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Foreword—The Porosity of Medieval Insular Romance

Morgan Dickson and Fanny Moghaddassi
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1The theme of this volume is hardly accidental. It arises from the collaboration between two scholars working in the same (French) academic system but with very different scholarly backgrounds, and on a genre which itself challenges linguistic and geographic divisions. The experience of working across texts that have travelled from French and Anglo-Norman contexts:

  • 1  On the relationship between French and Anglo-Norman, see for instance Trotter (2003).

“Wait, let’s write ‘French (namely Anglo-Norman) contexts’ instead—Anglo-Norman is one of the French medieval dialects.”
“‘French and Anglo-Norman’ seems more appropriate since the Anglo-Norman cultural context is so specific.”
“But that suggests that French and Anglo-Norman existed in two completely distinct linguistic and cultural spheres and overlooks the powerful connections that existed between speakers of various French dialects at a time, when texts regularly circulated across the Channel.”1

As our continued discussions suggest, medieval literature engages critics in constant redefinitions of cultural and linguistic identities and literary traditions. The closer one gets to a definition, the clearer it becomes that it cannot be watertight: Anglo-Norman is linguistically French, but has its own specificities; Middle English has been described as a creole, mixing Old English with French and Old Norse (Hahn, 67). Medieval texts exist in a space where leakage, spillage and transfer regularly occur, not only in linguistic but also in cultural and literary terms. Since medieval studies developed in the nineteenth century, at a time when national identities were being solidified, the porosity of medieval literary production tended to be glossed over as academic fields of study were being defined around a focus on national literatures. However, scholars working in medieval studies today show particular interest in rethinking divisions along national and linguistic lines and in bringing to light the porous aspects of medieval literary creation.

2Even in terms of content, medieval romance is characterised by Protean use of earlier material that was repeatedly reproduced, translated and transformed to suit new audiences and new contexts. From this perspective, approaches to medieval literature have recently been moving away from a historic paradigm that was anchored in narratives of evolution and transformation—where an “original” text was considered as a source against which later versions were compared—towards a paradigm that recognizes the complexities and contradictions of historical literary production and values variation as a conscious choice (Cooper & Edwards, 2023: 4). Medieval insular romance as a genre is inherently difficult to classify, given its multilingual nature and its reliance on cross-cultural and cross-generic borrowings. Attempts to order and categorise insular romance production, namely according to generic borders, have given way to an interest in the messy systems of mutual influence, translation and adaptation that characterize this production (Field, 1999). As such, many texts can be seen as contiguous rather than as discrete entities that lead from one to another in a decipherable and ordered progression. A new paradigm and new ways of working that recognise the importance of translations and cross-cultural circulations, particularly on a European scale are currently being redefined (see for instance Radulescu & Ríkharðsdóttir, 2023). Such work recognises the fact that the very terms that we use to analyse insular romance, the geographical, political and literary notions that fashion our studies, emerged after the Middle Ages. Working on historic periods can be seen as an act of translation where scholarly work tries to recapture some aspects of a historic period while necessarily building the analysis on present frameworks.

3One of the challenges of this field of study concerns the materiality of the text, as the reading of medieval romance stretches beyond a single manuscript, so that a text can be seen both as a literary unit and as a participation in a wider literary network that also informs the work. This is why medieval scholars increasingly address manuscript diversity and the material aspects of romance (Perkins, 2015), while envisaging variations as expressions of differing appropriations and interpretations of a given story in various geographical and historical contexts (Lodén & Obry, 2022). Moreover, romance narratives exist in the porosity between manuscripts and other forms of narrative communication, such as the visual arts: medieval audiences would have encountered the stories in different forms and contexts, whether oral or written.

  • 2  The notion of the meme is discussed p. 3-7.

4In thematic terms, much scholarly effort has already gone into restructuring our understanding of medieval literary practices and into producing alternative ways of envisaging medieval romance and its tropes. Helen Cooper’s notion of the meme has provided a powerful tool for the study of romance variation over time,2 without establishing any new artificial borders between works or periods, insofar as it stresses romance’s “infinite adaptability” (2004: 6). Cooper’s focus is on familiarity and cultural persistence, while other critics underline contiguities within the framework of a period. Anne Berthelot, for instance, suggests we think of the matters of romance (a medieval term referring both to content and form) as of “colours that rub off” onto narratives (2017: 315), providing thematic and stylistic shadings that can sometimes but not always be distinguished from one another.

  • 3  This overlap between romance and hagiographical material has long been discussed, see Mehl (1968: (...)

5The very porosity of romance, in national, material and thematic terms, is one of the primary reasons that romance has been so hard to define as a genre. A vernacular literature of entertainment for socially diverse audiences (Putter and Gilbert, 2000), romance—and particularly the romances written in the British Isles—drew on a multilingual and multicultural literary heritage. Comprised of various earlier genres, this heritage included the chanson de geste, the roman d’antiquité, earlier courtly romances and Breton lays. At the same time, to take up Berthelot’s image, it tends to blend them into a new colour scheme where those earlier shades remain more or less distinct as traces or can produce an entirely new tone and atmosphere. For instance, many Middle English romances have a religious tone reminiscent of hagiographical texts to the point that it can be hard to distinguish between them.3

6Much of the recent work that is currently being done in medieval literary studies addresses the various forms of overlapping and cross-pollination described above. The international nature of the contributions found in this volume (by scholars working in Canada, France, Germany, Portugal and the United Kingdom) is particularly suited to such reassessment of historic divisions and to the analysis of the specifically malleable nature of romance as a genre. The volume proposes the notion of porosity as a tool for the analysis of these various types of interconnection. Porosity posits the coexistence and interpenetration of several forms: as a concept, it allows for a better understanding of medieval literary practices and opens a space for the study of the variations and incongruities of medieval texts. Its focus is on approaching simultaneity and contradiction: as such, porosity suits the analysis of a period which embraced a “both / and” hermeneutics, one that allowed for the coexistence of two contradictory ideas (Newman, 2013: 7-13). The overlap between several forms also presupposes communication between seemingly disparate entities, whether linguistic, geographical or thematic. Rather than finding contradiction problematic or trying to impose order onto diversity, romance embraces forms of accumulation, translation, adaptation and blending. It calls for systems of analysis that refrain from projecting classification and separations onto medieval literary production and instead explore instances of interweaving, porosity and / or melding. Recent work in medieval studies thus promotes interdisciplinary and multilingual approaches that allow for a form of disciplinary porosity.

7This volume explores aspects of romance’s thematic, generic, linguistic and material porosity in the context of insular romance. The contributions which open the volume examine bodily porosity, a theme that exerted particular fascination for medieval audiences, as can be seen in the continued popularity of Ovid’s Metamorphoses and of narratives of transformation throughout the Middle Ages (Bynum, 2001). Romance as a genre is particularly interested in examining human experience and notions of selfhood: it frequently explores liminal situations where the body and the mind stretch beyond the borders usually attributed to them. In many narratives, female characters exist across supposed divisions, such as that between the human and the non-human worlds, as is the case for Melusine or Heurodis. Caitlin Coxon’s paper highlights the porous taxonomy of romance character types and examines the figures of Medea and Melusine within the context of the literary categories of the witch and the fairy mistress. Transformations also affect male bodies, as illustrated in Amis and Amiloun, where the heroic body of the knight Amiloun undergoes a radical degradation, analysed by Emily Dolmans in physical, social, spatial and religious terms.

8Following on from thematic porosity, the next section of the volume works through the disciplinary porosity of romance in which a strong narrative is interwoven with preoccupations pertaining to contemporary social, political and philosophical questions. In the fourteenth-century Breton lay Sir Orfeo, the queen’s bodily transformation points to the limits of knowledge, as discussed by Michael Reid, who shows that the poem raises epistemic questions as to the ability for the audience to fully understand human experience. Romance also comments on political and social roles, as illustrated in the Middle English Sir Tristram: drawing on the poem’s linguistic and geographic versions and on an examination of visual representations of the story in manuscript illuminations (London, British Library Add. MS 11619) and the Chertsey tiles, Aude Martin identifies a specific interest in the role of the political adviser at the English court. Medieval romances, though notoriously imprecise, also engage with contemporary economic and technological advances. Alicia Haniford studies how the Middle English Floris and Blancheflour translates Eastern literary motifs and technological realities by adapting them to contemporary preoccupations with water supply in English towns.

9All of the papers in this volume recognise the importance of the multilingual circulation of romance, and the last section of the volume is specifically focused on this theme, through an analysis of the stories of two popular medieval heroes, Guy of Warwick, and the even more illustrious Alexander the Great. Ana Rita Martins sheds light on the importance of the Guy of Warwick tradition beyond the British Isles: her examination of a mid-fifteenth-century unpublished Latin version of the story, found in the Portuguese monastery of Santa Maria de Alcobaça, shows a shift in interpretation, promoting Guy’s penitent nature over his heroic and chivalric exploits. Similarly, Valerie Gruenzel follows different uses of the immensely popular Nine Worthies material in two mid-fifteenth-century versions of the Alexander legend associated with courts in Burgundy and in Scotland. The final paper in the volume proposes a reflection on the generic porosity of romance itself: Martine Yvernault traces questions of liminality and circularity through the Middle English versions of Lay le Freine and The Romance of the Cheuelere Assigne, highlighting the ever-transformative nature of romance themes, motifs and genre.

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Bibliography

BERTHELOT, A. (2017): “Matière de Bretagne, matière d’Arthur, matière de Merlin : a matter of opinion, ” in FERLAMPIN-ACHER, C. & GIRBEA, C. (eds.), Matières à débat. La Notion de matière littéraire dans la littérature médiévale, Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, p. 305-315.

BYNUM, C.W. (2001): Metamorphosis and Identity, New York, NY, Zone Books, 288 p.

COOPER, H. (2004): The English Romance in Time: Transforming Motifs from Geoffrey of Monmouth to the Death of Shakespeare, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 542 p.

COOPER, H. & EDWARDS, R.R. (2023): “Introduction,” in COOPER, H. & EDWARDS, R.R. (eds.) Medieval Poetry, 1100-1400: Volume 2, The Oxford History of English Poetry in English, Oxford, Oxford University Press, p. 1-11.

FIELD, R. (ed.) (1999): Tradition and Transformation in Medieval Romance, Cambridge, D.S. Brewer, 188 p.

HAHN, T. (1999): “Early Middle English,” in WALLACE, D. (ed.), The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, p. 61-91.

LODÉN, S, & OBRY, V. (2022): Floire et Blancheflor en Europe, Anthologie, Moyen Age européen, 12, Grenoble, Université Grenoble Alpes Éditions, 368 p.

MEHL, D. (1968): The Middle English Romances of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul Limited, 300 p.

NEWMAN, B. (2013): Medieval Crossover: Reading the Secular against the Sacred, Notre Dame, IN, University of Notre Dame Press, 399 p.

PERKINS, N. (2015): Medieval Romance and Material Culture, Cambridge, D.S. Brewer, 285 p.

PUTTER, A. & GILBERT, J. (2000): “Introduction,” in PUTTER, A. & GILBERT, J. (eds.), The Spirit of Medieval English Popular Romance, Harlow, Pearson Education, p. 1-38.

RADULESCU, R. & RIKHARÐSDOTTIR, S. (2023): The Routledge Companion to Medieval English Literature, New York, NY, Routledge, 500 p.

TROTTER, D. (2003): “L’anglo-normand : variété insulaire, ou variété isolée ?” Médiévales, 45.2: 43-54, https://journals.openedition.org/medievales/760.

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Notes

1  On the relationship between French and Anglo-Norman, see for instance Trotter (2003).

2  The notion of the meme is discussed p. 3-7.

3  This overlap between romance and hagiographical material has long been discussed, see Mehl (1968: 120).

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References

Bibliographical reference

Morgan Dickson and Fanny Moghaddassi, “Foreword—The Porosity of Medieval Insular Romance”Recherches anglaises et nord-américaines, 59 | 2025, 5-10.

Electronic reference

Morgan Dickson and Fanny Moghaddassi, “Foreword—The Porosity of Medieval Insular Romance”Recherches anglaises et nord-américaines [Online], 59 | 2025, Online since 30 June 2025, connection on 19 April 2026. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/ranam/1537; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/148cw

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About the authors

Morgan Dickson

Université de Picardie – Jules Verne, Textes, représentations, archéologie, autorité et mémoire de l’Antiquité à la Renaissance, TRAME UR 4284.

Fanny Moghaddassi

Université de Strasbourg, Savoirs dans l’espace anglophone : représentations, culture, histoire, SEARCH UR 2325.

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The text only may be used under licence CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. All other elements (illustrations, imported files) may be subject to specific use terms.

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