Abstract:
Four Middle English romances Athelston, the Tale of Gamelyn, Havelok the Dane and Bevis of Hampton deal with the serious business of their youthful protagonists growing up, leaving home and finding a place to settle down, a business that involves exile, fleeing murderous relatives, and movement into the streets to solve political problems that begin within the walls of the king’s palace. Although scholars of medieval spatiality have avoided popular romance, I draw upon Henri Lefebvre’s idea of how perceived, conceived and lived space intertwine, to uncover the meaningful spatial patterns that support these tales. I investigate how poets deliberately employ physical descriptions of bodies, buildings and other objects and how power flows around spaces. Athelston and Gamelyn represent human civilisation in a textured and complex way that challenges the binaries commonly employed in spatial analysis. Havelok the Dane associates the idea of civilisation with kingdom-building and centres on the bodies of the exceptional protagonist and his wife, who increase their power over the spaces around them as they mature. In Bevis of Hampton, a pattern of habitation followed by a period of displacement characterises the protagonist’s search for identity and introduces the idea of exile in the world from a homeland that can only be entered after death. A potent mix of religion, power, and politics governs spatiality in Middle English romance.
