This thesis analyzes eight specific Swedish medieval ballads that contain supernatural transformation and hybridity for how they depict gender in late medieval and early modern contexts. Using literature as a historical resource and a micro-historical approach, this thesis applies gender theory, intersectional approaches, and monster theory to its reading of these ballads. Through this analysis, this thesis has found that transformation in these ballads highlights what it meant to be human in the late medieval and early modern periods, by contrasting and defining humanness through the tension of being a hybrid. And inevitably, discussions of the body during these periods involved having a gendered body. While these stories define what was human and what was not, they discuss and negotiate late medieval and early modern conceptions of masculinity and femininity. Additionally, the conflicts in these stories introduce real-life issues such as power, violence, and social roles. Characters in these ballads negotiate gender and social roles by subverting and upholding societal power structures. A woman acts independently and marries a snake against her family’s wishes. Wives use magic to upend the social hierarchy usurp their husbands’ authority. Father’s roles as protectors are both questioned and underlined in stories of their failures. This thesis concludes that late medieval and early modern audiences had many different understandings of gender, and these audiences used supernatural transformation ballads as a means of communicating complex and contradictory elements of identity and gender during this period.

This research attempts to describe the material culture of the Gaelic labouring classes living in western Ulster in the Late Medieval period. The research combines ethnohistorical contextual and technical scientific analysis of ‘chance’ finds discovered in the region’s bogs. Technical analysis dates fifteen museum objects, characterises the materials from which they were made, and explores their cultural significance. Absolute dating indicates that one third of the 15 objects analysed relate to the Gaelic lordships of late medieval western Ulster, with the remainder reflecting aspects of Iron Age and Post-Medieval material culture and related cultural pracrices. Contextual analysis of the later medieval objects and their find locations provides new insights into Gaelic Irish culture and landscape interactions in this period and place. In addition, the research explores the trajectory of indigenous materiality in western Ulster beyond the Late Medieval period. To this end, the thesis examines the relationship between Late Medieval indigenous materiality, and the folk material culture that emerges in western Ulster in the Modern period. / Heritage Consortium, Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK)

The relationship between Erasmus of Rotterdam and the religious movement called the Devotio Moderna, especially the latter's relevance to Erasmian piety, has been a somewhat contentious historiographical issue. This thesis examines that relationship, and asserts that the Devotio Moderna was a crucial formative aspect of Erasmus' religiosity. However, its relevance ought not be overstated, due to the humanist's significant developments away from his spiritual forerunners.

This study examines the role of the Austin Friars in pre-Reformation English society, as distinct both from the Austin Friars of Europe and from other English mendicant orders. By examining how the Austins formulated their origins story in a distinctly English context, this thesis argues that the hagiographical writings of the Austin Friars regarding Augustine of Hippo, whom they claimed as their putative founder, had profound consequences for their religious platform. As their definition of Augustine's religious life was less restrictive than that of the European Austin Friars and did not look to a recent, charismatic leader, such as Dominic or Francis, the English Austin Friars developed a religious adaptability visible in their pastoral, theological, and secular activity. This flexibility contributed to their durability by allowing them to adapt to religious needs as they arose rather than being constrained to what had been validated by their heritage. The behaviour of these friars can be characterised foremost by their ceaseless advancement of the interests of their own order through their creation of a network of influence and the manoeuvring of their confrères into socially and economically expedient positions. Given the propensity of the Austin Friars towards reform, this study seeks to understand its place within and interaction with English society, both religious and secular, in an effort to reconstruct the religious culture of this order. It therefore investigates their interaction with the laity and patronage, with heresy and reform, and with secular powers. It emphasises, above all, the distinctiveness of the English Austin Friars both from other mendicant orders and from the European Austin Friars, whose rigid interpretations of the religious example of Augustine led them to a strict demarcation of the Augustinian life as eremitical in nature and to hostile relations with the Augustinian Canons. Ultimately, this thesis interrogates the significance of being an Austin Friar in fifteenth- or sixteenth-century England and their role in the religious landscape, exploring the exceptional variability to their behaviour and their ability to take on accepted forms of behaviour.

The present dissertation attempts to follow and analyze each and every individual stage of food provisioning of a late medieval monastic community. Chapter One is an introductory survey, describing the topic, its status quaestionis, problems and methodology. Chapter Two establishes the geography of crops in the rural hinterland of Norwich, with each manor specializing in different crop. A close analysis of the crop geography partially supports the Von Thünen thesis. Chapter Three looks at the agricultural trends of the demesnes. Roughly speaking, the period between c. 1290 and 1370 was a history of wheat’s expansion at the expense of rye, on the one hand, and legume shrinkage at the expense of grazing land. Chapter Four discusses annual grain acquisition, its components and disposal. It shows that about eighty per cent of the total supply derived from harvest, while the remainder came in form of tithes, grants and purchases. Chapter Five deals with the human and equine interaction. The bovine population was certainly dominant, but the draught horses easily outnumbered the oxen. Each year,the Priory authorities saved a great deal of money, because of (virtually) free customary carting service. Chapter Six explores the space for storing and processing of the annual grain supply. The five adjacent buildings, namely the Great Granary, brewery, bakery, mill and staples, allowed most effective cooperation between dozens of Priory labourers working in victual departments, on the one hand, and decreased transportation costs. Chapter Seven attempts to establish the relation between the Priory population, its annual grain supply and demand. Conversion of the grain into approximate calorific and financial equivalent reveals that the supply must have exceeded the demand. Chapter Eight is deals with the actual consumption of the grain supply. As far as Norwich monks are concerned, their annual bread and ale supply has certainly exceeded their normal requirements and there is no hint about selling the surplus. Joining the bread and ale accounts with those of the cellar, we arrive at astonishing calorific figures. Chapter Nine discusses the charity activities of Norwich Priory, particularly connected to the distribution of bread and ale among the needy. There were three distinctive groups: hermits, prisoners and paupers. According to almoner’s accounts, the Priory allocated generous sums of loaves and ale to the paupers.

The present dissertation attempts to follow and analyze each and every individual stage of food provisioning of a late medieval monastic community. Chapter One is an introductory survey, describing the topic, its status quaestionis, problems and methodology. Chapter Two establishes the geography of crops in the rural hinterland of Norwich, with each manor specializing in different crop. A close analysis of the crop geography partially supports the Von Thünen thesis. Chapter Three looks at the agricultural trends of the demesnes. Roughly speaking, the period between c. 1290 and 1370 was a history of wheat’s expansion at the expense of rye, on the one hand, and legume shrinkage at the expense of grazing land. Chapter Four discusses annual grain acquisition, its components and disposal. It shows that about eighty per cent of the total supply derived from harvest, while the remainder came in form of tithes, grants and purchases. Chapter Five deals with the human and equine interaction. The bovine population was certainly dominant, but the draught horses easily outnumbered the oxen. Each year,the Priory authorities saved a great deal of money, because of (virtually) free customary carting service. Chapter Six explores the space for storing and processing of the annual grain supply. The five adjacent buildings, namely the Great Granary, brewery, bakery, mill and staples, allowed most effective cooperation between dozens of Priory labourers working in victual departments, on the one hand, and decreased transportation costs. Chapter Seven attempts to establish the relation between the Priory population, its annual grain supply and demand. Conversion of the grain into approximate calorific and financial equivalent reveals that the supply must have exceeded the demand. Chapter Eight is deals with the actual consumption of the grain supply. As far as Norwich monks are concerned, their annual bread and ale supply has certainly exceeded their normal requirements and there is no hint about selling the surplus. Joining the bread and ale accounts with those of the cellar, we arrive at astonishing calorific figures. Chapter Nine discusses the charity activities of Norwich Priory, particularly connected to the distribution of bread and ale among the needy. There were three distinctive groups: hermits, prisoners and paupers. According to almoner’s accounts, the Priory allocated generous sums of loaves and ale to the paupers.

This thesis explores the evolving history of the Cistercian convent of Günterstal in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It is structured around the anointing of the Last Rites of a Günterstal nun who was blessed on her eyes, ears, nose, mouth, hands, heart and feet. The thesis takes each body part as a symbol for understanding the changing environment and practices of the convent, especially the relationship between the nuns' spiritual and everyday lives, and the ways in which the nuns interacted with the world outside. It argues that the nuns developed a spirituality in the later fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries which was closely connected with the everyday world around them in a series of practices which went into decline following the criticism of the Reformation. Many of these were strategies developed by the nuns themselves for breaking down boundaries between convent and world. Attempts at revival in the later sixteenth century of convent life sought to heighten the distance between the convent and the world, in part by developing new forms of internalised spirituality. Yet these attempts at reform were made more difficult by the conflicting interests of those who sought change, the criticism which had come before, and the response of the nuns themselves. The thesis analyses a number of different external symbols of convent life, from the spaces they inhabited to the objects they handled, and shows how these represented a number of different values of what it meant to be a nun in this period, values which did not always sit easily with each other. Günterstal maintained a noble character throughout this period and the social profile of its inhabitants often jarred with the push towards religious uniformity. This thesis shows that the symbolic value of these markers became increasingly heightened over the sixteenth century and took on new forms as a direct result of the attack on the convent way of life in the Reformation.

This study considers Thomas Hoccleve’s role, throughout his works, as a “religious” writer: as an individual who engages seriously with the dynamics of heresy and ecclesiastical reform, who contributes to traditions of vernacular devotional writing, and who raises the question of how Christianity manifests on personal as well as political levels – and in environments that are at once London-based, national, and international. The chapters focus, respectively, on the role of reading and moralization in the Series; the language of “vice and virtue” in the Epistle of Cupid; the moral version of Chaucer introduced in the Regiment of Princes; the construction of the Hoccleve persona in the Regiment; and the representation of the Eucharist throughout Hoccleve’s works. One main focus of the study is Hoccleve’s mediating influence in presenting a moral version of Chaucer in his Regiment. This study argues that Hoccleve’s Chaucer is not a pre-established artifact, but rather a Hocclevian invention, and it indicates the transnational literary, political, and religious contexts that align in Hoccleve’s presentation of his poetic predecessor. Rather than posit the Hoccleve-Chaucer relationship as one of Oedipal anxiety, as other critics have done, this study indicates the way in which Hoccleve’s Chaucer evolves in response to poetic anxiety not towards Chaucer himself, but rather towards an increasingly restrictive intellectual and ecclesiastical climate. This thesis contributes to the recently revitalized critical dialogue surrounding the role and function of fifteenth-century English literature, and the effect on poetry of heresy, the church’s response to heresy, and ecclesiastical reform both in England and in Europe. It also advances critical narratives regarding Hoccleve’s response to contemporary French poetry; the role of confession, sacramental discourse, and devotional images in Hoccleve’s work; and Hoccleve’s impact on literary tradition.

This MA thesis scrutinizes metaphors used by the late medieval English in order to explore the cultural response to climate anomalies of varying severity prefacing the Little Ice Age. The thesis indicates that changes in these cultural expressions marked a transformation in late medieval English writers' conceptions of the natural world and their relationship to it. The central hypothesis is that repeated, long-term unreliable and uncertain weather conditions, and the resulting material insecurities and losses, stimulated a fundamental cultural response which reconfigured the metaphors used for the natural world. Although the representation of nature is inescapably an act of imagination, metaphors and metonymies for nature will be identified in the medieval creative literature, as well as the proto-scientific study of weather, and, in the context of the socioeconomic metabolism model, be brought under the light of conceptual metaphor analysis for elucidation.

This MA thesis scrutinizes metaphors used by the late medieval English in order to explore the cultural response to climate anomalies of varying severity prefacing the Little Ice Age. The thesis indicates that changes in these cultural expressions marked a transformation in late medieval English writers' conceptions of the natural world and their relationship to it. The central hypothesis is that repeated, long-term unreliable and uncertain weather conditions, and the resulting material insecurities and losses, stimulated a fundamental cultural response which reconfigured the metaphors used for the natural world. Although the representation of nature is inescapably an act of imagination, metaphors and metonymies for nature will be identified in the medieval creative literature, as well as the proto-scientific study of weather, and, in the context of the socioeconomic metabolism model, be brought under the light of conceptual metaphor analysis for elucidation.