Inaug.-Diss.--Halle-Wittenberg. / Lebenslauf. "Vollständig erscheint sie unter dem gleichen Titel als 4. Heft der Sammlung 'Romanistische Arbeiten." "Bibliographie": p. [63]-64.

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After King William created the New Forest in the twelfth century, the English monarchy sought to define the vert, both legally and ideologically, as a site in which the king’s rights were vigorously enforced. In the romance literature of England, the forest was treated as an exclusive chivalric testing ground, as the site of the aristocracy’s self-validation. The folk reaction against the privatization of this common space and its resources finds a strong literary articulation in the first Robin Hood ballads centuries later. The outlaw reclaims the forest by inhabiting it, appropriating the symbols of its governance, and establishing within it a court that is both legal and social, decked out in the trappings and traditions of romance chivalry and the forest administration. This thesis examines the ideological impulses behind Robin’s occupation of the forest, discussing their relationship to the legal and literary history of the English forest.

This thesis, ‘Fairy in Middle English romance', aims to contribute to the recent resurgence of interest in the literary medieval supernatural by studying the concept of ‘fairy' as it is presented in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Middle English romances. This thesis is particularly interested in how the use of ‘fairy' in Middle English romances serves as an arena in which to play out ‘thought-experiments' that test anxieties about faith, gender, power, and death. The first chapter considers the concept of fairy in its medieval Christian context by using the romance Melusine as a case study to examine fairies alongside medieval theological explorations of the nature of demons. The thesis then examines the power dynamic of fairy/human relationships and the extent to which having one partner be a fairy affects these explorations of medieval attitudes toward gender relations and hierarchy. The third chapter investigates ‘fairy-like' women enchantresses in romance and the extent to which fairy is ‘performed' in romance. The fourth chapter explores the location of Faerie and how it relates as an alternative ‘Otherworld' to the Christian Otherworlds of Paradise, Purgatory, Heaven, and Hell. The final chapter continues to examine geography by considering the application of Avalon and whether Avalon can be read as a ‘land of fairies'. By considering the etymological, spiritual, and gendered definitions of ‘fairy', my research reveals medieval attitudes toward not only the Otherworld, but also the contemporary medieval world. In doing so, this thesis provides new readings of little-studied medieval texts, such as the Middle English Melusine and Eger and Grime, as well as reconsider the presence of religious material and gender dynamics in medieval romance. This thesis demonstrates that by examining how fairy was used in Middle English romance, we can see how medieval authors were describing their present reality.

L’étude se fonde sur l’hypothèse que le possible est un critère fondateur du roman médiéval. Le corpus est donc constitué d’œuvres romanesques ou qui peuvent être considérées comme des précurseurs du roman : les chroniques de Wace, le roman antique, les romans tristaniens et les romans de Chrétien de Troyes. Ces œuvres ont été explorées suivant une double approche. La première approche, linguistique, a essayé de dégager pour trois faits de langue (futur, futur II, propositions hypothétiques) une racine sémantique et, surtout, un éventail de significations ; l’étude a permis de dégager des phénomènes stylistiques : d’une part, les auteurs peuvent se singulariser dans leur emploi des formes (on dégage alors des traits idiolectaux) ; d’autre part, certaines formes ont des emplois marqués qui peuvent, en contexte, être considérés comme expressifs. La seconde approche est littéraire ; elle permet de dégager comment ces formes linguistiques sont investies dans une œuvre. En se concentrant sur des segments brefs et saillants (formules et interventions narratoriales), il a été possible d’identifier des traits singularisant l’œuvre de chaque auteur, mais aussi des éléments spécifiques au genre du roman. En étudiant d’une manière plus large le possible, défini comme la confrontation au futur contingent, certains éléments d’ordre générique ont été dégagés. Tout d’abord, le roman motive systématiquement l’action : le possible sert à exprimer une volonté, un projet, une verbalisation initiale précédant la réalisation de l’action ; l’écriture romanesque semble insister sur l’investissement individuel dans l’accomplissement de l’acte. Ensuite, un processus se révèle au plan chronologique. En effet, toute forme de prédestination ou de fatalité s’efface progressivement dans les textes ; ceux-ci se focalisent désormais plus sur la liberté humaine. Cette focalisation se fait selon deux procédés : le premier consiste à présenter la volonté du héros comme problématique, et le second à développer le principe d’incertitude : le possible relève d’une impossibilité à saisir entièrement le réel. / This study is based on the hypothesis that possibility is an essential criterion of medieval romance. So, the corpus contains romances or works which can be considered as precursors of romance : Wace’s chronicles, the « romans antiques », tristanian romances et Chrétien de Troyes’s romances. These works had been studied in two directions. The first part of the study relies on linguistic analysis in order to identify, for three linguistic facts (future, future II and conditionnals) a semantic root and, mostly, the different significations it can have. Stylistic phenomena had been identified by doing so : first, author can have a specific way to use these forms (idiolectal facts) ; then, theses forms have marked uses which can, contextually, be considered as expressive. The second part of the study is a literary analysis, in order to see how linguistic forms are used in works. By considering brief and prominent segments (formulas and narratorial interventions), it had been possible to identify facts which differentiate each author’s works, but also facts which are specific to romance. By studying possibility at a larger scale, defined as confrontation to contingent future, generic specificities had been identified. Firstly, romance expresses systematically the motivation of the action : possibility is used to express a will, a plan, an initial verbalisation preceding the realisation of the action ; so, romance writing seems to insist on the personal implication in the accomplishment of the act. Then, from a chronological point of view, a process is at work. Indeed, all form of predestination or fatality is gradually erased in the texts ; human freedom is now the focus. This focalisation is made in two ways ; the first is the description of the hero’s will as problematic ; the second is the development of uncertainty : possibility is linked to the incapacity to apprehend completely reality.

This thesis focuses on the ways in which cloth and clothwork are represented in Old French romance in order to highlight how they relate to feminine voice, expression, and identity. By focusing mainly on medieval romance from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the field of research is narrowed to a period in which vernacular literature was redefining literacy. On the basis that literacy is not confined to the ability to read and write in Latin, clothwork is presented as a medium of literate expression, that being a form of readable knowledge or communication not codified in written word or language, and in the works of such authors as Marie de France, Chrétien de Troyes, and Jean Renart, amongst others, the presentation of clothwork fits this classification. My research focuses on gendered performance and gendered objects highlighting the divide between masculinity and femininity in materiality. Beginning with a contextualised and historical understanding of feminine clothwork, authority, and gendered biases in the Middle Ages in France, the Virgin Mary's associations with clothwork leads into an exploration of how the identities of women are tied to the cloth that they work or possess. From this basis, feminine voice in clothwork comes to the forefront of discussion as seemingly inaudible women make themselves heard through the use of needles and thread, telling their stories in cloth and tapestry. Throughout this study, an exploration of mother-daughter relationships is highly significant to the comprehension of feminine education and tradition in clothwork. The chansons de toile included in Le Roman de la Rose ou de Guillaume de Dole by Jean Renart underline the dichotomy and tension between oral and written culture, tying feminine voice to feminine clothwork and exploring the representation of this in the written text. Finally, Christine de Pizan's intimation of the importance of feminine tasks and brilliance concludes this study in order to better understand the ways in which the literature of the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance departs from the medieval presentation of clothwork as a typically feminine activity underlying and encapsulating a woman's identity and expressive power.

This dissertation is a critical analysis of identity in literature within the historical context of the theopolitical climate in England between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries. The narratives under consideration are the Lais of Marie de France, The Canterbury Tales, and The Book of Margery Kempe. A focus on the business of theology and the Church’s political influence on identity will highlight these lay writers’ artistic shaping of theopolitical ideas into literature. Conducting a literary analysis on the application of theopolitical ideas by these lay writers encourages movement beyond the traditional exegetical interpretation of their narratives and furthers our determination of lay intellectual attitudes toward theology and its political purposes in the development of identity and society.

This thesis concerns narratives about Anglo-Scandinavian contact and literary traditions of Scandinavian origin which circulated in England in the post-conquest period. The argument of the thesis is that in the eleventh century, particularly during the reign of Cnut and his sons, literature was produced for a mixed Anglo-Danish audience which drew on shared cultural traditions, and that some elements of this largely oral literature can be traced in later English sources.  It is further argued that in certain parts of England, especially the East Midlands, an interest in Anglo-Scandinavian history continued for several centuries after the Viking Age and was manifested in the circulation of literary narratives dealing with Anglo-Scandinavian interaction, invasion and settlement.  The first chapter discusses some narratives about the reign of Cnut in later sources, including the Encomium Emmae Reginae, hagiographical texts by Goscelin and Osbern of Canterbury, and the Liber Eliensis; it is argued that they share certain thematic concerns with the literature known to have been produced at Cnut’s court.  The second chapter explores the literary reputation of the Danish Earl of Northumbria, Siward, and his son Waltheof in twelfth-century sources from the East Midlands and in thirteenth-century Norwegian and Icelandic histories.  The third chapter deals with an episode in the Middle English romance Guy of Warwick in which the hero helps to defeat a Danish invasion of England, and examines the romance’s references to a historical Danish right to rule in England.  The final chapter discusses the Middle English romance Havelok the Dane, and argues that the poet of Havelok, aware of the role of Danish settlement in the history of Lincolnshire, makes self-conscious use of stereotypes and literary tropes associated with Danes in order to offer an imaginative reconstruction of the history of Danish settlement in the area.