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The themes of magic and the supernatural in medieval romance are here fully explored and put into the context of thinking at the time in this first full study of the subject. The world of medieval romance is one in which magic and the supernatural are constantly present: in otherwordly encounters, in the strange adventures experienced by questing knights, in the experience of the uncanny, and in marvellous objects - rings, potions, amulets, and the celebrated green girdle in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. This study looks at a wide range of medieval English romance texts, including the works of Chaucer and Malory, from a broad cultural perspective, to show that while they employ magic in order to create exotic, escapist worlds, they are also grounded in a sense of possibility, and reflect a complex web of inherited and current ideas. The bookopens with a survey of classical and biblical precedents, and of medieval attitudes to magic; subsequent chapters explore the ways that romances both reflect contemporary attitudes and ideas, and imaginatively transform them. Inparticular, the author explores the distinction between the `white magic' of healing and protection, and the more dangerous arts of `nigromancy', black magic. Also addressed is the wider supernatural, including the ways that ideasassociated with human magic can be intensified and developed in depictions of otherworldly practitioners of magic. The ambiguous figures of the enchantress and the shapeshifter are a special focus, and the faery is contrasted with the Christian supernatural - miracles, ghosts, spirits, demons and incubi. Professor CORINNE SAUNDERS Saunders teaches in the Department of English, University of Durham.

Romances, English --- Magic in literature. --- Supernatural in literature. --- History and criticism. --- Chaucer. --- Christian Supernatural. --- Enchantress. --- Faery. --- Magic. --- Malory. --- Medieval Romance. --- Nigromancy. --- Shapeshifter. --- Supernatural. --- White Magic.

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Using concepts from queer theory and close readings of images and allusions in these texts, Loving in Verse demonstrates the importance of homoeroticism to an examination of poetic influence. A discussion of the theories of poetic influence from four twentieth-century writers (T.S. Eliot, Harold Bloom, Roland Barthes, and Frank O'Hara) concludes Guy-Bray's analysis."--Jacket. "Loving in Verse examines how three poets present their relationship to their most important predecessors, beginning with Dante's use of Virgil and Statius in the Divine Comedy, moving on to Spenser's use of medieval English poets in the Faerie Queene, and finally addressing Hart Crane's use of Whitman in The Bridge. In each case, Guy-Bray shows how the younger poet presents himself and the older poet as part of a male couple. He goes on to demonstrate how male couples are, in fact, found throughout these poems, and while some are indeed familial or hostile, many are romantic or sexual.

LITERARY CRITICISM --- Poetry --- Homosexuality in literature --- Literature - General --- Languages & Literatures --- History and criticism --- Homosexuality in literature. --- Poetry. --- Dante Alighieri, --- Spenser, Edmund, --- Crane, Hart, --- History and criticism. --- Criticism --- Poems --- Verses (Poetry) --- Literature --- Philosophy --- Faerie queene (Spenser, Edmund) --- Divina commedia (Dante Alighieri) --- Bridge (Crane, Hart) --- Cumégia (Dante Alighieri) --- Divine comedy (Dante Alighieri) --- Divina comedia (Dante Alighieri) --- Commedia (Dante Alighieri) --- Comedy (Dante Alighieri) --- Poema sacro (Dante Alighieri) --- Comedia (Dante Alighieri) --- Edmund Spenser, The Faerie queene (Spenser, Edmund) --- Faerie queen (Spenser, Edmund) --- Faery queen (Spenser, Edmund)