The six essays in this work present interpretations and discussions of Bakhtin's essential yet difficult ideas on novelness. The contributions develop the concept of novelness beyond mere exegesis and deliver a wide range of approaches to the perspectives

In Lovely Violence: Chrétien de Troyes’ Critical Romances, Jørgen Bruhn rereads the well-known but still intriguing chivalric novels of the medieval French author Chrétien de Troyes (from the second half of the twelfth century, probably in northern France). Jørgen Bruhn—who is trained in modern comparative literature and literary theory—engages in a meeting with the medieval texts where the “strange” medieval contexts and texts are played up against more familiar contemporary concerns around textuality, gender and in particular the vexed question of violence.

After an...