Abstract
In medieval Armenia, a Christian princess is forced to consider the suit of the Sultan of Damascus. The possibility of marrying the Saracen is untenable, and the princess turns down the proposal in the strongest possible terms. In twenty-first-century Ouaha, a fictional desert nation in North Africa, Tally is forced to consider an arranged marriage with sheikh Tair and is equally horrified by the idea. Although separated by time social, political, and cultural context, both situations, one from Tars, the other from Disobedient, claim that a romantic union between East and West, Christian and Saracen is unthinkable. Yet, in each of the four case studies presented here, such a union is not only thinkable but successful. The romantic union occurs when what was previously seen as difference is reworked into sameness.
Keywords
- Romantic Love
- Temporal Moment
- Textual Space
- Medieval Text
- Medieval Study
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Notes
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© 2016 Amy Burge
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Burge, A. (2016). Romance in the East: Conclusions. In: Representing Difference in the Medieval and Modern Orientalist Romance. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-59356-6_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-59356-6_7
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