An immensely learned and thought-provoking exploration of the connections between love and religion in medieval romance, Doherty-Harrison’s approach takes the reader beyond conventional readings and opens up a rich world of theological complexity and ambivalence.
- Jacqueline Tasioulas, Professor of Medieval English & Scots, Clare College, University of Cambridge

This exhilarating study of Middle English romance investigates the genre’s complex attachments to Christian typology, and specifically to commentary on the Song of Songs and Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac. In a series of nuanced and sophisticated readings, Doherty-Harrison proves medieval romances to be 'vivid narratives of typological confusion,' which use 'medieval Christianity’s most powerful normative structure…typological anti-Judaism' to explore ambivalent individual relations of love, violence, sacrifice, and doubt. This bracing, highly original book will surely transform the way we understand the relationship between Christian theology and courtly romance.
- Emily Steiner, Rose Family Endowed Term Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania

Introduction: loving typology in medieval Christianity
1 Imagining Synagoga and Ecclesia with the Song of Songs
2 Types of Synagoga and the damaged garden in Sir Gowther
3 Promises of love and violence in Sir Orfeo
4 An Abrahamic lover?: typology and responsibility in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
5 Abrahamic wives and the Judgement of Solomon in Sir Amadace
Conclusion: typology as violence and desire