Troubling Arthurian Histories: Court Culture, Performance and Scandal in Chr?tien de Troyes's Erec et Enide

Drawing on a range of approaches in cultural, gender and literary studies, this book presents Chr?tien de Troyes's Erec et Enide as a daring and playful exploration of scandal, terror and anxiety in court cultures. Through an interdisciplinary reading, it locates Erec et Enide, the first surviving Arthurian romance in French, in various contexts, from broad cultural and historical questionings such as medieval vernacular 'modernity's' engagement with the weight of its classical inheritance, to the culturally fecund and politically turbulent histories of the families of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II Plantagenet. Where previous accounts of the tale have not uncommonly presented Chr?tien's poem as a decorous 'resolution' of tensions between dynastic marriage and fin'amors, between personal desire and social duty, this reading sees these forces as in permanent and irresolvable tension, the poem's key scenes haunted - whether mischievously or traumatically - by questions and skeletons from various closets.

Author: No?l Peacock

Publisher: Peter Lang Ltd, International Academic Publis

Publication Date: Dec 06, 2007

Number of Pages: 536 pages

Binding: Paperback or Softback

ISBN-10: 3039113852

ISBN-13: 9783039113859