Melusine
The English Melusine is extant in a unique manuscript in the British Library (Royal MS 18.b.II) dating ca. 1500. This Melusine is a largely faithful translation of the French original, possibly of the 1478 Steinschaber edition of the Roman de Mélusine, yet the identity of the translator and the purpose of the translation remain unknown. Melusine is also found in fragments Wynkyn de Word’s printed edition (STC (2nd ed.) /14648) also from ca. 1500. Although scholars have tended to consider the printed fragments to be simply a printed edition of the same text found in the manuscript, the lack of collation of these texts leaves this conclusion open to question. The work I have done so far on these texts suggests that the printed edition is likely a different version of the same text. This conclusion appears to be shared by Tania Colwell, whose article about the fragments is forthcoming in Volume 17 of the Journal of the Early Book Society. These two texts are of similar age, which suggests both that they may be different versions and that there may have been a lot of circulation of this text.
Only one modern printed edition exists for Melusine. A. K. Donald edited Melusine for the Early English Texts Society in 1895. Originally intended to be two volumes, only the first volume was published--that of the text found in Royal MS 18.b.II with glossary and minimal explanatory notes. In response to this lack of introductory critical material, Robert J. Nolan wrote An Introduction to the English Version of Melusine: A Medieval Prose Romance for his doctoral thesis in 1970. However, Nolan’s thesis has not been published, with the exception of two articles derived from it and published in Fabula in 1974. The English Melusine is occasionally mentioned in the context of discussion about fairies in Middle English romances, but rarely is it the primary text being studied. It is exceptional that Colwell’s forthcoming article focuses solely on this romance, and it is the only recent scholarship to consider the romance’s material text. The dearth of critical material about the English Melusine has contributed to its neglect in modern scholarship; thus, I intend to collate Royal MS 18.b.II and STC (2nd ed.) /14648 to shed more light on this Middle English romance. Building on my published findings as a result of this collation, I would begin to plan for one of my eventual goals to produce a new critical edition of Melusine.
The Hybrid 'Other' in Medieval Literature
My thesis on fairies dovetailed with other research on monsters in the medieval period, which observed that xenophobic medieval attitudes drew connections between Jews, Saracens, and monsters. Race in the Middle Ages has been studied in various ways over the past couple of decades, and recent publications such as Lyn T. Ramey’s Black Legacies: Race and the European Middle Ages (2014) indicate that this interest in race in the medieval period remains current; however, while hybridity has been discussed extensively in Postcolonial studies, hybridity in medieval literature has yet to be studied in depth.
My previous research on Melusine has demonstrated that this romance is concerned with so-called ‘purity of blood’ and explores to what extent the half-fairy Melusine can ‘pass’ as a human despite her fairy parentage. I am interested in broadening this research by investigating how medieval texts portray other ‘mixed’ characters: either part-supernatural, as in Sir Degaré and Sir Gowther, or fully human but ethnically mixed, as in The King of Tars. Through this research I will determine what happens when the Other is presented as characters of mixed race, species, or domain and in the anxieties evoked when characters exist within a liminal space because of their hybridity. Employing the questions of mixed-race theory—such as Judith Butler’s theory about ‘passing’ as a different gender or race—to examine medieval texts for instances of ‘mixing’, this research project will include both multiracial characters and those who were considered Other in the medieval period.
In doing so, I will examine historical understandings of race and racism and the underpinnings of modern assumptions about cultural identity. Although contemporary understanding of race has its roots in the early modern period during the Age of Exploration, race, and other factors that societies use to differentiate themselves from other societies, was not necessarily defined the same way in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as it has been in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Investigating how racism and hybridity were conceptualized in the medieval period will bring modern understandings of cultural identity into sharper focus. Further, studying issues of mixedness and hybridity will provide not only a unique lens through which to explore attitudes towards the foreign in medieval Britain, but also a means to examine modern responses to the Other.
My research will initially focus on medieval Britain, though it may expand to other areas of medieval Europe as the research progresses. I intend to use the data compiled by the University of York’s current project England’s Immigrants, 1330-1550, as it will provide extensive historical context for contemporary attitudes concerning ethnicity and the Other. I can then better place medieval English texts that present mixed characters in their cultural context. As a result, this study will provide not just for the examination of how authors portrayed the foreign and the hybrid, but also for historical considerations of the seeds of nationalism in medieval Europe. The ways in which hybridity affected cultural identity requires an understanding that ‘culture’ involves not only race or nationality or ethnicity, but may also include language or religious beliefs. As such, this research project will have three research themes: the Other in terms of nationality, race, and religion.
The English Melusine is extant in a unique manuscript in the British Library (Royal MS 18.b.II) dating ca. 1500. This Melusine is a largely faithful translation of the French original, possibly of the 1478 Steinschaber edition of the Roman de Mélusine, yet the identity of the translator and the purpose of the translation remain unknown. Melusine is also found in fragments Wynkyn de Word’s printed edition (STC (2nd ed.) /14648) also from ca. 1500. Although scholars have tended to consider the printed fragments to be simply a printed edition of the same text found in the manuscript, the lack of collation of these texts leaves this conclusion open to question. The work I have done so far on these texts suggests that the printed edition is likely a different version of the same text. This conclusion appears to be shared by Tania Colwell, whose article about the fragments is forthcoming in Volume 17 of the Journal of the Early Book Society. These two texts are of similar age, which suggests both that they may be different versions and that there may have been a lot of circulation of this text.
Only one modern printed edition exists for Melusine. A. K. Donald edited Melusine for the Early English Texts Society in 1895. Originally intended to be two volumes, only the first volume was published--that of the text found in Royal MS 18.b.II with glossary and minimal explanatory notes. In response to this lack of introductory critical material, Robert J. Nolan wrote An Introduction to the English Version of Melusine: A Medieval Prose Romance for his doctoral thesis in 1970. However, Nolan’s thesis has not been published, with the exception of two articles derived from it and published in Fabula in 1974. The English Melusine is occasionally mentioned in the context of discussion about fairies in Middle English romances, but rarely is it the primary text being studied. It is exceptional that Colwell’s forthcoming article focuses solely on this romance, and it is the only recent scholarship to consider the romance’s material text. The dearth of critical material about the English Melusine has contributed to its neglect in modern scholarship; thus, I intend to collate Royal MS 18.b.II and STC (2nd ed.) /14648 to shed more light on this Middle English romance. Building on my published findings as a result of this collation, I would begin to plan for one of my eventual goals to produce a new critical edition of Melusine.
The Hybrid 'Other' in Medieval Literature
My thesis on fairies dovetailed with other research on monsters in the medieval period, which observed that xenophobic medieval attitudes drew connections between Jews, Saracens, and monsters. Race in the Middle Ages has been studied in various ways over the past couple of decades, and recent publications such as Lyn T. Ramey’s Black Legacies: Race and the European Middle Ages (2014) indicate that this interest in race in the medieval period remains current; however, while hybridity has been discussed extensively in Postcolonial studies, hybridity in medieval literature has yet to be studied in depth.
My previous research on Melusine has demonstrated that this romance is concerned with so-called ‘purity of blood’ and explores to what extent the half-fairy Melusine can ‘pass’ as a human despite her fairy parentage. I am interested in broadening this research by investigating how medieval texts portray other ‘mixed’ characters: either part-supernatural, as in Sir Degaré and Sir Gowther, or fully human but ethnically mixed, as in The King of Tars. Through this research I will determine what happens when the Other is presented as characters of mixed race, species, or domain and in the anxieties evoked when characters exist within a liminal space because of their hybridity. Employing the questions of mixed-race theory—such as Judith Butler’s theory about ‘passing’ as a different gender or race—to examine medieval texts for instances of ‘mixing’, this research project will include both multiracial characters and those who were considered Other in the medieval period.
In doing so, I will examine historical understandings of race and racism and the underpinnings of modern assumptions about cultural identity. Although contemporary understanding of race has its roots in the early modern period during the Age of Exploration, race, and other factors that societies use to differentiate themselves from other societies, was not necessarily defined the same way in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as it has been in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Investigating how racism and hybridity were conceptualized in the medieval period will bring modern understandings of cultural identity into sharper focus. Further, studying issues of mixedness and hybridity will provide not only a unique lens through which to explore attitudes towards the foreign in medieval Britain, but also a means to examine modern responses to the Other.
My research will initially focus on medieval Britain, though it may expand to other areas of medieval Europe as the research progresses. I intend to use the data compiled by the University of York’s current project England’s Immigrants, 1330-1550, as it will provide extensive historical context for contemporary attitudes concerning ethnicity and the Other. I can then better place medieval English texts that present mixed characters in their cultural context. As a result, this study will provide not just for the examination of how authors portrayed the foreign and the hybrid, but also for historical considerations of the seeds of nationalism in medieval Europe. The ways in which hybridity affected cultural identity requires an understanding that ‘culture’ involves not only race or nationality or ethnicity, but may also include language or religious beliefs. As such, this research project will have three research themes: the Other in terms of nationality, race, and religion.