Description: Drawing upon feminist and gender theory, as well as cultural analyses of race, class, and colonialism, this provocative book revises our understanding of the literary genre of medieval romance. Heng argues that the romance genre arose in the twelfth century as a cultural response to the trauma of war, as a way of displacing the horror of taboo acts -in particular the cannibalism committed by crusaders upon the bodies of their enemies during the First Crusade. From this cultural trauma, Heng argues, sprang the fantastical episodes involving King Arthur in Geoffrey of Monmouths supposedly nonfictional "History of the Kings of England." She also discusses "Morte Arthure," explores the story of the Saintly Constance in all its incarnations, and concludes with a discussion of travel literature, which she sees as helping to consolidate collective identity and the early nation-state.

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