Narrating the Crusades
Loss and Recovery in Medieval and Early Modern English Literature

The first study to demonstrate how English literature continued to engage with crusading from medieval romances right through to Shakespeare.

Lee Manion (Author)

9781107057814, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 24 April 2014

320 pages
23.5 x 15.7 x 2.2 cm, 0.58 kg

'Of obvious interest to historians and literary scholars, medievalists and early modernists, Manion's book demonstrates the value of using literary texts, and especially romance, in the study of the crusades, and of viewing the crusades as a fruitful context for cultural production … Overall, Narrating the Crusades demonstrates the topical potential of the romance, a genre whose utility is often seen to lie in its entertainment value.' Mimi Ensley, Studies in the Age of Chaucer

In Narrating the Crusades, Lee Manion examines crusading's narrative-generating power as it is reflected in English literature from c.1300 to 1604. By synthesizing key features of crusade discourse into one paradigm, this book identifies and analyzes the kinds of stories crusading produced in England, uncovering new evidence for literary and historical research as well as genre studies. Surveying medieval romances including Richard Cœur de Lion, Sir Isumbras, Octavian, and The Sowdone of Babylone alongside historical practices, chronicles, and treatises, this study shows how different forms of crusading literature address cultural concerns about collective and private action. These insights extend to early modern writing, including Spenser's Faerie Queene, Marlowe's Tamburlaine, and Shakespeare's Othello, providing a richer understanding of how crusading's narrative shaped the beginning of the modern era. This first full-length examination of English crusading literature will be an essential resource for the study of crusading in literary and historical contexts.

Introduction
1. An anti-national Richard Cœur de Lion: associational forms and the English crusading romance
2. Sir Isumbras's '[p]rivy' recovery: individual crusading in the fourteenth century
3. Fictions of recovery in later English crusading romances: Octavian and The Sowdone of Babylone
4. Re-figuring Catholic and Turk: early modern literatures of crusading and the end of the crusading romance
Conclusion
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Crusades [HBWC], Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH], Early history: c 500 to c 1450/1500 [HBLC], Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB]