Does Affection Turn Apostata? Female Agency, Rhetorical Cannibalism, and the Romance of Conversion in The Travels of the Three English Brothers

lthough the acts of reading and writing prose romances are often tied to questions of early modern women’s agency, scholarly analyses of the a genre have for the most part concentrated upon the actions and identities of male characters. The specific focus on male identity in romance criticism is apparent at least as far back as the 1975 article in New Literary History in which Frederic Jameson famously described the defining moment of the chivalric romance as the scene in which the heroic knight encounters himself reflected in the enemy, with this mutual recognition of masculine similitude solidifying the concept of feudal nobility as a class identity transcending regional and even religious ties.Within the prose romance’s masculine economy of self-identification, women often appear as quested-for objects or brides, as victims of kidnapping or