The Genealogy of a Medieval Romance

Sunday, August 9, 2026 - 20:00 The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Discussions of cross-dressed medieval romance heroines commonly mention the tale of Grisandole. For the sake of completeness, I tracked down this comprehensive analysis of the tale. Although Grisandole's cross-dressing doesn't include any of the accidental homoeroticism of many such tales, this article is a great example of how medieval romances were built up out of pre-existing material, and how many parallel versions of a core tale co-existed, swapping elements out or in depending on the local taste. Grisandole's tale actually has close parallels with one element of the Romance of Silence, but this article was written before the latter was re-discovered. Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP LHMP #579 Paton 1907 The Story of Grisandole About LHMP Full citation: Paton, Lucy Allen. 1907. “The Story of Grisandole: A Study in the Legend of Merlin” in PMLA vol. 22, no. 2. pp.234-276. [Note: the story of Grisandole has an…