Acomparative Study of Middle English Romance and Modern Popular Sheikh Romance
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DESIRING THE EAST: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF MIDDLE ENGLISH ROMANCE AND MODERN POPULAR SHEIKH ROMANCE AMY BURGE PHD UNIVERSITY OF YORK WOMEN‟S STUDIES SEPTEMBER 2012 ABSTRACT This thesis comparatively examines a selection of twenty-first century sheikh romances and Middle English romances from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries that imagine an erotic relationship occurring between east and west. They do so against a background of conflict, articulated in military confrontation and binary religious and ethnic division. The thesis explores the strategies used to facilitate the cross-cultural relationship across such a gulf of difference and considers what a comparison of medieval and modern romance can reveal about attitudes towards otherness in popular romance. In Chapter 1, I analyse the construction of the east in each genre, investigating how the homogenisation of the romance east in sheikh romance distances it from the geopolitical reality of those parts of the Middle East seen, by the west, to be „other‟. Chapter 2 examines the articulation of gender identity and the ways in which these romances subvert and reassert binary gender difference to uphold normative heterosexual relations. Chapter 3 considers how ethnic and religious difference is nuanced, in particular through the use of fabric, breaking down the disjunction between east and west. Chapter 4 investigates the way ethnicity, religion and gender affect hierarchies of power in the abduction motif, enabling undesirable aspects of the east to be recast. The key finding of this thesis is that both romance genres facilitate the cross-cultural erotic relationship by rewriting apparently binary differences of religion and ethnicity to create sameness. While the east is figured differently in Middle English and modern sheikh romance, the strategies they use to facilitate the cross-cultural erotic relationship are similar. The thesis concludes that the constancy of certain attitudes towards the east in both medieval and modern romance reveals a persistence of conservative values in representations of the east in romance. CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .............................................................................................. 1 AUTHOR‟S DECLARATION ......................................................................................... 1 INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................... 2 „Dark […] But Not Too Dark‟: Representing Ethnicity in the Romance East ........... 3 Gender in Romance ................................................................................................ 15 Defining the Romance East .................................................................................... 24 Comparative Research Methods ............................................................................. 27 Saracens and Sheikhs: Selecting Sources ............................................................... 31 Outline of the Thesis .............................................................................................. 42 CHAPTER 1: SETTING THE SCENE: THE ROMANCE EAST ........................................... 45 „A Very Different Place‟: Locating the Romance East ........................................... 46 The New Middle East: The Rise of the United Arab Emirates ............................... 54 A Very English Place: Britain and Dubai ............................................................... 57 A „Medieval‟ Romance East: Shaky Temporality .................................................. 61 Bevis of Hampton: Geography and Journeys .......................................................... 71 „I Come From […] Many Territories‟: The Locus and Effect of Geography in Bevis of Hampton ........................................................................ 82 Conclusion ........................................................................................................... 105 CHAPTER 2: „FOR YOU ARE A MAN AND SHE IS A MAID‟: GENDER AND DIFFERENCE IN EAST AND WEST .................................................................... 109 „A Truly Magnificent Specimen‟: Masculinity and the East ................................. 110 „Made [Into] a Eunuch‟: Subverting Masculinity in Floris and Blancheflur ........ 119 „Beautiful Enough to Ensnare a Sultan‟: Performing Femininity ......................... 134 „Weird and Kinky and Medieval‟: Virginity and the East .................................... 140 Conclusion ........................................................................................................... 156 CHAPTER 3: FABRICATING SAMENESS ................................................................... 159 „Neither Fish Nor Fowl‟: Representing Difference .............................................. 160 „So This Was What a Desert Queen Looked Like‟: Transformative Fabric in Sheikh Romance ................................................................................... 178 „Dressed / As Though She Were Saracen‟: Disguising Religion in The King of Tars .............................................................................................. 190 „Is [This Child] Not Mine, That I Created?‟: Lineage and Miscegenation ............ 196 Conclusion ........................................................................................................... 209 CHAPTER 4: ROMANCING THE ABDUCTION MOTIF ................................................. 212 Redefining Abduction ............................................................................................ 15 „You‟re Part of My Harem‟: Abduction as Cultural Custom .................................... 222 „Keeping You Here is Keeping You Safe‟: Abduction as Protection ....................... 235 „Cherishing the Chains of their Bondage‟: Abduction as Sexual Fantasy ................ 246 „This […] Wasn‟t Freedom‟: Colonising the Abduction Motif ............................. 256 Conclusion ........................................................................................................... 264 ROMANCE IN THE EAST: CONCLUSIONS ................................................................. 267 Playing with Reality............................................................................................. 267 Negotiating With/in the East ................................................................................ 271 Romantic Orientalism .......................................................................................... 276 Next Steps ............................................................................................................ 278 APPENDIX 1: ROMANCE PLOT SUMMARIES ............................................................ 281 APPENDIX 2: LIST OF MIDDLE ENGLISH VERSE ROMANCES CONTAINING SARACENS ........................................................................................ 291 APPENDIX 3: LIST OF SHEIKH AND DESERT ROMANCES PUBLISHED IN BRITAIN BY MILLS & BOON, 1909-2009 ................................................................ 294 APPENDIX 4: HARLEQUIN MILLS & BOON MODERN ROMANCE SHEIKH TITLES 2000-2009 .................................................................................... 315 APPENDIX 5: COMPARISON OF PLACE NAMES IN BOEVE AND BEVIS OF HAMPTON ............................................................................................... 321 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................... 332 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Cover of Violet Winspear's Palace of the Pomegranate (1974) ................ 39 Figure 2: Cover of Dorothy Cork's Gate of the Golden Gazelle (1975) .................... 39 Figure 3: Map of Fictional Desert Nations in Mills & Boon Modern Romance Sheikh Novels ............................................................................... 49 Figure 4: Detail Map Showing Middle Eastern Fictional Desert Nations in Mills & Boon Modern Romance Sheikh Novels ...................................... 50 Figure 5: Distribution of Places in Boeve and Bevis of Hampton .............................. 84 Figure 6: Cover of Lynne Graham, The Desert Sheikh's Captive Wife (2008) ........ 165 Figure 7: Cover of Emma Darcy, Traded to the Sheikh (2006) ............................... 165 Figure 8: Cover of Annie West, The Sheikh's Ransomed Bride (2007) ................... 166 Figure 9: Cover of Kim Lawrence, Desert Prince, Defiant Virgin (2008) .............. 166 Figure 10: Cover of Sharon Kendrick, The Sheikh's Unwilling Wife (2007) ........... 167 Figure 11: Cover of Lynne Graham, The Arabian Mistress (2001) ......................... 167 Figure 12: Cover of Penny Jordan, Prince of the Desert (2006) ............................. 179 LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Manuscript Distribution of the Main Four Middle English Romances Featuring Erotic Relationships Between Christians and Saracens. ............................ 33 Table 2: Dubai Hotel Establishment Guests by Nationality, 2000-2009 (number of guests)...................................................................................................... 58 Table 3: Survey of Number of Place Names in the Most Complete Extant Middle English Versions of Bevis .............................................................................. 73 Table 4: Distribution of „Virgin‟ and „Innocent/Innocence‟ in Modern Romance Titles of Novels with Foreign Heroes......................................... 142 Table 5: Comparison of Passages from