Born That Way? Setting and Social Status as Intersecting Constituents of Identity in the Middle English 'Partonope' and the Yiddish 'Bovo d’Antona'

Abstract

This essay raises the question of how the representation of social identities in romances of the late medieval period shifts in line with the different settings that the protagonists must navigate in the course of their journeys. It compares the two very different figures of Partonope of Blois, from the eponymous Middle English romance, and Bovo, from the Yiddish romance Bovo d’Antona, in order to investigate how the construction of their social identities intersects with the geographical and social settings that they inhabit. In doing so, this study reveals two varying and counterintuitive templates for how social identity is shaped by setting, thereby shedding light on the contradictions inherent in the representation of Bovo and Partonope as both 'self-made men' and products of their class.