Marie de France and Chrétien de Troyes were two of the most influential French writers of the twelfth century. Both of these poets use different devices and themes of l’amour courtois, a model of how love was portrayed in literature at that time, to warn against the folie and the dangers to which adhering to the doctrines of this model could lead. They use narrative voice and commentary from characters to directly explain to readers why l’amour courtois is not an ideal example to follow, and they rely on the outcomes of their stories to portray potential outcomes for those who do or do not adhere to this code of courtly love. They also use their stories to express how important moderation and reason are in all aspects of life. In this thesis, I analyze in depth six of the twelve Lais of Marie de France (Guigemar, Yonec, Les Malheureux, Equitan, Le Frêne, and Eliduc) to show how her works favor unconditional love and punish selfish love. I explain how she uses narrative voice to directly support or condemn the actions of her characters. I also demonstrate how the end of each story can be a reward for selfless, sacrificial love or a punishment for self-interested love or for malicious intent toward an innocent character. I continue my analysis with three works of Chrétien de Troyes: Erec et Enide; Yvain, ou le Chevalier au Lion; and Lancelot, le chevalier de la Charrette. I explain how the first two stories exhibit a knight’s immoderation in either love or chivalry and how he must undergo a series of trials and battles to correct this imbalance in his life and strengthen his love for his wife. I also show how these stories promote the idea of a pure and ideal love within a mariage. The last of these stories is about an adulterous love, which does not seem to be condoned or condemned in the text, but the lovers are never given a happy reconciliation at the end. I also explain how this story is in particular exhibits the ridiculousness that can accompany courtly love. I specifically sought to compare the works of Marie de France and Chrétien de Troyes because they both seem to use different doctrines and devices of courtly love specifically to condemn its practice and its glorification and to instead demonstrate an alternative love one can seek that will be lasting and unconditional. I also wanted to underline how their portrayals of moderation (or immoderation) in love and chivalry were consistent throughout all of their works.

This project explores connections between hero and history, text and context. By engaging Postcolonial theories about the roles that invasion and oppression, play in developing national identity and how colonized people respond to such encounters in literature, I examine how experiences of invasion and hostile interaction as represented in medieval and early modern English literature influenced the creation of specific heroic values. In my first chapter, I analyze The Battle of Maldon and Beowulf as exemplars of the Anglo-Saxon culture, observing that Byrhtnoth and Beowulf work as fictional embodiments of a fantasy of power: men of super-human strength and exceptional resoluteness who, through remarkable sacrifices, inspire men to accomplish phenomenal deeds of their own. Next, I explore Arthur in The Alliterative Morte Arthure and Le Morte Darthur, who embraces his hybridity, fluidly moving between the Anglo-Saxon warrior tradition and the French romance tradition. Last, I consider Shakespeare’s Henry V, which depicts a conquering hero who possesses the prowess and nobility of his heroic predecessors and the ability to succeed where they failed, securing England’s continental dominance. In each era, I contend that the authors created heroes on whom they could project a fantasized identity which defied the realities of their time, heroes who changed based upon the type of threat faced by England. This study samples five hundred years of literature and uses this breadth to explore cross-periodic continuity, finding that the heroes of these texts respond not only to their historical context, but also to each other. This scope allows one to see how the emblem of the hero responds to the reality of the authors and audiences of these texts. The figure of the hero develops over centuries, demonstrating that as the needs of the authors and audiences change, so, too, does the character who represents them. These literary figures provide a unique window into the culture and concerns of the authors and audiences during the medieval and early modern eras. They represent desire for strength, inspiration, glory and triumph. They reflect the agony of anxiety, vulnerability, defeat, and hopelessness. Most importantly, they reimagine, reframe, and redress reality.

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This thesis investigates syncretic animal symbolism within medieval European occult systems. The major question that this work seeks to answer is: what does the ubiquity and importance of magical animals and animal magic reveal about overarching medieval perceptions of the world? In response, I utilize the emerging subfield of Animal History as a theoretical framework to draw attention to an understudied yet highly relevant aspect of occult theory and practice. This work argues that medieval Europeans lived in a fundamentally “enchanted” world compared to our modern age, where the permeable boundaries between physical and spiritual planes imbued nature and its creatures with intrinsic power. In addition, with the increasingly pervasive influence of Christianity, animals took on supplementary and often negative symbolic dimensions within evolving magical systems, yet retained their sense of power within a new syncretic context. By surveying classical occult inheritance, the pervasive influence of Christian doctrine, the use of animals in medical magic, and their rich symbolic potential within medieval literature, this interdisciplinary work highlights the multifaceted medley of Christian and pagan elements that became intertwined in daily life despite seeming doctrinal opposition. Although further scholarly research has yet to be done, analyzing understandings of a world filled with intrinsic occult power offers a valuable and revealing contrast to an age of increasingly sharpened boundaries between animals, human beings, the cosmic realm, and nature.

This thesis examines Augustine of Hippo's support of the cult of relics through the lens of Peter Brown's revision of the two-tiered model which was proposed in his 1981 book The Cult of Saints. More specifically, this thesis attempts to explain the introduction of saint's relics in the final book, book 22, of Augustine's magnum opus The City of God (De Civitate Dei). After providing proof of the theologian's opposition to the cult of relics in his youth, historical, biographical, and textual evidence is used to trace his later change of heart. This change in position is crystallized in a series of miracle accounts in the 8th chapter of the 22nd book. The analysis of this 'chain of miracles' is essential in understanding the purpose of the City of God as a whole and Augustine's own theories of death and resurrection.

In this thesis, my purpose is to determine why Augustine’s theory of knowledge by illumination was rejected by Franciscan theologians at the end of the thirteenth century. My main methodological assumption is that Medieval accounts of divine illumination must be interpreted in a theological context, or with attention to a scholar’s underlying doctrines of God and of the human mind as the image of God, inasmuch as the latter doctrine determines one’s understanding of the nature of the mind’s cognitive work, and illumination illustrates cognition. In the first chapter, I show how Augustine’s understanding of illumination derives from his Trinitarian theology. In the second chapter, I use the same theological methods of inquiry to identify continuity of thought on illumination in Augustine and Anselm. The third chapter covers the events of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries that had an impact on the interpretation of illumination, including the Greek and Arabic translation movements and the founding of universities and mendicant orders. In this chapter, I explain how the first Franciscan scholars transformed St. Francis of Assisi’s spiritual ideals into a theological and philosophical system, appropriating the Trinitarian theology of Richard of St. Victor and the philosophy of the Arab scholar Avicenna in the process. Bonaventure is typically hailed the great synthesizer of early Franciscan thought and the last and best proponent of traditional Medieval Augustinian thought. In the fourth chapter, I demonstrate that Bonaventure’s Victorine doctrine of the Trinity both enabled and motivated him to assign originally Avicennian meanings to philosophical arguments of Augustine and Anselm that were incompatible with the original ones. In the name of Augustine, in other words, Bonaventure introduced a theory of knowledge that is not Augustinian. In the fifth chapter, my aim is to throw the non-Augustinian character of Bonaventure’s illumination theory into sharper relief through a discussion of knowledge and illumination in the thought of his Dominican contemporary Thomas Aquinas. Although Aquinas is usually supposed to reject illumination theory, I show that he only objects to the Franciscan interpretation of the account, even while he bolsters a genuinely Augustinian account of knowledge and illumination by updating it in the Aristotelian forms of philosophical argumentation that were current at the time. In the final chapter, I explain why late thirteenth-century Franciscans challenged illumination theory, even after Bonaventure had enthusiastically championed it. In this context, I explain that that they did not reject their predecessor’s standard of knowledge outright, but only sought to eradicate the intellectually offensive interference of illumination, as he had defined it, which they perceived as inconsistent with the standard, in the interest of promulgating it. In concluding, I reiterate the importance of interpreting illumination as a function of Trinitarian theology. This approach throws the function of illumination in Augustine’s thought into relief and facilitates the effort to identify continuity and discontinuity amongst Augustine and his Medieval readers, which in turn makes it possible to identify the reasons for the late Medieval decline of divine illumination theory and the rise of an altogether unprecedented epistemological standard.

The mythology of migration is deeply integral to the medieval Germanic societies peopling Northern Europe and the island nations of the North Sea. Anglo-Saxon and Icelandic society construct their identities through a memory of migration that takes places within a frontier that is mythic and historical in scope. By surveying eco-critical components of Anglo-Saxon poems such as “The Wife’s Lament” and “The Husband’s Message” alongside the Icelandic sagas Egil’s saga and The Vinland sagas, a shared tradition of the frontier ideal is revealed.

It is undeniable that literature reflects much about the society that produces it. The give-and-take relationship between a society and its literature is especially interesting when medieval texts are considered. Because most medieval plots and characters are variants of existing stories, the ways that the portrayals change has the potential to reveal much about the differences between medieval societies separated by distance and time. Changes to the treatment of these recurring characters and their stories can reveal how the attitudes of medieval society changed over time. Perceptions of magic and attitudes toward its female practitioners, both real and fictional, changed drastically throughout the Middle Ages among clergy members and the ruling class. Historically, as attitudes toward women became more negative, they were increasingly prohibited from receiving a formal education and from gaining or maintaining positions traditionally associated with feminine magical power, such as healer, midwife, or wise woman. As the power of the Church grew and attitudes changed throughout the Middle Ages, women’s power in almost all areas of life experienced a proportional decrease. Using a combination of historical and literary sources, this paper will explore whether this decrease in power is evident in literary portrayals of magical female characters in medieval literature. Specifically, it will examine the agency and potency, or the intrinsic motivation and effectiveness within the story, respectively, of female characters within medieval narratives, comparing the characters to their earlier iterations. This research will offer a unique perspective on the roles of magical women in medieval literature.

This paper explores the extent to which the female characters in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales exercise any degree of narrative agency. Using both literary and historical approaches, this paper specifically discusses the cases of three of Chaucer’s women: Virginia, Griselda, and the Wife of Bath.

The tumulus tale of Troilus and his lover Cressida has left readers intrigued in renditions written by both Geoffrey Chaucer and William Shakespeare due to their subversive nature of the authors’ chosen generic forms. Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde challenges the expectations and limitations of the narrative of the chivalric romance. Shakespeare took the story and turned Troilus and Cressida into one of his famous “problem plays” by challenging his audience’s expectations of the tragic genre. I endeavor to draw attention to the ways in which both Chaucer and Shakespeare use the conventions of the chivalric romance and tragedy to play with the imbalances in the central relationship of Troilus and Criseyde/Cressida in the story. These imbalances are the source of experimentation in both texts that allows Chaucer to imbue tragedy in the chivalric romance and allow Shakespeare to undermine tragedy itself.