Melusine's Footprint

Misty Urban (Ph.D., Cornell University, 2008) coordinates the Writing Center at Muscatine Community College. She is the author of Monstrous Women in Middle English Romance (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 2010).Deva F. Kemmis (Ph.D., Georgetown University, 2012) is an instructor of German language and culture at the Goethe-Institut in Washington, DC. Her publications include an essay on self-forgiveness in the Nibelungenlied and a forthcoming article in the Yearbook of the Society for Medieval German Studies.Melissa Ridley Elmes (Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2016) is Assistant Professor of English at Lindenwood University. She has essays published or forthcoming on the Arthurian legend, Chaucer, teaching medieval literature, medievalism, the Robin Hood legend, and violence at the feast in medieval texts.

"This magnificent book combines the research of twenty interdisciplinary scholars who meticulously investigate the eponymous footprint of Melusine from a wide variety of literary as well as artistic approaches. It illustrates how richly this theriomorphic monstrous snake woman has contributed to the culture of so many European countries, and extends as far afield as China, in a study that clearly indicates the continuing fascination of this most enchanting and threatening figure. Melusine is here variously discussed as an instructive exemplar of Christian piety, a powerful mother who desires to humanize herself through marriage into the chivalric, religious order of her age, a transformative figure unifying humanity with nature, an abject object of the gaze, a fairy who functions as a monstrous Other in the mirror of romance, and a metaphor for transgressive feminine prowess. This enthralling work contributes extensively to Melusinia, reading the fairy serpentine hybrid as a symbolic force who never remains contained within any boundaries that may attempt to inscribe her."Gillian M. E. Alban (author of Melusine the Serpent Goddess in A. S. Byatt’s Possession and in Mythology (2003) and The Medusa Gaze in Contemporary Women’s Fiction: Petrifying, Maternal and Redemptive (2017)."Essential reading not only for medievalists, but also for scholars focused on fairy tale and folklore studies, cultural studies, feminist theory, gender theory, and postmodernist theory. Melusine’s Footprint reinvigorates the study of the Melusine tale and her depiction in various texts from the Medieval period through contemporary representations. The analyses vary theoretically and render new interpretations, keeping Melusine alive for scholars in the humanities and the social sciences". Sylvia Veronica Morin, in Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, 30 (1), (2019).

• AcknowledgementsList of IllustrationsNotes on ContributorsIntroductionPart I. Bodies and Texts: Mapping Melusine in Art and Print1 The Tail of Melusine: Hybridity, Mutability, and the Accessible OtherFrederika Bain2 Polycorporality and Heteromorphia: Untangling Melusine's Mixed BodiesAna Pairet3 Mermaid, Mother, Monster, and More: Portraits of the Fairy Woman in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Melusine NarrativesCaroline Prud'Homme4 The Melusine Figure in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century German Literature and Art: Cultural-Historical Information within the Pictorial ProgramAlbrecht Classen5 The Alchemical Transformation of MelusineMelissa Ridley ElmesPart II. Mother, Muse: Melusine and Political Identity6 Architecture and Empire in Historia de la linda MelosinaAnna Casas Aguilar7 The Lady with the Serpent's Tail: Hybridity and the Dutch MeluzineLydia Zeldenrust8 Matriarchs and Mother Tongues: The Middle English Romans of PartenayJennifer Alberghini9 Melusine and Luxembourg: A Double MemoryPit PéportéPart III. Theoretical Transformations: Readings and Refigurations10 Youth and Rebellion in Jean d'Arras' Roman de MélusineStacey L. Hahn11 The Promise of (Un)Happiness in Thüring von Ringoltingen's MelusineSimone Pfleger12 Half Lady, Half Serpent: Melusine's Monstrous Body and the Discourse of RomanceAngela Jane Weisl13 Passing as a "Humayn Woman": Hybridity and Salvation in the Middle English MelusineChera A. Cole14 Melusine and Purgatorial Punishment: The Changing Nature of FaysZoë Enstone15 Metamorphoses of Snake Women: Melusine and Madam WhiteZifeng ZhaoPart IV. Melusines Medieval to Modern16 Goethe and Die neue Melusine: A Critical ReinterpretationRenata Schellenberg17 "Listening Down the Hall": An Epistemological Consideration of the Encounter with Melusine in the Germanic Literary TraditionDeva F. Kemmis18 Woman, Abject, Animal: Refigurations of Melusine in Frischmuth, Jelinek, and EXPORTAnna-Lisa Baumeister19 How the Dragon Ate the Woman: The Fate of Melusine in EnglishMisty Urban20 Melusines Past, Present, and Future: An AfterwordTania M. ColwellSelected BibliographyIndex