Examines how Armenia has been represented and ‘imagined’ in texts from two periods in its history: the Middle Ages and the nineteenth century.
Today most people who think of Armenia associate it with the genocide of 1915, the struggle Armenians waged after the First World War to reclaim their ancient lands in Anatolia, a struggle complicated by centuries of subordination to the Ottomans, by persistent Russian efforts to exert influence and claim territory, and by Western indecision manifested in plentiful words but few deeds. This book, however, tells a different story: one of geo-political importance, strength, struggle, and diminishment, narrated in texts largely created by and for Europeans and Americans. It asks how the West imagined, described, and presented Armenia over time in historical and fictional accounts during two periods of close Armenian-Western contact. The first period spans the twelfth to fourteenth centuries; it examines a variety of texts, including the travel narratives of Marco Polo and John Mandeville, William of Tyre’s
Deeds Done Beyond the Sea, and romances such as
King of Tars,
Bevis of Hampton and
Le Roman de Mélusine. The second period is rooted in events during the nineteenth-century American missionary movement. It engages with a variety of popular and widely disseminated texts – books, pamphlets, newspapers – written and published in the United States from 1830 to the mid-1890s, detailing the encounters between the missionaries and the Armenians, frequently in the voices of women.
Table of Content
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part I: Medieval Writings
1. Armenia and the Tartars, a Chronicle Account
2. Describing the World, Placing Armenia
3. Determined: Stories of Armenian Women in the Crusader States
4. Women, Power and Armenia in later Medieval Anglo-French Romance:
King of Tars,
Bevis of Hampton,
Alexander and
Le Roman de Mélusine
5. Endgame: the Last King of Armenia in the Courts of England and France
Part II: Missionary Writings
6. American Evangelicals Saving Armenia
7. Women Missionaries: Transporting Education, ‘Home’, and Hope to Armenia
8. Two Sides of the Story: Pushing Back on the Missionary Master Narrative
Coda
Bibliography
Index
About the author
CAROLYN COLLETTE is an American literary critic whose work has focused on late Medieval Anglo-French literary culture. She is Professor Emerita of English literature at Mount Holyoke College.
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