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Urban, Misty
Misty Urban is Assistant Professor of English at Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston, Idaho, where she teaches early English literature and creative writing. She holds a Ph.D. in medieval English literature and an MFA in fiction writing from Cornell University.
2010 0-7734-3776-2This study treats the appearance of the monstrous woman in Middle English romance narratives as a self-conscious literary trope that reflects on, and often criticizes, the grounds of philosophical, cultural, and narrative discourse that place women both inside and outside medieval culture, constructing them as Other by biological and social difference yet relying on them for the reproduction and healthy maintenance of the male-governed social order.
Building on current monster theory and adding to research on medieval women in literature, this study reclaims the Middle English romance as a sophisticated literary strategy that, in its narrative reflexivity—and its use of a fictionalized thirdspace—reveals how medieval rhetoric essentially makes women into monsters.