This dissertation offers the first full-length study of medieval England’s literary tradition of manuals for penitents—texts describing the sins, and other essentials of the faith, that address penitents preparing for confession. This tradition includes works that were among the most popular in medieval England. Some of these—including the Parson’s Tale and Ancrene Wisse, which is an important precursor to this body of writing—have been studied in depth, but the tradition in which they participate is still not well understood. This dissertation shows that this tradition emerged in a significant way in the second half of the thirteenth century, although it took root in an existing body of self-examination writing. Insofar as it reflects a new emphasis on reading as a means of interrogating oneself rather than as a means of preparing oneself to interrogate others, the development of these manuals represents a widening range of reading practices and a shift toward private confessional education. The first two chapters describe the characteristics of manuals for penitents, including their material and formal qualities. Among other contributions, the first chapter explores a feature of commentaries on the essentials of the faith that often goes unnoticed: that when they appear in manuals for penitents, they are not, as is often thought, digressive, impersonal, or strictly didactic, but instead encourage and promote self-reflection. The second chapter examines the implied and actual audiences of manuals for penitents. On the basis of this more precise characterization of these manuals, the final three chapters offer insight into three interlinked texts chosen from different stages of the development of these manuals: Ancrene Wisse, the Compileison, and the Parson’s Tale. In addition to shedding light on these three texts, these concluding chapters highlight some of the tensions that emerged surrounding the shift to asynchronous penitential learning that was enabled by these manuals.

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<p dir="ltr">When one thinks of the medieval past, one might think of knights with their shining armor and swords; these are warriors. My dissertation seeks to examine and expose how “warriors” are gendered as masculine; a person or character categorized as a warrior might be assumed to be a man unless otherwise specified to be a “woman warrior.” The need for the qualifying adjective (“woman” or “female”) illustrates that the maleness of warriorhood and violence is understood as implicit. This governing assumption affects how women’s actions, particularly women’s violent actions, are interpreted. This dissertation takes women’s violence as a starting point, examining characters from Judith to Chaucer’s Dido. I show how and why the violence these women enact cannot be relegated to, say, maternal instinct or spirituality. The spiritual warrior is herself impressive, of course; she is a tool, a weapon of God, through whom God fights. The idea of the spiritual warrior then allows for discussions of women without painting them as inherently violent or aggressive. Instead, the spiritual warrior is the martyr, an extension of maternal instincts and the idea that women are caretakers and, when necessary, protectors. But these self-sacrificial ideals, often associated with maternity, are not, nor should they be, a requirement for womanhood.</p><p dir="ltr">I argue that in order to create a capacious enough definition of “woman” and even femininity, we must prize definitions of femininity from the grip of the patriarchy. What if we took these women on their own terms, instead? I seek to do exactly this: to examine, throughout this dissertation, both the ways that violent women act and what they say, without considering how their behavior might, nonetheless, be understood to conform to limiting ideas of femininity (such as the virgin or the whore). I thereby invite us to think about what it means when violent women enact their will on the world; and I also attend to the physical, in addition to the spiritual, effects of this violence (like killing someone). My work suggests that, in order to take gender seriously, we must pay attention to these moments when women hurt or kill either someone else or themselves.</p>

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In this dissertation, I examine the various ways in which medieval authors used the term "lollard" to mean something other than "Wycliffite." In the case of William Langland's Piers Plowman, I trace the usage of the lollard-trope through the C-text and link it to Langland's dependence on the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares. Regarding Chaucer's Parson's Tale, I establish the orthodoxy of the tale's speaker by comparing his tale to contemporaneous texts of varying orthodoxy, and I link the Parson's being referred to as a "lollard" to the eschatological message of his tale. In the chapter on The Book of Margery Kempe, I examine that the overemphasis on Margery's potential Wycliffism causes everyone in The Book to overlook her heretical views on universal salvation. Finally, in comparing some of John Lydgate's minor poems with the macaronic sermons of Oxford, MS Bodley 649, I establish the orthodox character of late-medieval English anti-Wycliffism that these disparate works share. In all, this dissertation points up the eschatological character of the lollard-trope and looks at the various ends to which medieval authors deployed it.

在《坎特伯里故事集》中，喬叟曾多次直接指出或間接暗示旅程中的故事競賽為一遊戲。然而，對此文本的研究文獻，卻鮮少從遊戲觀點切入分析。即便有，也多是從語言角度，來處理文本中各角色間的口語遊戲，或喬叟本人的文字遊戲，離真正的遊戲本身，似還有一段距離。有鑑於此，我試著以惠欽格及凱洛斯對遊戲的論述，做為理論框架，來分析《坎特伯里故事集》中的遊戲元素。我首先將找出證據，來證明整個朝聖之旅符合遊戲的定義，然後以其中三個故事為例，來分析四種遊戲範疇。本論文將分為五章，在第一章，我先說明遊戲長期以來被人忽視的地位，接著我將引入惠辛格及凱洛斯的論述。惠辛格提出遊戲的概念、定義，及功能；凱洛斯作為惠辛格在遊戲論述領域中的繼承人，則將惠辛格的成就，加以推展及補充，並將遊戲定義為四個範疇：競爭、機會、模仿、暈眩。所有的遊戲都可被歸納為這四類。在第一章的後半部，我將逐一從文本中，找出證據，來證明《坎特伯里故事集》在在都符合遊戲的定義。在第二章，我將討論＜騎士的故事＞中競爭與機會之運作。在第三章中，我將從模仿的層面來分析＜赦罪修士的故事＞。在第四章中，我將從暈眩的角度來看＜修女院教士的故事＞。在第五章中，我將總結前四章的要點，然後探討文學作為遊戲的可能性。最末，從遊戲的往復特性來看，我將主張《坎特伯里》遊戲尚未結束，它是遊戲昇華為藝術的最佳範本。 / In many places of The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer points out that this story-telling contest would be a game. However, researches on this text have scarcely been done from the perspective of game. In view of this, I try to apply Jonah Huizinga and Roger Caillois’ concepts of game as the main theoretical framework to The Canterbury Tales. In this thesis, I justify the pilgrimage as a big game first and then discuss the elements of play in three tales respectively. The thesis is divided into five chapters. In chapter one, I recount the subordinate position of game first and then introduce Huizinga and Caillois’ discourses. Huizinga comes up with the concept, definition, and function of game; Caillois modifies Huizinga’s notions and then categorizes games into four kinds: agon, alea, mimicry, and ilinx. In the following part of chapter one, I prove that The Canterbury Tales as a whole matches the notion of a game. In chapter two, I discuss the exercises of agon and alea in The Knight’s Tale. In chapter three, I analyze The Pardoner’s Tale from the aspect of mimicry. In chapter four, I see The Nun’s Priest’s Tale from the perspective of ilinx. In chapter five, I summarize the previous chapters first, and then explore the possibility of literature as the game. I argue that the game of The Canterbury Tales is not over and that it is the sublimation form of game into art.