Thesis (M.A.)--University of Montana, 2007. / Title from title screen. Description based on contents viewed Oct. 17, 2007. Includes bibliographical references (p. 81-84).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2000. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 228-242). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

Texte remanié de: Diss. / Bibliogr. p. [211]-225. Index.

This dissertation examines male bereavement in medieval literature, expanding the current understanding of masculinity in the Middle Ages by investigating both the authenticity and affective nature of grief among aristocratic males. My focus is on the pattern of bereavement that surfaces across genres and that has most often been absorbed into studies of lovesickness, madness, the wilderness, or more formalist concerns with genre, form, and literary convention, but has seldom been discussed in its own right. This pattern consists of love, loss, grief madness and/or melancholy, wilderness lament/consolation, and synthesis and application of information gleaned from the grieving process, which is found is diverse texts from the twelfth century romance of Chrétien de Troyes' Yvain to the fifteenth century dream vision/consolatio Pearl. A focused study of how bereavement is represented through this pattern gains us a deeper understanding of medieval conceptions of emotional expression and their connections to gender and status. In other words, this project shows how the period imagines gender and status not just as something one recognizes, but also something one feels. The judgments and representations of bereavement in these texts can be explained by closely examining the writings of such religious thinkers as Augustine and Aquinas, who borrow from the neo-Platonic and Aristotelian schools of thought, respectively, and both of whom address the potential sinfulness and vanity of excessive grief and the dangers for this excess to result in sinful behavior. This latter point is also picked up in medical treatises and encyclopedic works of the Middle Ages, such as those of Avicenna and Isidore of Seville, which are also consulted in this project. The medieval philosophical and medical traditions are blended with contemporary theories of gender, authenticity, and understanding, as well as an acknowledgement of the psychoanalytic contributions of Freud and Lacan. Through these theories, I explore the capacity for the men in these texts to move beyond the social strictures of masculinity in order to more authentically grieve over the loss of their loved ones, which often constitutes a type of lack. However, my purpose is not to view losses as lack, but rather, to see them as a positive impetus to push beyond the limits of social behavior in order to realize textually various outcomes and to suggest the limitations of such socially sanctioned conventions as literary forms, language, rituals, understanding, and consolation to govern the enactment of grief.

When an author produces a frame narrative, she simultaneously makes language both a represented object and a representing agent; when we imagine framed speech, we imagine both the scene its words represent and a mouth that speaks those words. Framed language is thus perfectly mimetic: the words we imagine being spoken within the fictional world are the same we use to effect that fiction's representation. Since its first function is to represent itself, the framed word acts both to push us out of the frame into our own temporality and to draw us into fictional times and spaces. This dissertation explores how first Dante and subsequently his successors, Boccaccio and Chaucer, deploy this structural feature of frames to engage difficult philosophical and theological disputes of their age. In the Divine Comedy, framed language allows Dante to approach the perfect presence of God without transgressing into a spatial conception of the divine. Intensifying Dante's procedure in his House of Fame, Chaucer forecloses the possibility of representation; he transforms every speech act into an image of its utterer rather than its referent, thus violently thrusting us back into the time we pass as we read. Boccaccio--first in his Ameto then in the Decameron--eschews this framed temporality in favor of the temporality of the fetish: while his narratives threaten to dissolve into their basic linguistic matters, the erotic energy of the people that populate those narratives forces them to cohere as fully imagined spaces and times. Finally the Chaucer who writes the Canterbury Tales fuses his initial reading of Dante with Boccaccio's response to it; he constructs the Canterbury pilgrims as grotesques who each open up a limited angle of vision on the time and space they collectively inhabit. These angles overlap and stutter over one another, unsettling the easy assignations of identity any given pilgrim would enforce on a tale or agent within the narrative. In doing so, Chaucer makes the temporality within his Tales strange and poignant in a way that fully mimics our own experience of extra-narrative time.

The contention of the thesis is that Chaucer's approach to the story of Troilus and Criseyde was determined by a wish to examine pragmatically the essential value of courtly love as a way of life and that he used the Troilus as a poetic vehicle for this examination. Furthermore it is maintained that his view of courtly love would be conditioned by the current philosophical theory of the "double truth"—that a thing may be true according to reason but false according to religion. The code of courtly love had been condemned by the Church as being opposed to Christian morality, but extolled by many writers, especially Andreas Capellanus, as being not only in harmony with natural morality but even the summum bonum of life. In Troilus and Criseyde Chaucer is speculating on the validity of the latter position, which constituted a commonly recognized example of one aspect of a double truth. If this hypothesis can be substantiated it is reasonable to hope that it may shed light on the major critical problems of the Troilus, specifically the relevancy of Troilus's speech on free will, the apparent inconsistency in Criseyde's actions and the artistic value of the epilogue. To establish the hypothesis the thesis presents evidence of the prevalence of the Averroistic system of thought from which sprang the theory of the two truths and of Chaucer's undoubted awareness of this philosophical position. Textual evidence is then introduced to show that Chaucer intended to deal specifically with courtly love as a rational and complete way of life and examine its consequences in the dramatic unfolding of the story. He developed courtly love into a way of life by making it a quasi-religion. From this arises the relevancy of Troilus's speech on free will: it is a commentary on the determinism implicit in this religion. The major characters in the poem are then considered. Taken together the dramatic roles of the male protagonists are seen to exemplify a comprehensive, tri-partite view of courtly love—idealistic, sensual and light-hearted—none of which proves eventually productive of lasting happiness. Criseyde’s character, flawed by her fear of scandal, is a crux in the tragedy. Her insistence that the courtly commandment of secrecy be kept is responsible for the lovers' separation. Hence the demands of the code of love are responsible for the tragedy, and Criseyde's betrayal is consistent with the timidity of character she continually displays. Finally the epilogue is seen as a summary of the findings of Chaucer's philosophical experiment in fiction. Troilus's final enlightenment expresses the conclusion of the author: that courtly love is a false happiness not only on religious grounds but also on rational and pragmatic ones. The theory of double truth has thus been dramatically shown to be inapplicable to the defense of courtly love as a way of life. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

The medieval animal world was vast and included mythical creatures as well as birds, reptiles and other beasts. This dissertation confines itself mainly to mammals. It explores the numerous references to them in Chaucer's works and finds these to be consonant with his general treatment of the brute creation for literary purposes. By Chaucer's day, the traditional attitude towards animals was well defined. The fables, the Bible, hermeneutical writings, natural histories, encyclopedias and art all stressed the apparently human characteristics of animals and rarely demonstrated scientific interest in the assessment of them. In an age when the visible world existed to instruct "man in spiritual matters, the characteristics were stereotyped and used merely to throw light on human or divine nature. Chaucer, whether he draws from popular lore, expository writings or animal stories, whether he is translating or using knowledge seemingly derived from observation, appears to think primarily of the conventional ideas associated with animals and to find animals interesting mainly because they can illustrate humanity. Many of his analogies are meaningful solely because of the conventional attributes of animals which are either stated or implied. In his most successful figures he is able to make folklore, symbolism and realistic detail combine to vivify the complexities of human character and action. Despite the assumptions of a number of critics that Chaucer shows a personal liking for animals, the evidence examined reveals that his references, at best conventionally colorless, are generally depreciatory and that animals frequently serve to illustrate distasteful aspects of humanity. He selects pejorative proverbial expressions and reinforces them with equally unfavorable observations of his own. In the case of the mammals considered in detail in this dissertation, the hare, the dog, the horse, the wolf, the sheep and the lamb, only the lamb receives an unequivocally favorable presentation and this presentation is necessitated by traditional Christian symbolism. To some extent Chaucer1s attitude may be regarded as stemming from Boethius who regarded animals as exemplifying the baser passions of Man. But an analysis of the nature of Chaucer's references, both figurative and non-figurative, indicates that an additional reason must be found to account for what often appears to be a compulsive selection of unpleasant images. It is suggested that Chaucer's recoil is the result of an inner tension. He tries to repress the attraction which he feels for the uninhibited vitality of the animal world because he knows that, according to the teachings of his Church, the uncontrolled expression of the natural passions is to be condemned, and that the animal serves as a warning, illustrating what Man becomes when, to his eternal damnation, he permits the body to triumph over the soul. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

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