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K. S. Whetter, Understanding Genre and Medieval Romance (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008). xxii + 205 pp.; 12 plates. ISBN 978-0-7546-6142-9. £5 5.00.
The definition of Middle English romance is a Holy Grail of romances scholarship and this book sets out to achieve it. K. S. Whetter begins with a lively defence of genre study against the reductive approaches of modern theorists, leading to a comprehensive and balanced survey of the work of some of the major figures of romances scholarship from Ker to Cooper. This provides a usefully transhistoric approach to the problems of identifying the features essential to the medieval genre which occupy the second chapter. The central thesis, that Middle English romance is defined by 'a combination and interaction of love, ladies and adventure, culminating in a happy ending', is less restrictive than it may seem at first: 'ladies' are not the female equivalent...