Representing Difference in the Medieval and Modern Orientalist Romance

Amy Burge is a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Literatures, Languages and Cultures at the University of Edinburgh, UK. She has published research on contemporary women's historical fiction, medieval and modern literary representations of virginity, and gender in Middle English and modern popular romance.

• Romance in the East: An Introduction1. Saracens and Sheikhs: Romance in Context2. Geographies of Fantasy: Exploring the Romance East3. "For you are a man and she is a maid": Gender and the East4. 'Neither Fish Nor Fowl": Representing Difference, Fabricating Sameness5. Romancing the Abduction MotifRomance in the East: ConclusionsAppendix 1: List of Middle English Verse Romances containing SaracensAppendix 2: List of Sheikh and Desert Romances Published in Britain by Mills & Boon, 1909-2009

Review 2: Myra Seaman, Professor of English, College of Charleston, USA Report on 'Romancing Difference' (formerly 'Desiring Difference') As this manuscript is a revision of an earlier version that I reviewed in November 2014, I will rely on that report to convey my posi>ve support for the project. Here I will focus primarily on how this revised version addresses some concerns I highlighted in that ini>al report. On the whole, the manuscript now much more fully accomplishes the aims the author delineates in the introduc>on. The previous version didn't contradict them in any way, but it leF some unfulfilled in its seeming hesita>on to pursue some of the compelling (and some>mes ambiguous) implica>ons it raised. The two key ways the author managed this in revision was by (a) providing previously withheld explana>on of how her conclusions are suggested by the data she provides in her analysis of the various modern and medieval texts and (b) presen>ng the reader in more direct detail the cri>cal and theore>cal ideas with which she was engaging in her analysis as it was previously presented. (A) has been improved throughout the manuscript, with (b) especially apparent in the revision of the Introduc>on. Indeed, the Introduc>on is now nearly twice its previous length, and I find the addi>ons to have helpfully detailed the author's premises and aims for the project. It now gives the reader more extensive prepara>on for the analyses to come in the individual chapters, invi>ng the reader into the conversa>ons the author is having with other scholars in the form of this book-and it also provides a service to the field more broadly in its close engagement with a set of concerns currently at the forefront. The Introduc>on now provides an extended discussion of 'difference' in terms of medieval and modern cultures (in par>cular race/ethnicity/religion), and traces engagements with it over the past quarter century, especially, within medieval studies, including postcolonial studies-and then extends that discussion to include gender and sexuality, which are oFen kept in a separate sphere from differences of race. This project reveals their intersec>onality in medieval and modern cultural products. This discussion of difference(s) prepares well for the focus on trends in cross - ?period analysis (and its connec>ons to postcolonialism and to a 'more theorised medievalism'). While reading the previous version I regularly wished for more overt assistance from the author as I made my way through her arguments. I am happy to see here much improved signpos>ng of her argument-oFen in rela>on to others'-as at the end of the sec>on introducing Bevis and geography in ch. 2 (pp. 41 - ?2). On the whole, this version presents the author's claims more directly and clearly (as at the top of p. 44). That kind of extension of the previous version can be seen throughout the manuscript. Another set of concerns I had revolved around a some terms that were important components of the argument's scaffolding but that weren't communica>ng as precisely as they might. The author has carefully clarified these and in some cases shiFed to different terms that lack the poten>al problems I saw in previous selec>ons (such as 'the west'). As part of that 'correc>on,' however, the author now makes extensive use of the term 'Saracen,' with which one can expect medievalists to have familiarity, but I wonder about those reading from a non - ?medieval perspec>ve. They would benefit from some early explana>on of the term. The author noted that she revised the conclusion extensively, and I appreciate that. These addi>ons, though, would benefit from some further revision. I found myself struggling more here than at any other point in the (revised) book, trying to see how what I understood her to be saying there suited what I'd understood from my reading of the book to that point. In par>cular, the more overt, direct connec>on between the medieval and the modern-'the insidious persistence of the medieval in modern popular fic>on' (189)-not only leF me doubXul (par>cularly in the posi>ng of of a 'covert rhetoric' that even in its implicitness creates modern anxiety), but it disturbed me in the way it seemed to be accep>ng the current popular understanding of 'the medieval.' I realize the author doesn't actually accept that, but words like 'insidious' (used early in both paragraphs on the lower half of p. 189, for instance) muddy the waters. I'd really encourage revisi>ng the tone of that sec>on. There's also some slippery use of the data on pp. 189 - ?90: the annual total sales value of romance in the US is then read as indica>ng the 'widespread popularity' of 'Orientalist novels' in par>cular. The data establishing the popularity of romance in general in the US doesn't indicate anything in par>cular about Orientalist novels, or their appeal, etc. I also found difficult to swallow the conclusions in that paragraph's last few sentences (top of p. 190), given what has been presented. I sense from the following paragraphs that this is the author's a]empt at "disentangling the layers' of history and discourse in Orientalist romance fic>on'-but it seems to me, as presented here, to be reinscribing rather than disentangling. A few responses to specific moments in chapters 2 - ?5: I found it a bit jarring when the author dis>nguishes her project from those preceding it as follows: 'However, a dis>nc>on between this study and many of those that have preceded it is that I am not examining modern texts which are self - ?consciously medievalising' given that she has just ended the previous paragraph by lis>ng 3 examples of essays similarly discussing modern texts that are not self - ?consciously medievalising in Cultural Studies of the Modern Middle Ages. That said, the following paragraph jus>fying such approaches is very valuable, as is the connec>on she makes with Holsinger's variety of neo - ?medievalism. The detailed inves>ga>on of the rela>onship between the UK and Dubai/UAE on pp. 61 - ?65 offers the kind of geographic specificity that the sheikh romances clearly support, and this offers a useful parallel to what the author does with Bevis-and supports the meaningful modifica>on of Teo's claims (p. 65). In Chapter 4, the addi>on to the end of par. 1 is helpful but I think it could use further development -I didn't feel fully situated by this introduc>on to the chapter the way I now am elsewhere in the book. In Chapter 5, I needed the added material at the start explaining what the author sees in the way abduc>on works in modern romances-and I wanted s>ll more, but then it appeared, right at the end of that sec>on at the bo]om of p. 147. The discussion of abduc>on in Octavian via Erwin's similar argument about Bevis (p. 152) needs to be presented more fully for its contribu>ons here to come across (whereas it works very well when used at the bo]om of p. 177). The new sec>ons do contain a number of typos and some distrac>ng stylis>c tendencies that will be addressed in edi>ng process (what was there in original submision generally had a]ended to such things). Review 1: Myra Seaman, Professor of English, College of Charleston, USA Report on 'Desiring Difference' !1 I'm grateful for the opportunity to read 'Desiring Difference: Gender, Ethnicity and Religion in Medieval and Modern Orientalist Romance.' I am deeply invested in cross-temporal investigations of the sort the author engages in here, and I am eager to see more such projects in circulation. Reading the manuscript has informed my own reception of the medieval cultural products that are the focus of the manuscript (the 'medieval orientalist romance' of the title) and on which I have written for most of my career, and I have learned, as well, much about the 'modern orientalist romance' that I'd previously encountered only in passing. After much consideration, I am recommending that the manuscript be reworked and resubmitted. I have much faith in the viability of the book that this project can become, but I am concerned that in its current form, the project will not have the extensive impact it should in the various arenas in which it engages. I am eager to see it published, but reluctant to see that happen too soon. I include a number recommendations for revision below. Overview: This extended study investigates representations of the east in medieval English romance (the era's most popular secular form) and in contemporary romance, particularly its (also very popular) subgenre of sheikh romance. More specifically, it attends to ways representations of gender, religion and ethnicity actually smudge the lines between east and west rather than rigidly maintaining them, as most readers have come to expect. The author describes her unconventional method in this project as 'two-fold: a relaxing of period boundaries, allowing two historical times to intermingle, and an unconventional analytical approach, in the presentation of expansive case studies' (161). She selects sample texts from each period and investigates these few texts in depth, rather than superficially surveying the vast field; and she refuses to isolate the textual products of the different periods or prevent cross-contamination-even as I would describe her approach as generally historicist and structuralist in orientation. The chapters of the book progress through its different thematic subjects-representations of ethnicity, religion, and gender in the two different romance traditions-with a final chapter on abduction, which the author connects to the previous chapters' focus on ethnicity and gender. Each chapter tends to look closely at one or at most two of the four case study texts, most often discussing each text and its cultural significance separately. The book concludes with a return to some of the theoretical concerns about periodicity and place raised in the introduction. The author has constructed her book in a way that doesn't speak only to the expert, although that is primary audience. The book also provides a resource to those engaging in study of either or both of these subgenres for the first time, offering many assistants in the appendices. Indeed, the third appendix alone ('List of Sheikh and Desert Romances Published in Britain by Mills & Boon, 1909-2009') vividly makes the case for the kind of study she engages in here. Reading it, I simply could not believe the number of Mills & Boon Sheikh and Desert Romances! The table went on on for pages and pages and pages, fascinating me in the novels' abundance and diversity over the decades. In addition, the tables and figures that the author has produced (as on page 24) to accompany her analysis and the images of book covers she has included allow readers to visualize very tangibly certain distinctive features of her investigation. Report on 'Desiring Difference' !2 Analysis of Strengths: The four Middle English texts that are the book's case studies have received renewed attention among medievalists in this post-9/11 era, and yet little has been published of late on any of them other than Bevis of Hampton (most of that appearing in a single 2008 collection on the text); in the past decade, four items have appeared that include discussion of Floris & Blancheflour (after none in the 1980s or 90s); five have appeared in the last decade on Octavian; and on average one scholarly text addressing King of Tars has appeared each year in the last twelve. This suggests that there is much room for the contributions this book is making in its extended analyses of all four of these texts and also demonstrates an increasing interest among and engagement by scholars in critical work on these texts and on this branch of the Middle English romance genre, one regularly neglected in previous decades. I can speak less directly to questions of timeliness and competition concerning the contemporary texts under discussion, though a quick survey of recently published items on sheikh romance-as well as critical activity on blogs such as that hosted by the LA Review of Books-indicates (along with general anecdotal observation of sustained interest in the Middle East, its culture, and the west's interaction with it) a significant audience for the book. One great benefit of approaches such as the author's in this project is the natural increase in readership associated with the approach, given that the book will appeal to those working in medieval studies and in contemporary Middle Eastern and popular culture studies, among others. This makes for a much larger audience than for a book on only one or the other of these topics. It also, most importantly, encourages cross-period and cross-cultural engagement among those audiences, of the sort that occurs with interdisciplinary projects. Given the book's somewhat idiosyncratic combination of these two subjects (a combination I find only beneficial), I anticipate little direct competition with comparable books. The rising interest in both of its central subjects will only increase its readership. [As a result, I would encourage quick revision, given the timeliness of the project. The sooner it is able to appear, the better.] I anticipate its audiences will be scholars and grad students in area studies (Middle Eastern, Medieval) and literary scholars and graduate students (with some applicability in select undergraduate classrooms). I would not be surprised if the focus on contemporary sheikh romances drew in what we might call general readers, and I know they would find the author's approach inviting. I would describe the author's approach throughout the book as carefully detailing how the particular topic under investigation is textually represented in both traditions, presenting extensive evidence (and context, cultural and literary) for each subject she addresses. The book is, as a result, a treasure trove of textual data. As I read it, I found myself feeling, above all, extensively informed. And I anticipate that other readers will find much to work with in what the author presents here. (Additionally, there can be no risk that the author's claims and conclusions might be labeled speculative rather than evidence-based.) The author has chosen her medieval texts carefully, and the chapters benefit from that selection. Floris and Blanchefleur, for instance, offers an incredibly rich subject for the analysis of gender Report on 'Desiring Difference' !3 and sexuality in Chapter 3. It's a surprisingly neglected Middle English romance, and I expect this chapter's sustained discussion will encourage further attention to it. This chapter also provides a clever and provocative reading of the seemingly hyper-conservative version of masculinity portrayed in the heroes of sheikh romance. King of Tars similarly warrants the attention the author lavishes on it in Chapter 4, and this analysis contributes originally and meaningfully to a growing body of critical work on the text. Analysis of Weaknesses: Some of the very qualities I praise in the Overview and Analysis of Strengths above are also responsible for some of the project's weaknesses in its current form. For instance, the appendices I highlight in the Overview also generate for the reader all sorts of questions that are then only rarely addressed (much less 'answered') by the author. More importantly, the ample data presented and discussed would bear much more analytical fruit if the author provided more guidance to the reader along the way, regarding the larger purposes of the local discussion. I often found myself wondering why I was reading what I was reading, beyond the simple pleasures offered by encountering the information (See, for example, the long discussion of pilgrimage and trade routes pp. 29-35 where the central claim doesn't really appear until p. 36). Along those lines, I'd really like to see not only earlier and more ample signposting but, even more importantly, much more extensive analysis of the detail presented. (See the short paragraph right after the block quote on p. 71, for an example of the kind of move I found frustrating.) Often, the author seems simply to restate what a given quote contains rather than than she amplifying and expounding (see p. 106, for instance). A good example of what I wanted to see more of as I read extends from the last full paragraph on p. 139 (starting 'Furthermore') through the end of p. 140. This became more troubling as the chapters progressed, to the point that I was disturbed that the explanation of the novels' ways of mitigating the cultural harms of bride abduction-an explanation that was clear and compelling, in terms of tracing how that unexpected dynamic works in the novels-wasn't accompanied by any discussion of what those investments, by authors and especially readers of the novels, revealed (particularly in terms of desire, given the title of the book). I was similarly troubled in Chapter 5's discussion of rape fantasies-troubled not by the topic itself, but by the fact that the first source provided on the subject is Nancy Friday, from 1976. And again the author makes this reference but doesn't build on it, analyze it, or critique it. Later, sources that are relevant but in one case similarly dated (Hazen [1983]and Handrahan [2004]) make appearances, but without elaboration. It's not until many pages later (p. 149) that the author addresses this directly. And yet even here-e.g. when she uses Philadelphoff-Puren to address how the hero(-rapist) is right (in that the heroine actually lies when she resists)-she explains how it works but doesn't analyze what it might indicate that it works. Characteristics like the following really call out for analytical response (not just explanation): 'However, by the end of the romance, the heroine manages to locate freedom in captivity, where she previously experienced a lack of freedom' (153). Saying that 'It is the heroine's ethnic hybridity which is Report on 'Desiring Difference' !4 central to her experience of a potential freedom within captivity' (154) just isn't sufficient. Nor is 'Although sheikh romance might provide agency and influence for the hybrid heroine within abduction, occupying the space of the abducted still places women in a position of relative passivity and powerlessness' (157), nor is her final conclusion that 'it is debatable how liberating it really is to constitute abduction and captivity as freedom' (158). I appreciate this project's openness to genres (modern as well as medieval) that are oft disparaged. But it seems the author takes our cultural approach to medieval texts-whose readers are unavailable to us, whose cultural positioning we often reconstruct (however partially and speculatively)-to modern texts whose readers' cultural positioning is very much available to us. Explaining how the texts work is step 1. From there, for medieval texts we consider what this urge to have them work that way might indicate about its moment. And for modern texts, we have to consider as well what this reveals (extremely conservative gender and sexual norms justified by being claimed despite previous 'western' resistance to them). This lack of extensive analysis limits the project as a whole. The early observation that 'It is revealing, and, of course, deliberate, that the context of the citation from Brown's 'In the Middle' can just as easily be shifted from the relationship between medieval and modern, to that of east and west' (8) seems likely to support an analysis of the two periods' texts (even if both are produced in the west, at different times) that is closer, more intimately integrated, than what results. It still seemed as if the period divide was generally maintained throughout the chapters. Certainly there will need to be some 'separate' analysis of each, but thereafter I'd like to see the author reaping more of the benefits of engaging these two orientalist romance traditions together. I found myself wondering if the author would talk comparatively at any point about the audiences for these two different romance forms, and the answer was 'no.' Concerns about the manuscript's engagement with secondary sources: I would like to see scholarly analysis foregrounded (currently much resides in the footnotes) throughout, and along with that some further discussion from the start of criticism fundamental to both medieval and contemporary orientalist romance. The introduction is quite short for a book of this length, and it lacks an extensive preparation for the reader, of the author's relationship to the different critical and theoretical traditions surrounding gender, ethnicity and religion. Some of this receives further discussion in individual chapters, but much of it doesn't. I would recommend at least doubling the length-and thus extent-of each of the sections of the introduction prior to p. 9. The 'Representing Difference' section of the introduction, for instance, acknowledges a very active arena of criticism and theory only exceptionally briefly, particularly considering the project's primary concern with matters of ethnicity and religion. Said's foundational text and Bartlett's journal article aren't sufficient to representing that complex and rich area of scholarship, before moving in more detail to medieval postcolonial approaches (pp. 7-9). Because the author addresses neomedievalist rhetoric (specifically of the variety Bruce Holsinger has studied extensively in response to 9/11) right at the start, and given how this demonstrates powerfully connections between medieval and modern cultural perspectives and the active Report on 'Desiring Difference' !5 redeployment of 'medieval' to the present by applying it to the geographic and cultural other of the contemporary east, I would encourage the author to pursue further this particular use of the medieval. A key conclusion is 'The process of this rethinking, methodologically and conceptually, has, I believe, opened up future possibilities for a different way of interpreting reductive neomedievalist and Orientalist discourse, as well as a different way of thinking about the relationship between modernity and the medieval' (163): I'd like to see some ideas about this. I would similarly encourage some more recent examples of neomedievalism on pp. 47-8. I don't know when this manuscript was submitted to Palgrave, but the 2012 date of access for online sources and the fact that there are no sources later than 2012 would suggest it needs to be revised with attention to texts that have appeared since-such as Cord Whitaker's 2013 JEGP article on 'Black Metaphors in the King of Tars' Katie Walters, 'The Form of the Formless' (2013, Reading Skin in Medieval Literature and Culture, ed Walters) Anna Czarnowus, Fantasies of the Other's Body in Middle English Oriental Romance (2013) But the fact that even these extremely pertinent 2011 sources (both by authors whose earlier work this author does use) don't seem to have been contacted is troubling: Lynn Ramey on 'Medieval Miscegenation' (Frankes ed, Contextualizing the Muslim Other in Medieval Christian Discourse, Palgrave, 2011) Calkin, Romance Baptisms and Theological Contexts in The King of Tars and Sir Ferumbras' (Purdie and Cichon collection, Medieval Romance, Medieval Contexts 2011) Bonnie Erwin on 'Conversion and the Power of Feminine Desire in Bevis of Hampton' in Exemplaria 2011. Teo's recent book Desert Passions: Orientalism and Romance Novels (U TX Press, 2012) is also missing, in terms of what the author actually relies on within the chapters. This book's influence is apparent from the fact that it's the lone monograph on what this author categorizes as sheikh romances; its influence is also attested by discussion of it on blogs and elsewhere (e.g. Tori MacAllister, 'Understanding the Sheikh Romance: The Roots of Romance in Our Relationship with the Muslim Middle East and North Africa' at torimacallister.wordpress.com, from 23 Aug 2013; and Nathalie Storey, 'The Sheikh's Prize is Usually White' on the LARB blog 5 March 2014). The author makes use of Teo's publications prior to this book (listed on works cited as 'forthcoming 2012'). As very little has been published focusing this subgenre, specifically- despite its obvious cultural significance in the past decade and more-this book should be a participant in this author's conversation. (Teo, notably, cites this author's work-her MA thesis, PhD thesis, and a conference paper.) A few points about titles and terms and expectations they generate: I found the discussion of geography in Bevis to be particularly useful to many readers who might not anticipate this discussion in a book, or a chapter, with this title. I would hate for it to be Report on 'Desiring Difference' !6 hidden from those who would most benefit from it. In that section, too, I encourage the author to work to find an alternative term to 'realness,' from which too much is being demanded. I found myself wondering what the author is really after when she says, on p. 27, 'Bevis [compared to Boeve, as she does extensively] creates a sense of realness through augmented detail' and later: 'In sum, Bevis uses this focus on routes, specific historical places and journey details to create a sense of 'realness'.' (28) 'The west' gets used in a way that is implicitly the contemporary west, so it's surprising to encounter it in a book so attuned to two moments and places in history; for instance, 'The payment of a 'bride price', also mentioned in Disobedient, connotes the traditional trade in bodies and dowry payment which the west has typically associated with the east' (131). The premodern west would not have made such a distinction. I'd like to hear more about why the final chapter focuses on abduction, given the orientation of the previous three chapters on representation of a particular quality (gender, ethnicity, etc.). Abduction is a recurring theme in orientalist romance and studies of it, so I'm not questioning its inclusion. Indeed, I found the investigation to reveal much about Middle English romance that I'd overlooked. But a case needs to be made, I think, for the shift of approach in this chapter. Why not begin with the compelling connection offered by the discussion of the 're-labelling [of] abduction as conversion' in Octavian (135), rather than hiding it in the middle of the chapter? Most importantly: Desire is foregrounded in the book's title and in the title of Chapter 4 but otherwise seems to get little attention. I anticipated a psychoanalytically-informed analysis throughout the book, given its title, and was surprised at its marked absence throughout. I don't think the book needs to get such an approach, but perhaps the title needs to be reconsidered, otherwise. [And finally, a very small point, but one I noticed nevertheless: Translations of Middle English passages in Chapter 5 (in the first half of it at least) need to translate the entire quoted passage, not just the challenging words (as is done in the rest of the manuscript).] I would like to conclude by reiterating my investment in this project: I want to see it published, but I fear that its current form would be more likely to make it fodder for someone else's analysis than its own strong argument. I consider my suggestions for revision to be largely, as a result, 'fundamental to the project's success.'