In Magic and the Supernatural in Medieval English Romance, Corinne Saunders juxtaposes “fictional” romances with analytical traditions of pre-modern European magic to show how romances engaged not only with issues of gender, race, class, and religion but also with the question of supernatural possibilities. The book has two main sections: first, a survey of magical principles, beliefs, beings, and dangers in classical and medieval philosophy and history; and second, discussions of magical themes and functions in medieval English romances. The effect of this order helps to remind the reader that romances were written in a world with a long tradition of scholars seriously working to define and theorize magic.
The first two chapters, “Classical and Biblical Precedents” and “The Middle Ages: Prohibitions, Folk Practices and Learned Magic,” draw from religious and philosophical primary sources and historical and folkloristic studies from the past century. Making sense of indications of a magical worldview in cultural worlds long past is a challenging task, and Saunders provides interesting glimpses into historical refractions of the theorizing of alchemists and theologians. These chapters provide rich, detailed footnotes that will be useful to readers who wish to learn more about the classical and medieval philosophies systematizing ideas about magic, although there is little indication of the developments in the evolving academic debates about pre-modern magical beliefs and practices.
The book’s impressive interpretive strength lies in the chapters that directly analyze romances. Chapter 3, “White Magic: Natural Arts and Marvellous Technology,” describes the construction of beneficent magics as part of a complex world. It significantly contributes to the discussion of the interplay of magic and fantastical technologies in romances by focusing on how this combination serves important rhetorical and narrative goals in works like Yvain and Ywain and Gawain, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Sir Percyvell of Gales, the Tristan legend, Beves of Hampton, Florys and Blauncheflour, and Chaucer’s Franklin’s and Squire’s Tales. Chapter 4, “Black Magic: The Practice of ‘Nigromancy,’” picks up with Chaucer’s Parson’s and the Canon’s Yeoman’s Tales, refers back to several of the tales in the preceding chapter, and continues on with a new set of romances from Partonope of Blois to Valentine and Orson that expose anxieties about both evil and misguided uses of magic. Saunders also usefully highlights the medieval folk etymology of “nigromancy” as magic that engages with darkness (and not necessarily with death) because “the word is understood to find its origins in Latin niger, black (rather than the Greek nekros, corpse)” (154). Chapter 5, “Otherworld Enchantments and Faery Realms,” shifts from magical objects and practitioners to innately magical beings who impinge on the mortal world. Saunders’ discussion of “the rewriting of the underworld as the otherworld” (203) in Sir Orfeo is particularly rich, and her larger conclusion is relevant to the whole book: “This structural role of otherworldly encounter is fundamental to romance. The magic of the otherworld never needs to be explained, excused, or enacted through studied practices. Rather, faery enchantment shapes, mis-shapes and transforms human lives, sometimes promoting but most often challenging the social order that romance tends to uphold” (204).
Chapter 6, “Christian Marvel and Demonic Intervention,” considers the fluid role of magic in romances with strong religious themes not in the genre of saints’ lives (although some heroes end up sanctified). What many of these tales, like Sir Gowther, share with saints’ lives is attention to extraordinary bodily transformations, deformations, and reformations. “Malory’s Morte Darthur” (chapter 7) is the only chapter that focuses on a single text, and Saunders uses this focus to draw in many of the points from earlier chapters, with the ambiguities that Malory layers on top of them. In particular, the discussion of Nenyve and her relationships with Merlin and other characters gives her character a multidimensionality that it often lacks. The epilogue briefly reflects on the change, and inherent loss, the idea of magic experienced as it shifted from a power in part derived from ambiguity to Renaissance rationalization.
Magic and the Supernatural is an extremely helpful survey of many medieval ideas about magic and an interesting consideration of many famous and less well-known romances together. It leaves implicit some specific connections between the two sections, but that organization may in fact be more convenient for a reader more interested in one part or the other.
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[Review length: 721 words • Review posted on November 23, 2011]