Empire of Magic: Medieval Romance and the Politics of Cultural Fantasy

Geraldine Heng

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Paper, 536 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-231-12527-7
$28.00 / £19.50

July, 2003
Cloth, 536 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-231-12526-0
$85.00 / £58.50

Introduction: In the Beginning Was Romance

History as Romance: The Genesis of a Medieval Genre

1. Cannibalism, the First Crusade, and the Genesis of Medieval Romance: Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain

Popular Romance: A National Fiction

2. The Romance of England: Richard Coer de Lyon and the Politics of Race, Religion, Sexuality, and Nation

Chivalric/Heroic Romance: Defending Elite Men and Bodies

3. Warring Against Modernity: Masculinity and Chivalry in Crisis; or, The Alliterative Morte Arthure's Romance Anatomy of the Crusades

Family Romance/Hagiographic Romance: A Matter of Women (and Children)

4. Beauty and the East, a Modern Love Story: Women, Children, and Imagined Communities in The Man of Law's Tale and Its Others

Travel Romance/Ethnographic Romance: Mapping the World and Home

5. Eye on the World: Mandeville's Pleasure Zones; or, Cartography, Anthropology, and Medieval Travel Romance

About the Author

Geraldine Heng is director of medieval studies at the University of Texas at Austin and associate professor of English and Comparative Literature. Her articles have appeared in PMLA, differences, Genders, and the Yale Journal of Criticism.

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