Melusine's Footprint : Tracing the Legacy of a Medieval Myth

In 'Melusine's footprint: Tracing the legacy of a medieval myth', editors Misty Urban, Deva Kemmis, and Melissa Ridley Elmes offer an invigorating international and interdisciplinary examination of the legendary fairy Melusine. Along with fresh insights into the popular French and German traditions, these essays investigate Melusine's English, Dutch, Spanish, and Chinese counterparts and explore her roots in philosophy, folklore, and classical myth. Combining approaches from art history, history, alchemy, literature, culture, and medievalism, applying rigorous critical lenses ranging from feminism and comparative literature to film and monster studies, this volume brings Melusine scholarship into the twenty-first century with nineteen lively and evocative essays that reassess this powerful figure's multiple meanings and illuminate her dynamic resonances across cultures and time Acknowledgements ix List of Illustrations x Notes on Contributors xi Introduction 1 PART I. Bodies and Texts: Mapping Melusine in Art and Print 1. The Tail of Melusine: Hybridity, Mutability, and the Accessible Other 17 Frederika Bain 2. Polycorporality and Heteromorphia: Untangling Melusine's Mixed Bodies 36 Ana Pairet 3. Mermaid, Mother, Monster, and More: Portraits of the Fairy Woman in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century 'Melusine' Narratives 52 Caroline Prud’Homme 4. The Melusine Figure in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century German Literature and Art: Cultural-Historical Information within the Pictorial Program 74 Albrecht Classen 5. The Alchemical Transformation of Melusine 94 Melissa Ridley Elmes PART II. Mother, Muse: Melusine and Political Identity 6. Architecture and Empire in 'Historia de la linda Melosina' 109 Anna Casas Aguilar 7. The Lady with the Serpent’s Tail: Hybridity and the Dutch 'Meluzine' 132 Lydia Zeldenrust 8. Matriarchs and Mother Tongues: The Middle English 'Romans of Partenay' 146 Jennifer Alberghini 9. Melusine and Luxembourg: A Double Memory 162 Pit Péporté PART III. Theoretical Transformations: Readings and Refigurations 10. Youth and Rebellion in Jean d’Arras' 'Roman de Mélusine' 183 Stacey L. Hahn 11. The Promise of (Un)Happiness in Thüring von Ringoltingen's 'Melusine' 208 Simone Pfleger 12. Half Lady, Half Serpent: Melusine's Monstrous Body and the Discourse of Romance 222 Angela Jane Weisl 13. Passing as a "Humayn Woman": Hybridity and Salvation in the Middle English 'Melusine' 240 Chera A. Cole 14. Melusine and Purgatorial Punishment: The Changing Nature of Fays 259 Zoë Enstone 15. Metamorphoses of Snake Women: Melusine and Madam White 282 Zifeng Zhao PART IV. Melusines Medieval to Modern 16 Goethe and 'Die neue Melusine': A Critical Reinterpretation 303 Renata Schellenberg 17. "Listening Down the Hall": An Epistemological Consideration of the Encounter with Melusine in the Germanic Literary Tradition 324 Deva F. Kemmis 18. Woman, Abject, Animal: Refigurations of Melusine in Frischmuth, Jelinek, and EXPORT 344 Anna-Lisa Baumeister 19. How the Dragon Ate the Woman: The Fate of Melusine in English 368 Misty Urban 20. Melusines Past, Present, and Future: An Afterword 388 Tania M. Colwell Selected Bibliography 405 Index 429 In Melusine's Footprint: Tracing the Legacy of a Medieval Myth , editors Misty Urban, Deva Kemmis, and Melissa Ridley Elmes offer an invigorating international and interdisciplinary examination of the legendary fairy Melusine. Along with fresh insights into the popular French and German traditions, these essays investigate Melusine's English, Dutch, Spanish, and Chinese counterparts and explore her roots in philosophy, folklore, and classical myth. Combining approaches from art history, history, alchemy, literature, cultural studies, and medievalism, applying rigorous critical lenses ranging from feminism and comparative literature to film and monster theory, this volume brings Melusine scholarship into the twenty-first century with twenty lively and evocative essays that reassess this powerful figure's multiple meanings and illuminate her dynamic resonances across cultures and time. Contributors are Anna Casas Aguilar, Jennifer Alberghini, Frederika Bain, Anna-Lisa Baumeister, Albrecht Classen, Chera A. Cole, Tania M. Colwell, Zoë Enstone, Stacey L. Hahn, Deva F. Kemmis, Ana Pairet, Pit Péporté, Simone Pfleger, Caroline Prud'Homme, Melissa Ridley Elmes, Renata Schellenberg, Misty Urban, Angela Jane Weisl, Lydia Zeldenrust, and Zifeng Zhao In 'Melusine's footprint: Tracing the legacy of a medieval myth', editors Misty Urban, Deva Kemmis, and Melissa Ridley Elmes offer an invigorating international and interdisciplinary examination of the legendary fairy Melusine. Along with fresh insights into the popular French and German traditions, these essays investigate Melusine?s English, Dutch, Spanish, and Chinese counterparts and explore her roots in philosophy, folklore, and classical myth.0Combining approaches from art history, history, alchemy, literature, culture, and medievalism, applying rigorous critical lenses ranging from feminism and comparative literature to film and monster studies, this volume brings Melusine scholarship into the twenty-first century with nineteen lively and evocative essays that reassess this powerful figure?s multiple meanings and illuminate her dynamic resonances across cultures and time Melusine's Footprint: Tracing the Legacy of a Medieval Myth offers twenty new critical essays from an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars examining the cultural, literary, and mythical inheritance of the legendary half-fairy, half-serpent Melusine.