This thesis investigates the relations between romance and texts of religious
instruction in England between c.1170–c.1330, taking as its principal textual corpus
the exceptionally rich literary traditions of insular French romance and religious
writing that subsist during this period. It argues that romance is a mode which
engages closely with religious and ethical questions from a very early stage, and
demonstrates the discourses of opposition in which both kinds of text participate
throughout the period. The thesis offers substantial readings of a number of neglected
insular French religious texts of the thirteenth century, including Robert Grosseteste's
Chasteau d'Amour, John of Howden's Rossignos, and Robert of Gretham's Miroir,
alongside new readings of romances such as Gui de Warewic and Ipomedon. This
juxtaposition of romance narrative and religious instruction sheds new light onto both
kinds of text: romance emerges as a mode with deep-rooted didactic qualities; insular
French religious literature is shown to be intensely concerned with the need to
compete with romance’s entertaining appeal in literary culture. This oppositional
discourse profoundly affects the form of instructional writing and romance alike. The
discussion of the interactions between insular French romance and instructional
literature presented here also serves as a new pre-history of Middle English romance.
The final chapter of the thesis offers several new readings of texts from the
Auchinleck manuscript, including the canonical romance Sir Orfeo and the neglected,
puzzling Speculum Gy de Warewyk. These readings demonstrate that fourteenthcentury
romance intelligently adapts the material it inherits from Francophone
literature to a new cultural situation. In these acts of reformation, Middle English
romance reveals itself as a discursive space capable of accommodating a wide range
of ethical and ideological affiliations; the complex negotiations between romance and
instructional literature in the preceding centuries are an important cultural condition
for this widening of possibilities.This thesis is not currently available via ORA