Synopses & Reviews
Explores the emergence of the romance in the twelfth century.
Synopsis
Until the twelfth century writing in the western vernaculars dealt almost exclusively with religious, historical and factual themes, but the second half of the twelfth century saw the emergence of a new genre consciously conceived as fictional, the romance. Dennis Green explores how and why this shift occurred.
About the Author
D. H. Green is Shröder Professor Emeritus of German at the University of Cambridge, and a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. He is the author of numerous books on Medieval German literature.
Table of Contents
Preface; List of abbreviations; 1. Defining twelfth-century fictionality; 2. Vernacular fiction in the twelfth century: predecessors, finding a place for fiction; 3. Fictive orality: Excursus: Orality and performance in early French romance; 4. Fiction and Wolfram's Parzival: intertextuality, sources, history; 5. Fiction and structure: Ordo narrationis, typology, folktale pattern, double cycle; 6. Fiction and history: types of narrative, Matière de Rome, Matière de Bretagne, genesis of medieval fictionality; Notes; Bibliography; Index of names.