"Redefining Gender Through the Arena of the Male Body: The Reception of Thomas's Tristan in the Old French ""Le Chevalier De La Charette"" and the Old Icelandic ""Saga Af Tristram Ok Isodd"

Lurkhur, Karen Anouschka

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Description

Title

"Redefining Gender Through the Arena of the Male Body: The Reception of Thomas's Tristan in the Old French ""Le Chevalier De La Charette"" and the Old Icelandic ""Saga Af Tristram Ok Isodd"

Author(s)

Lurkhur, Karen Anouschka

Issue Date

2008

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Fresco, Karen L.

Department of Study

Comparative Literature

Discipline

Comparative Literature

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

Literature, Romance

Language

eng

Abstract

This dissertation concentrates on two medieval romances which occupy different places in the medieval canon, Chretien de Troyes' Le Chevalier de la Charette and the Old Icelandic Saga af Tristram ok Isodd. Both of these texts are responses to the Old French Tristan romance and both deny the sexual ambiguity of the Tristan figure by reconfiguring the equation of male body and masculinity that is typical of courtly romance. Chretien is motivated by the disjunction between clerical and chivalric paradigms of masculinity and he uses the experiences of Lancelot to define gender as purely performative. Tristram ok Isodd, on the other hand, models the masculinity of its hero on the gender system in the literary-historic sagas of Icelanders. While maleness in this genre is largely based on performance, it rests on a biological basis. Thus, the ability of the Old Icelandic hero to father a son marks his immunity to the ambivalence which plagues the continental Tristan figure.

Graduation Semester

2008

Type of Resource

text

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