Ranam n°59/2025

This volume is dedicated to medieval insular romances, often described as “popular” and which receive less attention than Arthurian texts or canonical authors, such as Gower and Chaucer. It explores the porosity of a genre which has defied scholarly definition and recurrently engages with and challenges limits and boundaries. The different sections of this volume allow for a multi-faceted approach to the thematic, disciplinary and textual porosity of medieval romance. Middle English romances present a sustained interest in transformations of the body whether these relate to the influence of supernatural forces or to the accidents of life. Romances also exist at the crossroads between literature and philosophy (conceptions of the self), politics (constructions of power) and technology (how medieval technologies impacted fiction). They connect different geographical and historical areas, as stories are rewritten and adapted to new contexts, weaving webs of allusion and meaning.