The principal objective of this paper is to analyze Sir Gawain's efforts to balance the conflicting requirements of the Code of Chivalry with the basic needs of human nature to develop insights into the Gawain's character. Using an amalgamated definition of chivalry as the standard, I will examine Gawain's attempts to achieve his goal of being the perfect chivalric knight, determine the nature of his obstacles, and analyze the development of his character. In trying to live up to perfection, Gawain discovers that he is not perfect.

This study explores how three English romances of the late fourteenth century-Geoffrey Chaucer's Franklin's Tale, Thomas Chestre's Sir Launfal, and the anonymous Sir Gawain and the Green Knight-employ economic exchange as a tool to illustrate community ideals. Although gift-giving and commerce are common motifs in medieval romance, these three romances depict acts of generosity and exchange that demonstrate fundamental principles of proper behavior by uniting characters in the poems in spite of social divisions such as gender or social class. Economic imagery in fourteenth-century romances merits particular consideration because of Richard II's prolific expenditure, which created such turbulence that the peasants revolted in 1381. The court's openhanded spending led to social unrest, but in romances a character's largesse strengthens community bonds by showing that all members of a group participate in an idealized gift economy. Positioned within the context of economic tensions, exchange in romances can lead readers to reexamine notions of group identity. Chestre's Sir Launfal unites its community under secular principles of economic exchange and evaluation. Using similar motifs of exchange, the Gawain-poet makes Christian and chivalric ideals apparent through Gawain's service and generosity to all those who follow the Christian faith. Further, Chaucer's Franklin's Tale portrays hospitality as a tool to create pleasure, the ultimate goal of service. Although they present different types of group identity, these romances specify that generosity and commerce can illustrate the ideals of a poem's community and demonstrate to the audience model forms of behavior.

An examination of the influence of medieval numerology and number theory upon the works of the Gawain poet, this essay seeks to connect the importance of numbers to the construction of the four poems. By examining such number theories as the Divine Proportion and marriage numbers, as well as Pythagorean number concepts of masculine and feminine numbers, a clear connection between the literature and the number can be found. The poet not only seeks to use numbers to impart important Christian doctrine to his readers in a subconscious way, he also demonstrates an extreme pre-planning of every line and layout of each poem upon the page. Continuing in current critical traditions of examining this manuscript as whole, "Pearl, " "Patience, " "Cleanness, " and "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" are shown to join together in an interweaving of connectivity through number pattern and the repetition of important numerological concepts.

<div> <div> <div> <p>Medieval fairies are chaotic and perplexing narrative agents—neither humans nor monsters—and their actions are defined only by a characteristic unpredictability. My dissertation investigates this fairy chaos, focusing on those moments in a premodern romance when a fairy or group of fairies intrudes on a human community and, to be blunt, makes a mess. I argue that fairy disruption of human ways of thinking and being—everything from human corporeality to the definition of chivalry—is often productive or generative. Each chapter examines how narrative fairies upset medieval English culture’s operations and rules (including, frequently, the rules of the narrative itself) in order to question those conventions in the extra-narrative world of the tale’s audience. Fairy romances, I contend, puzzle and engage their audiences, encouraging readers and hearers to think about and even challenge the processes of their own society. In this way, my research explores the interaction between a text and its audience—between fiction and reality—illuminating the ways in which premodern narratives of chaos and disruption encourage readers and headers to engage in a sustained, ethical consideration of the world. </p> </div> </div> </div>

Tim Burtons films are largely thought to be exercises in style over content, and film adaptations in general are largely thought to be lesser than their source works. In this project, I argue that Burtons film <i>Sleepy Hollow</i>, an adaptation of Washington Irvings Legend of Sleepy Hollow, expresses his artistic message, that imagination and the irrational are equally valuable lenses through which to view the world as scientific process and reason are, while simultaneously complicating the thematic concerns of the longstanding myth of the headless horseman, the supernatural versus the natural and the irrational versus the rational, and relating them to his personal anxieties about the parent child relationship. I do so by drawing parallels between the film and its immediate source as well as <i>Sir Gawain and the Green Knight</i>, another chapter in the headless horseman myth, and two horror films from the 1960s. I compare the narrative structure, character relationships, thematic concerns, and cultural anxieties expressed in both the film and <i>Sir Gawain and the Green Knight</i> to demonstrate that the film argues for a worldview allowing the natural and the supernatural and the rational and the irrational to coexist. I also point to the visual references Burton makes to scenes from Roger Cormans <i>The Pit and the Pendulum</i> and Mario Bavas <i>La Maschera del Demonio</i>, illustrating the manner in which they complicate the myths thematic concerns. My argument adds to Hand and McRoys assertion that horror film adaptations are a form of myth-making and to the growing sense that there is more to Burtons art than flashy visuals.

Tim Burtons films are largely thought to be exercises in style over content, and film adaptations in general are largely thought to be lesser than their source works. In this project, I argue that Burtons film <i>Sleepy Hollow</i>, an adaptation of Washington Irvings Legend of Sleepy Hollow, expresses his artistic message, that imagination and the irrational are equally valuable lenses through which to view the world as scientific process and reason are, while simultaneously complicating the thematic concerns of the longstanding myth of the headless horseman, the supernatural versus the natural and the irrational versus the rational, and relating them to his personal anxieties about the parent child relationship. I do so by drawing parallels between the film and its immediate source as well as <i>Sir Gawain and the Green Knight</i>, another chapter in the headless horseman myth, and two horror films from the 1960s. I compare the narrative structure, character relationships, thematic concerns, and cultural anxieties expressed in both the film and <i>Sir Gawain and the Green Knight</i> to demonstrate that the film argues for a worldview allowing the natural and the supernatural and the rational and the irrational to coexist. I also point to the visual references Burton makes to scenes from Roger Cormans <i>The Pit and the Pendulum</i> and Mario Bavas <i>La Maschera del Demonio</i>, illustrating the manner in which they complicate the myths thematic concerns. My argument adds to Hand and McRoys assertion that horror film adaptations are a form of myth-making and to the growing sense that there is more to Burtons art than flashy visuals.

From the eighth to the fourteenth century, places of wonder and dread appear in a wide variety of genres in Old and Middle English: epics, lays, romances, saints’ lives, travel narratives, marvel collections, visions of the afterlife. These places appear in narratives of the other world, a term which in Old and Middle English texts refers to the Christian afterlife: Hell, Purgatory, even Paradise can be fraught with wonder, danger, and the possibility of harm. But in addition to the other world, there are places that are not theologically separate from the human world, but that are nevertheless both marvellous and horrifying: the monster-mere in Beowulf, the Faerie kingdom of Sir Orfeo, the demon-ridden Vale Perilous in Mandeville’s Travels, or the fearful landscape of the Green Chapel in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Fraught with horror or the possibility of harm, these places are profoundly different from the presented or implied home world of the text. My dissertation investigates how Old and Middle English narratives create places of wonder and dread; how they situate these places metaphysically between the world of living mortals and the world of the afterlife; how they furnish these places with dangerous topography and monstrous inhabitants, as well as with motifs, with tropes, and with thematic concerns that signal their marvellous and fearful nature. I argue that the heart of this poetics of marvellous spaces is displacement. Their wonder and dread comes from boundaries that these places blur and cross, from the resistance of these places to being known or mapped, and from the deliberate distancing between these places and the home of their texts. This overarching concern with displacement encourages the migration of iconographic motifs, tropes, and themes across genre boundaries and theological categories.

From the eighth to the fourteenth century, places of wonder and dread appear in a wide variety of genres in Old and Middle English: epics, lays, romances, saints’ lives, travel narratives, marvel collections, visions of the afterlife. These places appear in narratives of the other world, a term which in Old and Middle English texts refers to the Christian afterlife: Hell, Purgatory, even Paradise can be fraught with wonder, danger, and the possibility of harm. But in addition to the other world, there are places that are not theologically separate from the human world, but that are nevertheless both marvellous and horrifying: the monster-mere in Beowulf, the Faerie kingdom of Sir Orfeo, the demon-ridden Vale Perilous in Mandeville’s Travels, or the fearful landscape of the Green Chapel in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Fraught with horror or the possibility of harm, these places are profoundly different from the presented or implied home world of the text. My dissertation investigates how Old and Middle English narratives create places of wonder and dread; how they situate these places metaphysically between the world of living mortals and the world of the afterlife; how they furnish these places with dangerous topography and monstrous inhabitants, as well as with motifs, with tropes, and with thematic concerns that signal their marvellous and fearful nature. I argue that the heart of this poetics of marvellous spaces is displacement. Their wonder and dread comes from boundaries that these places blur and cross, from the resistance of these places to being known or mapped, and from the deliberate distancing between these places and the home of their texts. This overarching concern with displacement encourages the migration of iconographic motifs, tropes, and themes across genre boundaries and theological categories.

No description available.