<p> Monstrosity and transformation were intrinsically connected topics during premodern times. From Ovid&rsquo;s <i>Metamorphoses</i> (<i> circa</i> 8 CE) to Isidore of Seville&rsquo;s <i>Etymologies</i> (560&ndash;636 CE), intellectuals of all fields of knowledge explored the possibility of human physical transformation, and its consequences. This dissertation will approach hybrid monstrosity in imaginative literature of medieval Iberia on the basis of its textual and formal representations, but also as the repository of cultural significance and ideologies that characterize a particular time and place. My study focuses on five medieval Spanish texts: the <i>Libro del cavallero Zifar</i> (<i>Book of the Knight Zifar</i>, c. 1300) often considered one of the first chivalric novels written in Spain; the <i>Libro de buen amor</i> (<i>Book of Good Love</i>, c. 1330&ndash;1343) a satirical and parodic poem fully grounded in both learned and popular culture; the <i>Amad&iacute;s de Gaula</i> (<i> Amad&iacute;s of Gaul</i>) (1508) and its sequel, <i>Las sergas de Esplandi&aacute;n</i> (<i>The Adventures of Esplandi&aacute;n </i>) (1510); and the <i>Alborayque</i> (<i>circa</i> 1454&ndash;74), an anti-Jewish illustrated pamphlet published in Castile at the end of the fifteenth century. My dissertation unpacks the concepts of monstrosity and transformation present in medieval European culture, and the ways these are displayed in a variety of texts in order to reinforce or undermine religious, gender, and ethnic anxieties. In addition, my research traces the shifts in attitudes akin to processes of transformation in monstrous beings between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. It will be clear that during the fourteenth century monstrosity and change were connected to religious identity, while during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the texts studied embody the political agenda aimed at unifying the Peninsula through the idea of the <i>Reconquista</i> (the Christian retaking of Muslim lands), and the cultural and social struggles between the different cultural and religious communities.</p><p>

This thesis provides a detailed and interdisciplinary analysis of one of medieval England’s most enduring saints’ cults: that of St Edmund of East Anglia. Focussing largely on the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the surviving material, literary and visual evidence is examined through the twin lenses of matter and narrative, thus offering a novel means of perceiving medieval saintly devotion. Borrowing elements from Alfred Gell’s distributed agency theory, Michel Callon and Bruno Latour’s Actor Network Theory (ANT) and notions of ‘object biography’, chapter one develops a bespoke means of modelling the spatial, temporal and material dimensions of cult. Saints’ cults are imagined as expansive and entangled phenomena, focussed around a central ‘relic nexus’. Following this, chapter two employs these ideas to analyse the historical and material growth of Bury St Edmunds as a cult centre. This chapter demonstrates that Edmund’s materiality both played a significant role in determining the form his cult took and positioned him within an elite cadre of incorrupt saints. Switching to the narrative lens, chapter three contrasts early chronicle texts with later hagiography and charter evidence. This chapter shows that, across succeeding generations, Edmund’s legend shifted in line with contemporary historical circumstances to become entwined with the institutional identity of Bury St Edmunds Abbey. Chapter four expands the narrative analysis to consider the consequences of literary and oral dissemination. Tracing the literary transmission of a story implicating Edmund in the death of Swein Forkbeard, this chapter reveals how a series of twelfth-century, historical and political writers adapted this legend for their own purposes. Yet, far from being limited to literature, the chapter further argues that Edmund’s narrative was couched within a fluid oral context. Chapter four concludes by employing the theoretical structures developed in chapter one to model the narrative environment of Edmund’s cult. Chapter five focusses on how Edmund was visualised at his cult centre. A particular example of pictorial storytelling produced at Bury, the miniature sequence in Pierpont Morgan MS M.736, is analysed to reveal that visual representations provided a means of expounding both the material and narrative sensibilities of cult. Chapter six expands the visual and material discussion. A range of media, from large-scale wall art to small-scale archaeological finds, are used to show that Edmund and his narrative could be presenced in personal and idiosyncratic ways through a variety of objects. Chapter seven draws together the interrelated strands from the preceding sections and discusses what we can say about the relationship between matter and narrative in cult. It concludes that combinations of Edmund’s materiality and narrative could be combined, to create the unique truths that fashioned personal and corporate identities. Edmund’s cult, it is suggested, was a multi-faceted and expansive phenomenon which, although based around his shrine at Bury St Edmunds, held meaning well beyond. Following this, some concluding thoughts are offered on how the theoretical framework developed in this thesis might be adapted and applied to similar cult structures.

The application of literature to geographical research has been a matter of interest to scholars since antiquity but, apart from several normative statements on this subject in the past, literary geography has not been a serious focus of geographical inquiry until relatively recently. Since the early 1970s, however, humanistic geographers have been probing literature assiduously not simply for its geographical content, but for the subtle clues that it provides in helping us to better understand the mundane, contradictory and transcendental experiences of human beings in relation to their environment. It is upon the latter that this research focuses. Specifically, the purpose of this study was to explore the experiential significance of landscape in the Shakespearean imagination in the belief that by doing so we can not only shed new light on the perceptions, attitudes and values of the culture in which it was written, but also improve our own understanding of the world in which we live. Although an enormous amount of research has been undertaken on William Shakespeare, litterateurs have tended to ignore many aspects of the playwright’s work that are so important to geography. In focusing upon Shakespeare’s dramatic landscape, I have attempted to fill this gap. First, I identify a wide variety of elements of the landscape according to their frequency of occurrence; then, through the application of phenomenology and hermeneutics, I have endeavoured to disclose the meaning of these elements as they are portrayed in the text; the application of polarity, ambiguity and antinomy, as well as the literary devices of symbolism, simile and metaphor have been used to enrich the discourse. My method of inquiry is superimposed upon a conceptual framework in which I first examine the landscape from the macroscale, focusing upon the cosmic landscape of Elizabethan cosmology, terrestrial space and the stage; then I approach the landscape from the mesoscale, by exploring the regional landscape of the city, the middle landscape and the wilderness; finally, I concentrate upon specific landscape elements within the regional landscape, by classifying them into either a territorial core, interactional space or public space. The study ends by identifying some important concepts from within the research framework and I elaborate upon these in an attempt to disclose more fully the experiential significance of landscape in the Shakespearean imagination. One of the most important concepts identified in this study is the pervasive use of the body-landscape metaphor. However, the landscape:body metaphor is far more prevalent in Shakespeare's work, because the body:landscape metaphor did not become more widely adopted until much later in history. Nevertheless, Elizabethan cosmology is clearly reflected in the spatial representation of the landscape: the city is a symbol of order and a metaphor for paradise; the wilderness is a symbol of chaos and a metaphor for hell; and the middle landscape mediates between this antinomy. But there are some anomalies. The centre of the landscape periodically erupts in chaos, and the periphery harbours enclaves of order that are sometimes portrayed as utopias. In addition, even though the centre of the landscape is overwhelmingly portrayed as sacred--in contrast to the periphery, which is profane--in practice the antinomy of sacred and profane space is misleading, because the Elizabethans' whole life was encapsulated in an eschatological doctrine in which the entire world was sacred. Furthermore, the complexity of the Shakespearean landscape is displayed in a variety of responses to the human involvement with the environment that can best be understood when placed upon an insider-outsider continuum. Perhaps most significant of all, however, is the role of the stage. The symbolic representation of heaven and hell in the theatre not only allows the vertical metaphorical landscape of Elizabethan cosmology to interact with horizontal terrestrial space in ways that profoundly transform the landscape; there is strong evidence that this allowed the Elizabethan audience to view the theatre as a metaphor for life through a 'suspension of disbelief', giving them a sense of identity, purpose and meaning in a way that modern drama, and even cinematography, has found virtually impossible to emulate. / Graduate

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