ABSTRACT
Medieval romance is inescapably rooted in the Christian worldview of its time. Yet the manifestation of Christianity within romance can take many different forms and elicit a wide variety of responses. Christianity provides structure and shape to romance by offering a time scheme founded on the liturgical seasons and feast days and by emphasizing the role of divine providence in the world and the co-existence of sublunar (temporal) and celestial realms. Recent criticism, as Helen Cooper has emphasized and as the volume she introduces demonstrates, has attended to the “multiplicity of angles” offered on Christianity by romance. It is easy to see romances as constructing a never-never world: their archaism, frequent lack of geographic specificity, and use of repeated motifs and formulae create a sense of timelessness. Romance lends itself to psychoanalytical and structuralist approaches.
