Medieval Crossover: Reading the Secular Against the Sacred (Conway Lectures in Medieval Studies)

New
Illustrated
2013
$49.63

The sacred and the secular in medieval literature have too often been perceived as opposites, or else relegated to separate but unequal spheres. In Medieval Crossover: Reading the Secular against the Sacred, Barbara Newman offers a new approach to the many ways that sacred and secular interact in medieval literature, arguing that (in contrast to our own cultural situation) the sacred was the normative, unmarked default category against which the secular always had to define itself and establish its niche. Newman refers to this dialectical relationship as crossover -which is not a genre in itself, but a mode of interaction, an openness to the meeting or even merger of sacred and secular in a wide variety of forms. Newman sketches a few of the principles that shape their interaction: the hermeneutics of both/and, the principle of double judgment, the confluence of pagan material and Christian meaning in Arthurian romance, the rule of convergent idealism in hagiographic romance, and the double-edged sword in parody.

Medieval Crossover explores a wealth of case studies in French, English, and Latin texts that concentrate on instances of paradox, collision, and convergence. Newman convincingly and with great clarity demonstrates the widespread applicability of the crossover concept as an analytical tool, examining some very disparate works. These include French and English romances about Lancelot and the Grail; the mystical writing of Marguerite Porete (placed in the context of lay spirituality, lyric traditions, and the Romance of the Rose); multiple examples of parody (sexually obscene, shockingly anti-Semitic, or cleverly litigious); and Rene of Anjou's two allegorical dream visions. Some of these texts are scarcely known to medievalists; others are rarely studied together. Newman's originality in her choice of these primary works will inspire new questions and set in motion new fields of exploration for medievalists working in a large variety of disciplines, including literature, religious studies, history, and cultural studies.

Synopsis

The sacred and the secular in medieval literature have too often been perceived as opposites, or else relegated to separate but unequal spheres. In Medieval Crossover: Reading the Secular against the Sacred, Barbara Newman offers a new approach to the many ways that sacred and secular interact in medieval literature, arguing that (in contrast to our own cultural situation) the sacred was the normative, unmarked default category against which the secular always had to define itself and establish its niche. Newman refers to this dialectical relationship as crossover -which is not a genre in itself, but a mode of interaction, an openness to the meeting or even merger of sacred and secular in a wide variety of forms. Newman sketches a few of the principles that shape their interaction: the hermeneutics of both/and, the principle of double judgment, the confluence of pagan material and Christian meaning in Arthurian romance, the rule of convergent idealism in hagiographic romance, and the double-edged sword in parody.

Medieval Crossover explores a wealth of case studies in French, English, and Latin texts that concentrate on instances of paradox, collision, and convergence. Newman convincingly and with great clarity demonstrates the widespread applicability of the crossover concept as an analytical tool, examining some very disparate works. These include French and English romances about Lancelot and the Grail; the mystical writing of Marguerite Porete (placed in the context of lay spirituality, lyric traditions, and the Romance of the Rose); multiple examples of parody (sexually obscene, shockingly anti-Semitic, or cleverly litigious); and Rene of Anjou's two allegorical dream visions. Some of these texts are scarcely known to medievalists; others are rarely studied together. Newman's originality in her choice of these primary works will inspire new questions and set in motion new fields of exploration for medievalists working in a large variety of disciplines, including literature, religious studies, history, and cultural studies.

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More Information

Format: Illustrated
Pages: 416
Edition: Illustrated
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
Published: 30 May 2013
ISBN 10: 026803611X
ISBN 13: 9780268036119

Media Reviews

As Barbara Newman points out, in the wake of the bruising debates about 'Robertsonianism, ' scholars preferred to focus on different kinds of questions, but the work produced during the intervening decades can now fruitfully inform a return, with a somewhat different orientation, to the thorny questions of how the sacred and the secular interact in medieval literary texts, and indeed how and to what extent these categories functioned within medieval cultural imagination. Newman's book tackles these questions head-on in a variety of texts, and is sure to stimulate further research in this area. --Sylvia Huot, University of Cambridge
[Newman] aptly reminds us of the distance between the modern and the medieval, noting how sometime between 1600 and 1900 the secular rather than the sacred becomes the default category of Western culture. . . . Having herself 'crossed over' from English literature to French, and from religious texts to secular romance, Newman's enthusiasm for this 'crossover' will fruitfully enrich the contacts between these academic fields. --Speculum
Newman's book works against the effects of Robertson's totalizing program, and on that score alone its contribution is considerable. . . Newman thus reveals a strain in medieval literary history with long antecedents and wide application. It would seem to have been waiting a long time to be revealed. On this view, then, Newman's book is revelatory. --Comparative Literature Studies
Beyond the field of late medieval literary studies, Medieval Crossover is a must-read for scholars in any discipline concerned with secularization and passage to modernity. Medieval Crossover is the most powerful book about the interaction of pre-modern sacred and secular literary cultures since D.W. Robertson's A Preface to Chaucer. --Modern Philology
This outstanding piece of scholarship makes an original contribution to the fields of medieval studies in general as well as more specifically to the study of medieval English and French, or better, francophone literature produced either on the continent or in England. Medievalists working in a large variety of disciplines--historical, sociological, religious, as well as cultural and literary--will find this book of great interest. The general argument for both-and is completely convincing: specialists as well as general readers of medieval works need to learn about and practice double judgment, and Newman's book gives them wonderful examples of how to do so and what is at stake in the process. --Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner, Boston College
In Medieval Crossover, Barbara Newman highlights the ways in which the premodern reader understood 'sacred' and 'secular' not as opposing points on a continuum but as what Newman calls a state of 'double judgment, ' where transcendent truths could be understood through paradox or hermeneutic inversion. Exquisitely written, grounded in thoughtful readings of some of the most enigmatic texts of the Middle Ages, Medieval Crossover charts a new course in our understanding of premodern modes of interpretation. --Suzanne Conklin Akbari, University of Toronto
Understanding these texts in conversation as crossover works, as Newman does, enriches and complicates our reading of each. . . . This book will be essential reading for any student of religion, history, or literary studies and will doubtless inspire much scholarship to come. --Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies
In the conclusion, Newman generously identifies her work as laying a path to be pursued by others. In addition to the method it outlines, Medieval Crossover provides the ground for exploring why so many medieval texts and genres--in serious and playful registers--construct an inextricable relationship between the secular and the sacred, even when they seem most antithetical to one another. --Studies in the Age of Chaucer
The undeclared subject of this book is nothing less amazing or mysterious than the procreation of life through art. From the altitude of a medium-earth-orbit satellite, Newman's 'meandering path' and its side-tracks describe an intricate pattern, crisscrossing and double-crossing, as elaborate as the swiveling of Love. . . . Thanks to Newman's game-changing encore to the Donaldson/Robertson debate, we now can see a way to speak of crossovers between secular and sacred as tools of indigenation, and of indigenation as a protean driver in the evolution of social values. --The Medieval Review

Author Bio

Barbara Newman is professor of English, religious studies, and classics at Northwestern University, USA. She is the author of a number of books, including God and the Goddesses: Vision, Poetry, and Belief in the Middle Ages and Frauenlob's Song of Songs : A Medieval German Poet and His Masterpiece.