Think romance! Re-conceptualizing a Medieval Genre
Romances were the most popular, most influential, most wide-ranging form of fiction in the high and late Middle Ages. While this popularity has ensured a great deal of modern critical attention, particularly to individual romances, it has not necessarily meant that the place of romance in the Middle Ages has been understood adequately. That is, as scholars outside of the field of literary studies -historians, art historians, musicologists- have begun to look at romances, those inside continue to treat this genre largely in terms of its literary merit. This interdisciplinary conference seeks to re-conceptualize romance more broadly, not only as a topic of interest for scholars of particular medieval vernacular texts, but as a kind of tool, a bearer of a set of assumptions, a cultural category available to medieval authors, artists, composers, and patrons.