chapter four
LITERATURE

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Identity and Authority … 149
Heroic Narrative … 153
Heroic Literature in Medieval Scandinavia … 155
The Heroic Narrative in France … 158
The Heroic Narrative in Spain … 161
Origins, Definitions, and Categories of Romance … 163
Courtly Love … 166
Arthurian Romance … 169
Translatio Studii: Sources for Romance … 173
The Non-Narrative Lyric Impulse … 177
Medieval Allegory and Philosophical Texts … 183
Dante Alighieri … 186
The Medieval Dream Vision … 189
William Langland and Piers Plowman … 192
The Medieval Story Collection … 195
The Canterbury Tales … 199
Christine de Pizan … 201

Giovanni Boccaccio … 204
Geoffrey Chaucer … 205
Chrétien de Troyes … 205
Dante Alighieri … 206
Marie de France … 207

SIDEBARS AND PRIMARY DOCUMENTS
Primary sources are listed in italics
Technical Terms in Medieval Literature … 150
Literary Genres in the Middle Ages … 152
The Tradition of Alliterative Poetry … 154
An Icelandic Blood Feud (excerpt from Njal's Saga revealing the violence of Icelandic blood feuds) … 157
Heroic Literature in Ireland and Wales … 162
A Knight Searches for an Adventure (excerpt from Chrétien de Troyes' Yvain in which a knight converses with a serf) … 165
Andreas Capellanus's Rules for Love (excerpt from The Art of Courtly Love) … 168
The Grail Quest … 170
What Gawain Learned about Himself (excerpt from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight) … 171
The Contours of the Literary Life of King Arthur … 172
Boethius and the Consolation of Philosophy … 175
An Example of Translatio Studii: Boccaccio and Chaucer … 176
Ideal Female Beauty (excerpt from Marie de France's Lais describing conventional idealized beauty) … 177
Birds in Medieval Literature … 180
The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Medieval Literature … 181
The Spiritual and the Erotic in the Middle English "Foweles in the frith" … 182
Macrobius's Classification of Dreams … 191
Pilgrimage in Medieval Literature … 194
Dame Sirith (excerpt from a tale that satirizes bourgeois materialism and courtly love) … 197
Opening Lines of Chaucer's General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales (surprising shifts in Chaucer's multi-faceted work) … 200