Space, Gender, and Memory in Middle English Romance

This book offers a much-needed consideration of Melusine within medieval and contemporary theories of space, memory, and gender. The Middle English Melusine offers a particularly rich source for such a study, as it presents the story of a powerful fairy/human woman who desires a full human life-and death-within a literary tradition that is more friendly to women's agency than its continental counterparts. After establishing a "textual habitus of wonder," Jan Shaw explores the tale in relation to a range of Middle English traditions including love and marriage, the spatial practices of women, the operation of individual and collective memory, and the legacies of patrimony. Melusine emerges as a complex figure, representing a multifaceted feminine subject that furthers our understanding of Middle English women's sense of self in the world.

Introduction.- Chapter One: An Epistemology of Wonder.- Chapter Two: Wonder and Love.- Chapter Three: Building Gender.- Chapter Four: Architectures of Memory.- Chapter Five: Problematic Pasts and New Beginnings.- Conclusion: The Divine Ordo : Reprise.