Romance Socio-Spaces
摘要
Together with the next chapter, this chapter calls attention to spatial experience in the Middle English Breton lays and in medieval romance. It considers social practices of space and defines romance socio-spaces, that is to say spaces defined by their tight correlation to the social uses they are put to. Analysis of the systems of socio-spatial inclusion and exclusion and of the spatial display of aristocratic status in the lays leads to a definition of romance space as processional in the sense that space and community come into existence in one and the same gesture. Despite their delight in ritualistic uses of space, romance plots also cherish a narrative fascination for spatial disruption, when heroes are unfairly rejected from the socio-space they belong to and/or when enemy forces irrupt into their ideal worlds. Heroic quests can then set romance space in motion, before the final reintegration of heroes within their original socio-spaces can be accomplished.