Thesis (Ph. D.)--Bryn Mawr college, 1915. / Vita. University Microfilms facsimile reprint. Chapter IV contains the text of the Lay each line "accompanied by a corresponding line of Gaimar's text if one is to be found."

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Bryn Mawr college, 1915. / Vita. University Microfilms facsimile reprint. Chapter IV contains the text of the Lay each line "accompanied by a corresponding line of Gaimar's text if one is to be found."

The story of Lady Godiva's naked ride through Coventry is well known. While scholars agree that it has no historical basis, no satisfactory explanation has been offered as to when and why it first appeared. This thesis explores the possibility that it may have been an original composition intended as hagiography. Beginning with the historical Godiva, who died in 1067, it details the various categories of saint that were popular in Anglo-Saxon England, in particular the 'cartulary' or 'founder' saint - a category for which Godiva was eminently qualified. It examines the possibility of political objections to her canonization in the light of her grandsons' role in the rebellion against William the Conqueror, and considers the allegation that Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, had a particular animosity towards the English saints. The paper then turns to hagiography as a literary genre. It explores the purpose of writing about the saints, and how this correlates with the well-known flurry of such writing that occurred in England in the aftermath of the Norman Conquest. It discusses the influence of folklore, classical literature and twelfth-century courtly romance on hagiography in general, and examines the story of Godiva's Ride with specific reference to the Virgin Martyr tradition and to Chrétien de Troyes' courtly romance Erec et Enide. A brief overview of the political situation in Coventry when the story was first written in 1218 suggests that Godiva was intended to serve a role similar to that of the cartulary saint. Finally, the thesis considers how Godiva became a local folk hero, and how this may have preserved her memory long after she would have been forgotten as a saint. It examines her changing role as a symbol of Coventry and of the East Midlands, and ends with the revelation that she may have become a saint after all - albeit of a uniquely secular variety.

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This thesis explores the depiction of ecclesiastical restorers in narrative sources in England between c.1070 and 1130. It examines the way in which contemporaries wrote about churchmen who were engaged in restoring the English Church, particularly the actions which were attributed to them. While a great deal has been written about ideas of Church reform from the time, little has been done to set out who might actually be considered a restorer. Narrative sources offer a window through which to assess the themes which most concerned writers of the time. The thesis focuses upon chronicles and saints' Lives to delve into these themes, as it seeks to identify the criteria by which writers assessed churchmen who attempted to restore the Church. Certain common trends will be identified. However, it will also be argued that different contexts and commentators honed the image of the restorer so that the needs of communities and their particular members shaped ideas of the figures under discussion. The examination is split between four chapters, each addressing an important aspect in the depiction of the restorer. Chapter One looks at the importance of material restoration, through the recovery of lost lands and the rebuilding of churches. Chapter Two looks at how writers depicted restorers correcting morals in England and improving monastic customs, particularly saints' cults. Chapter Three explores the notion of ‘right order' and how it was important for churchmen to ensure that the correct hierarchy was restored. The fourth and final chapter examines the personal characteristics expected of a restorer, such as industry, prudence and learning, as well as descriptions of saintly restorers. Finally, the conclusion tests its findings against writing from different times and places, namely other European writing from the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries and tenth-century England.

Thesis advisor: Robert Stanton / This dissertation introduces the remix as an interpretive framework for the analysis of medieval texts and demonstrates its value as a new approach to understanding even well-studied texts. Breaking the process of remixing down into three composite processes—aggregation, compilation, and renarration—allows the reader to examine a given text as the cumulative effect of a series of actions taken by known or unknown remixers. Doing so in turn allows for new readings based on previously un- or under-explored alterations, completions, and juxtapositions present within the text or its physical or generic contexts, or embedded within its processes of textual production. This dissertation presents four case studies that show the usefulness of this approach in regard to (1) the physical and textual construction of the Junius manuscript; (2) the conventions of the ‘encomium urbis’ genre and the meaning of ‘home’ in Old English poetry; (3) King Leir narratives and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as forms of history writing; and (4) various contextualizations of Grendel, the antagonist from the poem Beowulf. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: English.

British Library MS Harley 2253 is a unique fourteenth-century miscellany consisting of 140 folios and containing 116 different texts, including lyrics, political poems, fabliaux and other secular and religious texts in verse and prose, Latin, Middle English and Anglo-Norman. While the so-called “Harley Lyrics” popularized by Brook’s edition may have registered widely on scholarly radar, many of the non-English texts in the collection have failed to elicit critical attention. However, these texts are vital points in the narrative of English literary history. In particular, the four Anglo-Norman fabliaux included in Harley 2253 constitute a majority of the extant pre-Chaucerian fabliaux produced on the English isles, and of these, Le Dit de la Gageure and Du Chevalier a La Corbeille have no Old French analogues. This report explores the Anglo-Norman fabliaux in this manuscript, their relationship to the continental French tradition and to the subsequent English (ie. Chaucerian) fabliaux incarnations. Specifically, I argue that representations of female desire – figured as an opposition between “stillness” and doing one’s “will” – surface in these obscene misogynist stories that simultaneously objectify and colonize the female body. “De Clerico et Puella”, Le Dit de la Gageure and Le Chevalier qui fist Les Cuns Parler all include an unmarried female who articulates her sexual desire freely, a sharp contrast to the traditional cuckoldry plot of Old French fabliaux which revolves around a married woman’s illicit affairs. Indeed, the grotesque images of sexual violence and the pornographic images of sexual fulfillment in these pre-Chaucerian fabliaux are not contained by the ecclesiastic context from which these texts originate, but rather they linger and are transformed by the female characters, patrons, readers and hearers of the medieval manuscripts in their domestic contexts. / text

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This thesis explores the geographic complexity of English identity in the High Middle Ages by examining texts that reflect moments and spaces of cultural contact. While interaction with a cultural Other is often thought to reinforce national identity, I challenge this notion, positing instead that, in the texts analysed here, cultural meetings prompt the formation or consolidation of regional identities. These identities are often simultaneously local and cross-cultural, inclusive but based in community ties and a shared sense of place. Each of the four chapters examines a different kind of regional identity and its relation to Englishness through romances and historiographical texts in Anglo-Latin, Anglo-Norman, and Middle English. Discussion primarily focuses on the Gesta Herwardi, Gaimar's Estoire des Engleis, Fouke le Fitz Waryn, Gui de Warewic, Boeve de Haumtone, Le roman de toute chevalerie, and Richard Coer de Lyon. Each of these texts negotiates English identity in relation to a cultural Other, and balances various aspects of cultural identity and scales of geographic affiliation. While some focus exclusively on a particular locality, others create inclusive regional identities, draw together the foreign and the familiar, or depict England as a region on the edge of an interconnected world. These texts show that Englishness can carry different meanings, nuances, and identitary strategies that depend on context, location, or ideology. Together, they forge an image of England that is diverse and multinucleated. Its borders become spaces of meeting, connection, and cultural overlap, as well as division. These works establish a strong English identity while articulating England's necessary relationship with other places, spaces, and peoples, challenging not the borders of England, but the borders of Englishness.

This thesis examines the depiction of saintly figures within the Latin vitae of twelfth-century England (1066–c.1215). It tests the extent to which these depictions are homogeneous and examines what factors may have shaped representations. Analysis focuses on vitae of twelfth-century saints, a sample of texts that have not previously been examined as a corpus in this way. By encompassing a range of different types of saint, authors and contexts, utilising this corpus allows a comparative examination of how different facets of sainthood could be expressed in hagiography. The textual analysis at the heart of this study aims to unpick individual texts' ideals of saintly behaviour. Whilst hagiographers functioned within a well-established genre, considering a wide range of saints' vitae allows scrutiny of the impact of context in shaping depictions. It will be argued that these portrayals of saintly figures demonstrate thematic harmony which is tempered by individuality and context to form recognisable and yet distinctive depictions of sainthood. The analysis is structured around four common hagiographical themes, each worthy of detailed examination: Outer Appearance, Sexuality and Chastity, Food and Fasting, and Death. Chapter 1 investigates how saintly figures are described in terms of physical appearance, deportment and demeanour, and clothing. Chapter 2 focuses upon sexuality, exploring the manifestations of chastity and virginity within the Lives and testing how this might vary from saint to saint and between the sexes. Chapter 3 examines food and food abstention, previously under-represented in secondary literature on twelfth-century hagiography and on male saints. The thesis ends with a consideration of death, a surprisingly understudied theme in Anglophone scholarship. By examining the process of dying and the moment of mortality, this chapter will fill an important analytical vacuum between lived sanctity and sanctity in death.