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612-822-4611
Medieval Crossover: Reading the Secular against the Sacred

Medieval Crossover: Reading the Secular against the Sacred

Hardcover

Series: Conway Lectures in Medieval Studies

Art HistoryLiterary CriticismGeneral Christianity

ISBN10: 0268206570
ISBN13: 9780268206574
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
Published: Sep 30 2022
Pages: 416
Weight: 1.60
Height: 0.94 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English

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.

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Literary Criticism