This book provides a systematic framework for the emerging field of Mediterranean studies, collecting essays from scholars of history, literature, religion, and art history that seek a more fluid understanding of "Mediterranean." It emphasizes the interdependence of Mediterranean regions and the rich interaction (both peaceful and bellicose, at sea and on land) between them. It avoids applying the national, cultural and ethnic categories that developed with the post-Enlightenment domination of northwestern Europe over the academy, working instead towards a dynamic and thoroughly interdisciplinary picture of the Mediterranean. Including an extensive bibliography and a conversation between leading scholars in the field, Can We Talk Mediterranean? lays the groundwork for a new critical and conceptual approach to the region.

This new companion to the works of Marie de France offers fresh insights into the standard critical debates. Marie de France is the author of some of the most influential and important works to survive from the middle ages; arguably best-known for her Lais, she also translated Aesop's Fables (the Ysope), and wrote the Espurgatoire seint Patriz (St Patrick's Purgatory), based on a Latin text. The aim of this Companion is both to provide information on what can be gleaned of her life, and on her poetry, and to rethink standard questions of interpretation, through topics with special relevance to medieval literature and culture. The variety of perspectives used highlights both the unity of Marie's oeuvre and the distinctiveness of the individual texts. Aftersituating her writings in their Anglo-Norman political, linguistic, and literary context, this volume considers her treatment of questions of literary composition in relation to the circulation, transmission, and interpretation ofher works. Her social and historical engagements are illuminated by the prominence of feudal vocabulary, while her representation of movement across different geographical and imaginary spaces opens a window on plot construction.Repetition and variation are considered as a narrative technique within Marie's work, and as a cultural practice linking her texts to a network of twelfth-century textual traditions. The Conclusion, on the posterity of her oeuvre, combines a consideration of manuscript context with the ways in which later authors rewrote Marie's works. Sharon Kinoshita is Professor of Literature, University of California, Santa Cruz; Peggy McCracken is Professor of French, Women's Studies, and Comparative Literature, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

This new companion to the works of Marie de France offers fresh insights into the standard critical debates. Marie de France is the author of some of the most influential and important works to survive from the middle ages; arguably best-known for her Lais, she also translated Aesop's Fables (the Ysope), and wrote the Espurgatoire seint Patriz (St Patrick's Purgatory), based on a Latin text. The aim of this Companion is both to provide information on what can be gleaned of her life, and on her poetry, and to rethink standard questions of interpretation, through topics with special relevance to medieval literature and culture. The variety of perspectives used highlights both the unity of Marie's oeuvre and the distinctiveness of the individual texts. Aftersituating her writings in their Anglo-Norman political, linguistic, and literary context, this volume considers her treatment of questions of literary composition in relation to the circulation, transmission, and interpretation ofher works. Her social and historical engagements are illuminated by the prominence of feudal vocabulary, while her representation of movement across different geographical and imaginary spaces opens a window on plot construction.Repetition and variation are considered as a narrative technique within Marie's work, and as a cultural practice linking her texts to a network of twelfth-century textual traditions. The Conclusion, on the posterity of her oeuvre, combines a consideration of manuscript context with the ways in which later authors rewrote Marie's works. Sharon Kinoshita is Professor of Literature, University of California, Santa Cruz; Peggy McCracken is Professor of French, Women's Studies, and Comparative Literature, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

An exciting reassessment of the works of Chretien, making use of modern critical theory to test orthodox opinion. This co-written, multi-stranded book challenges assumptions about Chretien as the author of a canon of works. In a series of lively exchanges, its five authors reassess the relationship between lyric and romance, between individuality and social conditions, and between psychology and medieval philosophy. The idea of "logical time" is used to open up such topics as adventure, memory, imagination, and textual variation. Recent research on Troyes and on the political agency of women leads to the reappraisal of subjectivity and gender. Throughout, the medieval texts associated with the name of Chretien are highlighted as sites where thought emerges; the implications of this thought arehistoricized and further conceptualized with the help of recent theoretical works, including those of Lacan. ZRINKA STAHULJAK, VIRGINIE GREENE, SARAH KAY, SHARON KINOSHITA and PEGGY McCRACKEN are professors at the University of California, Los Angeles, Harvard, New York University, the University of California, Santa Cruz and the University of Michigan respectively.

Medieval Boundaries Rethinking Difference in Old French Literature Sharon Kinoshita "From beginning to end, Kinoshita drives home her innovative thesis: that the formation of French literary texts between 1150 and 1225 cannot adequately be understood without reference to various types of cross-cultural contact between French-speaking nobles and those perceived by them as cultural, religious, and linguistic 'others.'"--E. Jane Burns, University of North Carolina "Kinoshita has produced a book of major importance. Her command of the Francophone Middle Ages should exert an important critical influence on the greater field of Middle English and should also be recognized as an important contribution to the prehistory of postcolonial studies."--David Wallace, University of Pennsylvania "I highly recommend this timely study as one of the most innovative, cohesive, and ambitious I have read--one that is capable of reinvigorating medieval literary studies in the Romance languages at the undergraduate and graduate level and will be a "de rigueur" citation in any future bibliography of the period."--"Medieval Review" In "Medieval Boundaries," Sharon Kinoshita examines the role of cross-cultural contact in twelfth- and early thirteenth-century French literature. Starting from the observation that many of the earliest and best-known works of the French literary tradition are set on or beyond the borders of the French-speaking world, she reads the "Chanson de Roland," the "lais" of Marie de France, and a variety of other texts in an expanded geographical frame that includes the Iberian peninsula, the Welsh marches, and the eastern Mediterranean. In Kinoshita's reconceptualization of the geographical and cultural boundaries of the medieval West, such places become significant not only as sites of conflict but also as spaces of intense political, economic, and cultural negotiation. An important contribution to the emerging field of medieval postcolonialism, Kinoshita's work explores the limitations of reading the literature of the French Middle Ages as an inevitable link in the historical construction of modern discourses of Orientalism, colonialism, race, and Christian-Muslim conflict. Rather, drawing on recent historical and art historical scholarship, Kinoshita uncovers a vernacular culture at odds with official discourses of crusade and conquest. Situating each work in its specific context, she brings to light the lived experiences of the knights and nobles for whom this literature was first composed and--in a series of close readings informed by postcolonial and feminist theory--demonstrates that literary representations of cultural encounters often provided the pretext for questioning the most basic categories of medieval identity. Awarded honorable mention for the 2007 Modern Language Association Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for French and Francophone Studies Sharon Kinoshita is Professor of Literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The Middle Ages Series 2006 320 pages 6 x 9 11 illus. ISBN 978-0-8122-3919-5 Cloth $59.95s 39.00 ISBN 978-0-8122-0248-9 Ebook $59.95s 39.00 World Rights Literature Short copy: "Kinoshita has produced a book of major importance. Her command of the Francophone Middle Ages should exert an important critical influence on the greater field of Middle English and should also be recognized as an important contribution to the prehistory of postcolonial studies."--David Wallace, University of Pennsylvania

Composed in a prison cell in 1298 by Venetian merchant Marco Polo and Arthurian romance writer Rustichello of Pisa, The Description of the World relates Polo's experiences in Asia and at the court of Qubilai, the Great Khan of the Mongol Empire. In addition to a new translation based on the Franco-Italian "F" manuscript of Polo's text, this edition includes genealogies of the Mongol rulers and nine maps of Polo's journey, as well as thorough annotation and an extensive bibliography.