Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 36-06, Section: A, page: 3679. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1975.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 38-04, Section: A, page: 2109. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1976.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 37-10, Section: A, page: 6472. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1976.

Efforts to examine English romance as a genre are complicated by the wide variety within the corpus. This study proposes a rationale for grouping as a subgenre fourteen romances which have common interest in supernatural figures whose presence motivates definitive assessments of their protagonists. Deploying the characteristic romance diptych structure pivoted around a moment of decisive action, these romances employ a distinctive type of imagery, the romance icons. The dialogue of masculine prowess, iconically represented by the sword and the spear, with the feminine, iconized by the circular, renewable images of rings, wells, and springs, serves as the nucleus for the examination of the role of trouthe as a principle for guiding the interrelationships of sexuality, power, and self-identity. This study focuses on the manner in which the romance imaginary, the tripartite thematic complex of values in which chivalric prowess is both promoted by and rewarded by erotic fulfillment and the desires for social status, property, and feudal power, serves as the paradigmatic metaphor for the fulfillment of the self. The romances examined employ central iconic images in staging the complex interactions of the masculine and feminine which are essential in attaining this goal. Through a process of resignification, these icons become the locus for the development of the theme of trouthe as the essential value for the identification, preservation, and completion of the self. In the English supernatural testing romances, trouthe is seen as the means by which humans can cope, but not control, what is ultimately unfathomable, the complex forces of the self and the Other, signified by the icons of romance. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 56-04, Section: A, page: 1348. / Major Professor: Eugene Crook. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1995.

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This dissertation demonstrates that the poetry of Geoffrey Chaucer and John Lydgate joined nonliterary medical texts in transporting medical discourse into the English language and culture. In the later-fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the production of Middle English medical and literary texts increased dramatically. These categories overlapped at the site of medical verse. I show that authors of imaginative fiction also wrote what is in effect medical verse by employing medical discourse in stand-alone poems and in passages embedded in longer works. As Chaucer and Lydgate became central in an emergent national literary canon, their texts––and the medical content they contained––enjoyed an especially broad circulation. Thus Chaucer and Lydgate participated in the Englishing and popularization of medical discourse. In the General Prologue and linking narratives of the Canterbury Tales, Chaucer satirizes academic medicine by means of its own discourse––what he calls the "termes of phisik"––and in the context of a larger thematic exploration of healing and illness in post-Black Death England. In the Knight's tale, Chaucer includes a miniature verse treatise on lovesickness (amor hereos), which, despite its brevity and satiric quality, draws learnedly from contemporary medical theory, in effect constituting one of the best-known technical works on the subject in Middle English. Lydgate's Dietary, a verse regimen of physical, spiritual, and social health, was one of the most widely circulated Middle English poems. It has been overlooked and misunderstood by scholars, however, because they have neglected to consider the poem's complex relationship with its sources and analogues and often refer to a highly unrepresentative edition of the text. By locating Chaucer's and Lydgate's creative uses of medical discourse within their textual and historical contexts, I offer new readings of their poems and reconstruct their respective roles in English medical history. / Cette thèse se propose de démontrer que la poésie de Geoffrey Chaucer et de John Lydgate s'allie à des textes médicaux non littéraires dans le processus de passage du discours médical dans la langue et la culture anglaises. Vers la fin du quatorzième et au quinzième siècle, la production de textes dans les domaines médical et littéraire en moyen anglais a augmenté de façon spectaculaire. Ces catégories de textes se sont toutefois chevauchées en regard avec la profession médicale. Dans ce travail, je montre que les auteurs de fiction imaginative ont écrit aussi de façon effective dans le domaine médical et ont employé le discours médical dans des poèmes séparés et d'autres passages ont été incorporés dans des œuvres plus longues. Comme Chaucer et Lydgate sont devenus incontournables dans le contexte littéraire national émergent de l'époque, leurs textes – et le contenu médical qu'ils contiennent – ont connu une diffusion particulièrement grande. Ainsi Chaucer et Lydgate ont contribué au progrès de langue anglaise ainsi qu'à la vulgarisation du discours médical. Dans le prologue général et les récits de liaison des Contes de Canterbury (Canterbury Tales), Chaucer fait la satire de la médecine universitaire par le moyen de son propre discours – ce qu'il appelle les « termes of phisik » – et d'une grande exploration thématique de la maladie et la guérison dans l'Angleterre de l'après-peste noire. Dans le conte du Chevalier, Chaucer inséra un court verset traitant du chagrin d'amour (amor hereos), lequel malgré sa brièveté et sa qualité satirique, use savamment de la théorie médicale contemporaine. Ce qui, en effet, fait de lui l'une des œuvres techniques, écrites en moyen anglais, les plus connues sur le sujet. La Diététique (Dietary) de Lydgate, un verset sur le régime de santé physique, spirituel, social, a été l'un des poèmes les plus largement diffusés en moyen anglais. Cependant, il a été négligé et pas très bien reçu par les chercheurs, parce qu'ils n'avaient pas considéré la relation complexe qu'entretient ce poème avec ses sources et ses analogues, et aussi parce qu'ils ont utilisé à une édition fort non-représentative du texte. En plaçant l'utilisation créative du discours médical de Chaucer et de Lydgate dans leur contexte textuel et historique, ce travail propose une nouvelle lecture de leurs poèmes et un meilleur rétablissement de leurs rôles respectifs dans l'histoire médicale anglaise.

The Conte du graal (1190), Chrétien de Troyes' last romance, was left unfinished by its author. Its four Continuations (1190 to 1235) form a narrative cycle of over 60 000 lines – far beyond the 10 000 lines of the original text. Remarkably, the authors of the Continuations show little regard for the rule of unobtrusiveness, which Gérard Genette considers a corollary of the art of continuation (Genette, 1982). In betraying Chrétien's narrative legacy, his unfaithful successors paradoxically ensure its continued relevance. The theme of lineage suggests the idea of a heritage shared by a community of individuals and, as such, serves as a metatextual tool, allowing the authors of the Continuations to reconcile – in sometimes playful manner – two conflicting aims: the urge to form a family (a synchronic narrative whole) with the Conte du Graal, and the need to question the legacy and diachrony of its composition – each step of which mirrors a specific moment in the history of literature throughout the 12th and 13th centuries. This paper combines jaussian reception theories with the theories of paratextuality and « New Philology », in order to define the poetic distinctness of the entire body of work, from conception to reception. We shall see that the various authors of the Continuations seek to defy their readers' expectations regarding the codes of continuation and, more generally, of the romance genre, but that the copyists may adapt the narrative cycle to the particular fashion of their time. Since both authors and transcribers use the metaphor of filiation profusely as a form of mise en abyme of their own act of rewriting or codicological manipulation, the dynamics of lineage constitute the main thread of this paper, which aims to capture the imagination of a XIIth century French writer (Gallais, 1988) and of his future audience for centuries to come. / Le Conte du Graal (1190), dernier roman de Chrétien de Troyes, est demeuré inachevé par son auteur. Les quatre Continuations (1190 à 1235) qui le prolongent forment avec lui un cycle narratif d'environ 70 000 vers, soit 60 000 de plus que le texte original. Force est de constater que les continuateurs ne respectent pas l'impératif de discrétion que Gérard Genette voyait comme étant corollaire à la continuation (Genette, 1982). En successeurs infidèles, ils trahissent le patrimoine narratif légué par Chrétien afin d'en garantir, paradoxalement, l'actualité. Parce qu'il suggère l'idée d'un héritage partagé par une communauté d'individus, le thème du lignage sert d'outil métatextuel aux auteurs des Continuations pour réconcilier – parfois avec ludisme – les deux principes divergents qui régissent leur écriture, à savoir la nécessité de former une famille (un ensemble narratif synchronique) avec le Conte du Graal et celle de s'interroger sur l'héritage et la diachronie de la composition de ce même ensemble, dont les étapes correspondent à différents moments de l'histoire littéraire des XIIe et XIIIe siècles. En jumelant les théories jaussiennes de la réception avec celles de la paratextualité et de la « nouvelle philologie », le présent mémoire aura pour dessein de cerner la spécificité poétique des œuvres du corpus, tant du point de vue de leur conception que de celui de leur réception. Si l'on verra que les continuateurs ont cherché à déjouer les attentes du lectorat concernant les codes de la continuation et, plus généralement, du genre romanesque, on s'attardera également sur les moyens mis en œuvre par les copistes pour rendre les Continuations plus conformes aux goûts de l'époque. Du fait que les auteurs et les scribes usent souvent de la métaphore filiale pour mettre en abyme leur propre démarche de réécriture ou de refonte codicologique, les rapports lignagers serviront de fil conducteur à cette analyse qui cherche à esquisser un portrait de « l'imaginaire d'un romancier français du XIIe siècle » (Gallais, 1988) et de son public des siècles suivants.

Queer studies have generally ignored twelfth and thirteenth-century "canonical" Arthurian verse novels, concentrating on the more explicit chansons de geste and prose romances. However, I argue that these Arthurian novels present both sexual ambiguity and homoeroticism, be they declared or latent. They are expressed by Arthur's knights' "special friendships," and by their constant desire of engaging in hand-to-hand fights. Though the use of war and sickness vocabulary to express love has been observed by scholars, an assiduous reading of Chrétien de Troyes and his successors' novels reveals that they resort to a similar rhetoric in describing a knight's desire both for a lady and for a knightly encounter with an enemy. I study two faces of these novels' homoeroticism, both expressed by a narcissistic fascination: the knights' ambivalent virile friendships and their physical confrontations, corresponding to carnal closeness. To do so I analyze the characters' relationships in five of Chrétien de Troyes' novels, and in a few ludic Arthurian novels. Furthermore, I explore the studied manuscripts' ancient and modern reception, as well as the medieval versions available to modern translators. This confirms my reading of these novels, since medieval scribes and illustrators appear to have shared it. / Bien que la vogue des queer studies ait généralement ignoré les romans arthuriens en vers « canoniques » des XIIe et XIIIe siècles (privilégiant plutôt l'étude de la chanson de geste ou du roman en prose, plus explicites), on remarque dans ceux-ci une ambiguïté sexuelle et un homoérotisme sinon affirmés du moins latents qui se disent à la fois à travers les « amitiés particulières » qu'entretiennent entre eux les chevaliers d'Arthur et leur désir perpétuel d'en venir au corps à corps. En effet, s'il est commun de recourir au vocabulaire guerrier ou à celui de la maladie pour exprimer l'amour, la fréquentation assidue des romans de Chrétien de Troyes et de ses successeurs met en évidence que ceux-ci usent d'une rhétorique similaire pour traiter du désir du chevalier pour une dame et pour la rencontre chevaleresque avec un ennemi. Les deux pans de l'homoérotisme que nous tenterons de mettre au jour seront donc les amitiés viriles ambivalentes et les affrontements physiques comme pendant du rapprochement charnel, qui se formulent dans les deux cas par le biais d'une fascination narcissique. Nous considérerons les cinq romans de Chrétien de Troyes et quelques romans arthuriens ludiques, ainsi que les réceptions anciennes et modernes des différents manuscrits à l'étude, des variantes médiévales disponibles aux traductions modernes qui en ont été faites, détour qui viendra confirmer que la lecture que nous proposons a pu être partagée par quelques scribes et illustrateurs.

The didacticism of thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century vernacular poetry and vernacular, Latin and macaronic pastoral manuals and exempla books, and the obvious inclusion of hagiographical and homiletic material in verse romance itself invite the study of early Middle English verse romance--namely, King Horn, Floris and Blancheflour, Havelok the Dane and Amis and Amiloun--as another literary means by which moral theological instruction was disseminated to the ecclesiastical community and laity. Like contemporary didactic literature, short verse romance treats the subjects of sin, virtue and penance; like the structure of contemporary philosophico-theological studies, the thematic relationships between the romances suggest a vernacular mirror of morality. Floris and Blancheflour and Amis and Amiloun develop allegories of the concept of sin, which involve a presentation of condition and process. The former is represented in demonstrations of disobedience, inverted proper hierarchal moral order, the desire for perverse self-exultation, the motif of the trial, the motif of exile and the motif of both mental and physical disease. Recalling familiar allegorizations of the Fall, the process of sin that these two romances develop introduces the stages of suggestion, delight and consent as well as analysis of the moral struggle involved in the act of volition which leads to the debasement of reason and the loss of the "true being" of the will. While Floris and Blancheflour delineates the tripartite process, Amis and Amiloun examines the entire process, emphasizing the significance of the concept of the defects which predispose one to the commission of sin. King Horn and Havelok the Dane develop allegories of the concept of moral excellence. Included in these allegories are actual and symbolic representations of cardinal and theological virtue. Included also is the study of the process by which one attains release from the condition of sin. In both poems the first stage of this process appears in the attainment of knowledge and experience of sorrow. The second stage involves the strengthening of the soul through the practice of cardinal virtue. The final stage appears in the attainment of the principal characters' disposition for good. While King Horn examines the entire process, Havelok the Dane focuses on the attainment of the specific theological virtue of hope. In addition to presenting examinations of virtue and sin, verse romance also develops an account of the sacrament of penance. The acts of the proximate matter of this sacrament, which appear most often, are contrition or "interior penance" and confession. The act of satisfaction is also an integral part of some works, appearing in their conclusions. The form of the sacrament receives minimal treatment. No significant character plays the role of ecclesiastical confessor. Thus, thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century English short verse romance is a literary form which treats the propaedeutics of moral theology. Its thematic relationship to contemporary philosophico-theological treatises and vernacular, Latin and macaronic didactic literature thus provides yet another instance of the effect that encyclopaedism had on the literary art of the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries.