Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Contributors
- Abbreviations
- Introduction: Romance and its Medieval Contexts
- 1 The Pleasure of Popular Romance: A Prefatory Essay
- 2 Representations of Peasant Speech: Some Literary and Social Contexts for The Taill of Rauf Coilyear
- 3 ‘As ye have brewd, so shal ye drink’: the Proverbial Context of Eger and Grime
- 4 Ekphrasis and Narrative in Emaré and Sir Eglamour of Artois
- 5 What's in a Name? Anglo-Norman Romances or Chansons de geste?
- 6 ‘For Goddes loue, sir, mercy!’: Recontextualising the Modern Critical Text of Floris and Blancheflor
- 7 Roland in England: Contextualising the Middle English Song of Roland
- 8 Romance Baptisms and Theological Contexts in The King of Tars and Sir Ferumbras
- 9 Modern and Medieval Views on Swooning: the Literary and Medical Contexts of Fainting in Romance
- 10 Walking (between) the Lines: Romance as Itinerary/Map
- 11 Romances of Continuity in the English Rous Roll
- 12 ‘Ex Libris domini duncani / Campbell de glenwrquhay/ miles’: The Buik of King Alexander the Conquerour in the household of Sir Duncan Campbell, seventh laird of Glenorchy
- 13 ‘Pur les francs homes amender’: Clerical Authors and the Thirteenth-Century Context of Historical Romance
- Index
- Volumes already published
8 - Romance Baptisms and Theological Contexts in The King of Tars and Sir Ferumbras
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Contributors
- Abbreviations
- Introduction: Romance and its Medieval Contexts
- 1 The Pleasure of Popular Romance: A Prefatory Essay
- 2 Representations of Peasant Speech: Some Literary and Social Contexts for The Taill of Rauf Coilyear
- 3 ‘As ye have brewd, so shal ye drink’: the Proverbial Context of Eger and Grime
- 4 Ekphrasis and Narrative in Emaré and Sir Eglamour of Artois
- 5 What's in a Name? Anglo-Norman Romances or Chansons de geste?
- 6 ‘For Goddes loue, sir, mercy!’: Recontextualising the Modern Critical Text of Floris and Blancheflor
- 7 Roland in England: Contextualising the Middle English Song of Roland
- 8 Romance Baptisms and Theological Contexts in The King of Tars and Sir Ferumbras
- 9 Modern and Medieval Views on Swooning: the Literary and Medical Contexts of Fainting in Romance
- 10 Walking (between) the Lines: Romance as Itinerary/Map
- 11 Romances of Continuity in the English Rous Roll
- 12 ‘Ex Libris domini duncani / Campbell de glenwrquhay/ miles’: The Buik of King Alexander the Conquerour in the household of Sir Duncan Campbell, seventh laird of Glenorchy
- 13 ‘Pur les francs homes amender’: Clerical Authors and the Thirteenth-Century Context of Historical Romance
- Index
- Volumes already published
Summary
While romances may be secular narratives, they make frequent use of religion to entertain their audiences. Characters often engage in prayer or pilgrimage, and masses, marriages and baptisms regularly appear. Although it is not particularly helpful to sift romance depictions of religious ceremonies for evidence about liturgical practices, it is intriguing to reverse the process and consider the ways in which romances engage the cultural ideas of their day. This essay examines how late medieval theological understandings of baptism are taken up in two fourteenth-century English romances, The King of Tars and Sir Ferumbras. Theological and romance depictions of baptism both use the sacrament to reflect upon what makes a body Christian, or what establishes Christian identity in a body.
Baptism, according to Thomas Aquinas, ‘is called the sacrament of faith because it involves a profession of faith and joins those who receive it to the congregation of believers’. It is the rite through which both newborns and adult converts become Christian and manifest publicly their beliefs and allegiances. As such, baptism is a moment in which to study the question of what makes a Christian. Medieval thinkers, both theological and literary, used this moment to contemplate what effects change in a person, how that change can be perceived by others, and the respective roles of language and the body in determining identity and belief.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Medieval Romance, Medieval Contexts , pp. 105 - 120Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2011