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The role of the body in social life is a problem that occupies much of medieval thought. This thesis considers the poetic use of the language of the body to convey contemporary concerns and to explore the paradigms of the body that constituted medieval social normality. Each poet considered is deeply influenced by the dominant modes of bodily discourse in medieval life; medicine, religion and natural philosophy. This thesis examines each of these modes of discourse and demonstrates their prevalence in the poetry of Geoffrey Chaucer, Robert Henryson and William Dunbar. It is argued that each poet, while writing under the influence of his predecessors, displays characteristic attitudes to the body and to the social and political concerns that arise around it. It is shown that both of the Scottish poets owe a debt to Chaucer, but that they also develop ways of speaking of the body that are distinctive from him and from each other. This thesis shows three poets negotiating the problematic issue of the body in social life and illustrates their general conformity to social norms, but more importantly their occasional attempts to interrogate and uncover those ideas about the body that were broadly accepted by society.

The high medieval period saw the creation of numerous texts that straddled the borderline between history and fiction. A particularly striking group of texts in this context, which, surprisingly, have never been studied together, is that written in the aftermath of King John's reign concerning individuals who had been active in England and Northern France in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. These are: the History of William Marshal, the Romance of Fouke Fitz Waryn, the Romance of Richard Coeur de Lion, and the Story of Eustace the Monk. The lives of four very different men - a knight, an outlaw, a king and a mercenary - were all re-imagined in the course of the thirteenth century and within living memory of their actual lives and deeds. The following thesis identifies certain events in the lives of these men that both encouraged the development of fictional identities and shaped the form those identities were to take. It also demonstrates that the cultural trauma experienced as a result of the events of John’s reign allowed individuals of the recent past to be plausibly described in terms more often used for those some centuries hence. Fictionalised history will be shown to be a valuable source for both the relationship between historical and fictional literature in the Middle Ages, and popular attitudes to the past in so far as John’s reign can be perceived as a moment identified as one of cultural change.

The present study analyses the senses and sense-relations of approximately fifty words of two major groups signifying benevolence and malevolence within courtly contexts in the works of Chaucer. The analysis is carried out not with individual words alone, but also in such a manner as to indicate how these words enter into patterned relationships of various types and origins, and some of these are described. Though the ultimate contribution of the thesis is conceived to be in terms of a more precise understanding of the conceptual background and stylistic resources of Chaucer's art, thereby furnishing the equipment for a surer and closer criticism of late mediaeval English literature in general, some account is also taken of recent linguistic thought on the structure of the vocabulary and meaning. The problems of analysis and representation of the meaning of vocabulary items and their inter-relationships are considered as a preliminary: structural semantics, conceptual fields, collocations, idiom-formation and context of situation are discussed, and the contribution of linguistic theory to the method of analysis is indicated at some length. The limitations of the ordinary, synchronic model of linguistic description for the study of the lexis and diction of a mediaeval language are demonstrated, and the reconciliation of synchronic with diachronic methods is urged as a corrective. The notion of a fully extensive semantic field in this area of the vocabulary is rejected in favour of the inter-relation of numerous lesser systems, and the importance of diachronic and extra linguistic factors in the study of vocabulary is then illustrated by their role in explaining the origin and development of the lexical, lexico-grammatical and semantic patterns originally isolated by synchronic analysis. By these means a literary critical procedure is envisaged which would combine the insights of literary and intellectual history with the critical objectivity of descriptive linguistics

This thesis discusses presentations of madness in medieval literature, and the ways in which these presentations are affected by (and effect) ideas of gender. It includes a discussion of madness as it is commonly presented in classical literature and medical texts, as well as an examination of demonic possession (which shares many of the same characteristics of madness) in medieval exempla. These chapters are followed by a detailed look at the uses of madness in Malory’s Morte Darthur, Gower’s Confessio Amantis, and in two autobiographical accounts of madness, the Book of Margery Kempe and Hoccleve’s Series. The experience of madness can both subvert and reinforce gender roles. Madness is commonly seen as an invasion of the self, which, in a culture which commonly identifies masculinity with bodily intactness, can prove problematic for male sufferers. Equally, madness, in prompting violent, ungoverned behaviour, can undermine traditional definitions of femininity. These rules can, however, be reversed. Malory’s Morte Darthur presents a version of masculinity which is actually enhanced by madness; equally divergent is Margery Kempe’s largely positive account of madness as a catalyst for personal transformation. While there is a certain consistency in the literary treatment of madness – motifs and images are repeated across genres – the way in which these images are used can alter radically. There is no single model of madness in medieval literature: rather, it is always fluid. Madness, like gender, remains open to interpretation.

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This thesis attempts to use the iconological common places found in Renaissance emblem books in order to Illuminate the emblematic aspects of Spenser's iconography. Since the figures in the emblem books were commonplaces repeated by author after author, there can be no certainty of finding a definitive source. But more often than not it is Spenser's sheer liveliness of invent¬ ion which defeats the source-hunter. At best we might hope to find an emblematic model which formed the basis of Spenser's composition. Even analogues in the emblem books can often show the significance of Spenser's visual imgges. Each chapter of the thesis examines a different aspect of Spenser's symbolic art.

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This is the first attempt at a major revaluation of the entire Complaynt of Scotland for a century. This important, unique, neglected mid sixteenth-century Scottish prose work is placed in its historical context , The Complayner is revealed as a biblical and classical scholar, a patriot with humane European perspectives, focussing on the crucial problems confronting Scots in the aftermath of the English 'Rough Wooing'. He wrestles with the philosophical yet practical dilemma of such alternatives as freewill or fatalistic apathy, collaboration or non-collaboration, submission or resistance. It is an appeal for concord and resistance. The Complayner reveals implicit views of history as a providential pattern.and time as a continuous present in which linear chronology and causation are less important than meaning and perennially universally valid constants. The Complayner is identified as Robert Wedderburn, and new evidence of possible places and dates of writing and printing are given . Hitherto undetected sources and influences are indicated, including large-scale borrowing from Pliny and Guevara. The Complayner adopted from Chartier the framework of the dialogue, with its key features including the use of allegory, the dream vision framework, conscious display of humanism, erudition and moralistic eloquent sententiousness in Ciceronian periodic sentence structure and antithetical Senecan argumentation. Introduction, notes and an appendix, give a detailed parallel analysis of Chartier and the Complaynt.