Abstract not available

Most studies of direct discourse in Old English poetry and especially in Beowulf have ignored the emphasis on speech in Anglo-Saxon society as a form of action similar to yet distinct from other types of human activity. The application of recent sociolinguistic and philosophic insights known collectively as "speech act theory" or "pragmatics" provides an interesting and productive new way of looking at direct discourse in the poem. The distribution of speeches in the poem does not appear to be governed by rules analogous to the rules governing turn-taking in "ordinary conversation." Instead, a character's representation in direct discourse appears to be largely dependent on both his social and moral status. In addition, the Beowulf poet, with one exception, appears to avoid speech-within-speech. Possibly as a consequence of this tendency, the various scop songs are always represented in indirect, rather than direct, discourse. The classification of portions of speeches as specific types of speech acts provides significant insights into the relationship of direct discourse in the poem to its social context. The beot, for example, is a specific type of commissive, an utterance in which the speaker obligates himself to perform a future act. The beot corresponds in several major respects to the modern notion of a contract. On the other hand, speakers in the poem do not seem to utter requests unless they possess some inherent right to have the listener perform the act requested. Expressives, utterances that have as their primary purpose the expression of the speaker's psychological state, seem to be limited only to the single case of a king thanking God. Speakers apparently indirectly thank individuals by uttering favorable judgements on their prowess or wisdom. In addition, there are several instances in the poem of declarations, utterances that radically alter reality merely by the fact of their being spoken. The coherence of speeches, the way that individual speech acts are combined to make meaningful extended discourse, can be viewed as a function of the relevance of succeeding speech acts to their audience. In the first part of the epic, Beowulf's adventures in Denmark, all the speeches can be considered relevant in terms of each speaker's immediate audience. In the second part of the epic, however, the speeches become less concerned with the characters to whom they are apparently directed. The growing irrelevance of the speeches serves possibly to reinforce symbolically the growing elegiac mood that dominates the last part of the poem. The application of speech act theory also allows episodes such as Hrothgar's "Sermon" to be perceived more clearly as functions of their immediate social context rather than solely as examples of Christian homiletics. But most significantly, looking at the speeches as discrete actions reveals their importance as a vital part of the narrative movement of the poem.

Compared to the romances of Chretien de Troyes, Partonopeu de Blois has been little studied up to the present. Early studies, hampered by an inadequate edition, were limited largely to an examination of sources and/or comparative traditions; the romance was often mentioned in passing in works encompassing the entire genre or all of Old French medieval literature, but was rarely studied in depth. When the romance became accessible through Gildea's edition (1967), it was included in such studies as Hanning's examination of the concept of the individual and his relation to society, Bruckner's analysis of the functioning of the convention of hospitality, and Ferrante's study of the role of women in medieval literature. Such studies have done much to expand our understanding of Partonopeu. Because of the scope of these studies--wide-ranging examinations of a theme, concept, or convention-- the discussion of Partonopeu has been a means rather than an end, and critical insights on the poem are fragmented. The present thesis attempts to study in depth some aspects of the romance in the context of an examination of that work alone, while profiting from the perceptions of scholars who have adduced the poem as evidence for their various conclusions. Much of this study is devoted to an examination of the structure of Partonopeu and the ways in which that structure contributes to the elaboration of meaning in poem. The essentially bipartite construction, while not sacrificing nuances of composition, underlines the theme of growth and personal fulfilment. This bipartition is intensified by the use in the first part of the poem of material and a tone that would not be inappropriate in a lai, devices that are droppd in the second part (Chapter II); and by a dramatic reversal of male and female roles and influence (Chapter IV). Another aspect of this study is essentially of intertextual and extratextual interest. An attempt is made to situate the romance in the context of a small corpus of roughly contemporaneous romances (Chapter V). The study of the role of the narrator, a role that constitutes the greatest innovation of the poem, is in part intended to underscore the relationship, mediated by the poet's creation, the narrator, between poet and audience; the functions of this "character," both intra- and extratextual, are examined (Chapter III).

This study traces the representations of the Nizari Isma'ilis, or Assassins, in medieval European texts, a process revealing three different discourses about the sect. I argue that when the crusaders first encountered the Syrian branch of the sect, they sought to enter into an alliance with its members. Early texts discussing the Assassins reflect this desire for an alliance and treat the sect correspondingly. The events at the end of the twelfth century—especially the assassination of Marquis Conrad of Montferrat, newly elected King of Jerusalem—introduce a new way of approaching the sect in Latin Christian histories and chronicles of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. To the historians chronicling the death of Conrad, the sect functions as an instrument in the portrayal, positive or negative, of more significant historical figures such as Richard the Lion-Heart of England, Philip Augustus of France, and Conrad himself. Although the occasion of Conrad's murder did not immediately lead to the rejection of a discourse of alliance in treating the Assassins, this early approach to the sect was eventually replaced by one of exoticization in the thirteenth century. This third and final discourse rose to prominence as the historical Nizaris lost their independence and power, ultimately falling to the Mongols in 1256. As a result of the process of exoticization, the Assassins came to be seen as a “wonder of the East.” The three approaches to the Assassins outlined above did not succeed each other, but rather overlapped and sometimes existed simultaneously. Nonetheless each discourse achieves dominance at a different time. Thus, the discourse of alliance predominates in the early years of the medieval European representation of the sect, but the assassination of Conrad of Montferrat informs the perception and depiction of the Assassins from 1192 to the first third of the thirteenth century. Thereafter the discourse of exoticization becomes the dominant discourse about the Assassins in Latin Christendom, one that continues to influence our understanding of the sect to this day.

The Libro del rey Canamor is one of a small group of chivalric narratives that reached popularity levels in sixteenth-century Europe similar to the “best-seller” of today. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries these works were often overlooked or easily dismissed by scholars and many have been forgotten by the modern press. My proposal is to present the Libro del rey Canamor to the scholarly public for closer examination, easier access and renewed interest. This study presents a review of the essential distinctions often made between various types of chivalric narratives, leading to a brief discussion of their history in Hispanic literature, as well as their classification and acceptance through the years. It also examines the history of the shorter narratives and their relation to sixteenth-century printing and the creation of an editorial genre. The analysis of the Libro del rey Canamor examines its editorial history and narrative structure. Although some of its contemporaries were published for a longer period of time, this text was not able to extend its publishing life into the seventeenth century. Nevertheless, there were at least ten different editions in its heyday. The Libro del rey Canamor consists of two independent nuclei which create a hybrid text, the first part of which comes from a medieval source, while the second brings to light the aforementioned editorial genre. It is likely that the second part was written specifically for publication in early sixteenth-century Valencia. The analysis of content focuses on the major protagonists, folk motifs and their roles and functions in the more developed episodes. Finally we examine the presence of humor found in each section, concentrating on battle bravado, love intrigues, and jests. The review of the history of the chivalric narratives, both editorial and social, as well as the analysis of the internal elements of the Libro del rey Canamor in particular, show that this brief narrative is a hybrid text: a combination of a medieval narrative, albeit heavily edited, and a newly written second generation, melded together to create one of the best-sellers of sixteenth-century Spain.

The thirteenth-century poetic dedication to Santa Oria is a vividly portrayed life of a little-known saint. Author, Gonzalo de Berceo abides by tradition in ways that the devotional poem is well-received by his public while presenting innovation which demands the attention of his contemporary audience. The Spanish poet selects a female religious subject and conforms to certain familiar motifs of female spiritual progression simultaneously exploring novel pathways. Dreams and voyages to the other world are decoratively displayed through a schematic of symbols, both bold and subtle. The artistic and picturesque quality to the poem melds elements of literary tradition to create an original voyage of a young saint, a vision and her soul. This study investigates the five visionary journeys presented in the poetic dedication to Oria. Elements of symbolism and imagery, the scripting of sanctity, with regard for female holiness, and the access to and artistic rendering of the other world are identified and located with respect to an opulent hagiographic ancestry. The Poema de Santa Oria is presented in context with other thirteenth-century mester de clerecía poems also offering visionary escapes. The Spanish-language works of shared legacy with Oria offer shades of the heavenly realm yet do not penetrate the other world locations to the extent of visionary literary precedent. The Poema de Santa Oria is positioned within an extensive tradition of hagiographic and visionary legacy descending from both art and letters. It is argued here that as a body, Oria shared language, experience and earthly spaces with her mester de clerecía contemporaries, yet the journeys of her spirit are more closely aligned with earlier literary experiences of divine destinations. Berceo's artistic style is as gentle and deliberate as the characters and landscapes he portrays. Consideration is given to the artist's exploitation of the senses which result in creation of the precious pictorial images governing narration of the saint's visionary world.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 1979. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 353-379). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center.

Since humans engage in ritual activity in everyday life, we should expect that rituals are portrayed in literature. Thus I examine the question of whether rituals portrayed in heroic epics are realistic reflections of rituals from--in this case--Old English and Old Irish society, or idealized rituals, or anti-rituals (models of social behavior to be avoided). Taking this approach to heroic poetry requires an anthropological analysis of the societies that created the literary texts, which can help us generate hypotheses about the nature of the rituals and how they supported society. After such considerations, the narrative literature can be sifted for portrayals of rituals, and then analysis can tell us the complementary story: how the depicted rituals may have compared to actual use. In early chiefdom societies where warfare was endemic, rituals that regulated violent conflicts were important, as is attested by Germanic hoarding rituals and Irish boundary rituals. In Beowulf the dragon hoard may represent status symbols whose overabundance created social conflicts. The events leading to the redeposition of the hoard may reflect rituals of communion. In Tain Bo Cuailnge, the events and rules of raiding may portray the real concern for maintaining tribal boundaries nonviolently in the fragmented political climate of early Ireland. Both literary traditions portray rituals as ideal methods of behavior translatable to deeds in real life, although both traditions portray the ill-effects caused when characters break the rules of rituals. Thus, although the dragon hoard was properly buried once upon a time, a thief breaks the rules, recovers some treasure, and unleashes supernatural havoc upon the tribe in the form of a dragon. The proper redeposition of the hoard is, perhaps, for long-term 'damage control' whose immediate application caused the death of Beowulf. Similarly, Irish tradition portrays the rules of single combat being followed for a time, in which Cu Chulainn is able to hold his turf against many invaders; but as the rules of warfare are broken against him in unfair combat, his supernatural prowess wreaks mass deaths upon the enemy--mass deaths that ritual warfare attempted to avoid. Therefore the tales portray the ideals of conflict-reducing rituals by showing the state of society without ritual controls.

Cronica Sarracina was one of the most widely read books of its time. It was very popular, and contemporary historians considered it a proper historiographic work. Despite this fact, later opinion believe it to be stylistically poor. It was also considered to be a fictional work because it used myth, legend, and dream material. In order to clarify this discrepancy, the present work focuses on three fundamental points: the nature of the historical discourse, the role of the narrative in historiographic writing, and the literary conventions of the Middle Ages. In order to be considered a proper historiographic work, the work must represent the actual facts, that is to say, the facts that exist outside of the author's consciousness. The traditional historical discourse starts from this premise, but concentrates on accumulating referentiality to affirm the existence of the external reality that is independent from the discourse that announces it. However, the most recent theories hold that the events and the realities represented in a historiographical work are not independent from the discourse that announces them. The story mechanism is inseparable from the way in which we perceive and represent our world. Taking as a starting point the instability of the boundaries established among the principal forms of discourse, especially in the case of the discourses produced prior to the nineteenth century when the rules of their formation were different, this document asks whether Cronica Sarracina is a proper historiographical work. It examines the criteria of the truth and objectivity in force at the time of the Cronica's writing, the literary conventions that govern its narrative structure, and if its narrative structure contributes to the representation of the truth. The document explores the role of those aspects historically least acceptable, that is to say, those concerning chivalry and those that were traditionally labeled as myth, and how these contribute to the representation of the truth.

As we gaze into the mirror of literary texts, we often forget that the images projected back at us are verbal constructs that may bear little resemblance to the reality they purport to represent. This is the case with a group of fifteenth-century Spanish texts that denigrate or defend women. We do not witness these women as they really were; instead, we see fictionally embodied projections of the fears and fantasies of both their authors and of the societies in which they were formed. We see how man's relation to woman plays itself out in a constant oscillation between overwhelming attraction and fear of the loss of control over both himself and woman; or, we see women who are so perfect and so willingly subjected to man's control that they will never achieve status as an individual. This dissertation examines three modes of discourse used by these texts to represent women. The misogynist discourse of Alfonso Martínez de Toledo and Luis de Lucena achieves near hallucinatory visions of chaos with its depictions of Woman as Wild Man: the incarnation of every excess and sin that men might dream of but know they cannot indulge in. These creatures destroy the “natural” order of society by defying its control. Attempts to tame them may fail, for only the annointed few are equal to the task. In contrast, the profeminist discourse of Juan Rodríguez del Padrón, Mosón Diego de Valera, Álvaro de Luna, and Fray Martín de Córdoba raises women up to a potential paradise of harmony and respect between the sexes, but below the surface of these portrayals of exemplary wives, widows, and virgins, we see the continuing discourse of male control. Indeed, this control is now tightened, so that even perfect women are tested, to see which will fall. Finally, we come to Teresa de Cartagena, this group's only female voice. Teresa borrows from both male-determined discourses and then subverts them so that she can at last free herself with the very words meant to imprison her and, by extension, all women. men.