Thesis (Ph.D.)--Brown University, 2008. / Vita. Advisor : Mercedes Vaquero.

<p>This project examines the medieval practice of the sacrament of penance and the innovative ways in which medieval literature engaged with the pastoral project of the Catholic church to provide the penitent with a way to deal with sin. Drawing from medieval literature, religious writing and theological sources, this project begins by illustrating the extent to which each of these didactic texts produces a "model of confession" that reaffirms the teachings of the church. However, approaching these texts with careful attention to language and to the grammar of sin and penance, I show that each of these undeniably orthodox works departs from traditional accounts of the sacrament of penance in significant ways. I suggest that such departures point to moments of theological exploration. My dissertation thus interrogates the category of orthodoxy, showing it to be more capacious and exploratory than is generally recognized. Further, I suggest that the vernacular penitential literature of the late medieval period, motivated by pastoral considerations, actively engages with academic and clerical theological debates surrounding the heavily contested sacrament of penance. </p><p>Chapter one examines <italic>Jacob's Well<italic>, a fifteenth-century vernacular penitential treatise. I argue that the narrative exempla often work against the instruction offered within each chapter, compelling the reader to consider theological problems not addressed within the doctrinal material. These resistances, I suggest, are intentional and not only suggest certain limitations in traditional penitential manuals, but encourage a more conscientious penitential practice and a better understanding of church doctrine. In chapter two I consider the <italic>Showings<italic> of Julian of Norwich. I show how Julian critiques the church's penitential system and offers an alternative form of confession and penance that holds the sinner accountable for sins while reassuring the penitent of God's love and forgiveness. Chapter three compares two fifteenth-century morality plays, <italic>Mankind<italic> and the <italic>Castle of Perseverance<italic>. Through a reading of the treatment of mercy in both plays, I suggest that the Castle's departures from traditional accounts of sacramental confession allow the author to explore the scope of God's mercy and experiment with the idea of universal salvation while still promoting orthodox instruction. I conclude this dissertation with Thomas Hoccleve's poem "Lerne to Die," one of the earliest treatments of the Ars moriendi theme. Examining some of the differences between sacramental confession and deathbed confession, I show how the absence of the sacrament in this dramatic account of unprepared death emphasizes the power of God's grace and limitations of human effort. However, Hoccleve ultimately reaffirms the necessity of final confession by the end of the poem.</p> / Dissertation

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2008. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-11, Section: A, page: 4325. Adviser: Karen L. Fresco. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 319-339) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2006. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-07, Section: A, page: 2565. Adviser: Marianne Kalinke. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 203-211) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

abstract: In 1999, Geneviève Hasenohr announced the discovery of a fragment of Marguerite Porete's Mirouer des Simples Ames, a work condemned by the Church at the University of Paris in 1310, hidden in a manuscript at the Bibliothèque municipale in Valenciennes. The fragment corresponds with roughly two chapters in the only extant French version of the manuscript (Chantilly, Musée Condé MS F XIV 26), and when compared with other editions of the Mirouer, it appears to be composed in what might have been Marguerite Porete's native dialect. The discovery changed scholars' perceptions of the weight of the various versions and translations - the Chantilly manuscript had been used previously to settle any questions of discrepancy, but now it appears that the Continental Latin and Middle English translations should be the arbiters. This discovery has elevated the Middle English editions, and has made the question of the translator's identity - he is known only by his initials M.N. - and background more imperative to an understanding of why a work with such a dubious history would be translated and harbored by English Carthusians in the century that followed its condemnation. The only candidate suggested for translator of the Mirouer has been Michael Northburgh (d. 1361), the Bishop of London and co-founder of the London Charterhouse, where two of the three remaining copies of the translation were once owned, but the language of the text and Northburgh's own position and interests do not fit this suggestion. My argument is that the content of the book, the method of its translation, its selection as a work for a Latin-illiterate audience, all fit within the interests of a circle of writers based in Yorkshire at the end of the fourteenth century. By beginning among the Yorkshire circle, and widening the search to include writers with a non-traditional contemplative audience, one that exists outside of the cloister - writers like Walter Hilton, the anonymous authors of the Cloud of Unknowing and the Chastising of God's Children, and Nicholas Love - we may have a better chance of locating and understanding the motives of the Middle English translator of the Mirouer. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. English 2011

Les romanciers des XIIe et XIIIe siècles dépeignent des protagonistes atteints par la maladie d’amour, une énigmatique pathologie qui figure également dans les traités de médecine. Par l’étude du motif narratif de la maladie d’amour nous nous interrogeons sur l’influence des textes médicaux sur la littérature romanesque médiévale. Dans les œuvres de notre corpus, deux types bien distincts de la maladie d’amour sont représentés : l’amour héroïque, potentiellement mortel, et la folie amoureuse, caractérisée par un comportement non civilisé. Curieuse ou spectaculaire, la pathologie implique une rupture avec les activités chevaleresques ou encore avec la courtoisie. La description analytique des causes, signes et cures de la maladie d’amour met en évidence les constituants invariants et les éléments facultatifs qui composent ce motif narratif. Présent dans les littératures antiques et étrangères, le motif soulève la question de la transmission des connaissances, tandis que l’intervention du personnage du médecin ou l’éducation des protagonistes conduisent à une réflexion sur la reconnaissance de la pathologie. Notre étude montre que les ouvrages médicaux ont exercé une influence limitée sur la représentation romanesque de la maladie d’amour, laquelle contribue à l’originalité de la littérature du Moyen Âge. / Novelists from the 12th and 13th centuries depict characters affected by lovesickness, an enigmatic illness that also appears in medical treatises. Our study of the narrative motif of lovesickness will lead us to wonder about the impact of medical texts on medieval fiction. Two different types of lovesickness are represented in the novels collected in our corpus : heroic love, which is potentially deadly, and love madness, charaterized by uncivilized behaviour. Whether strange or spectacular, the pathology implies breaking with chivalrous activities or even with courtliness. The analytic description of the causes, signs and treatments of lovesickness shows the recurring components and the optional elements that build this narrative motif. Used in ancient and foreign literatures, the motif raises the question of the handing down of knowledge, while the appearance of the character of the doctor and the protagonists’ education lead us to ponder on the recognition of this pathology. Our study shows that medical books have had a limited influence on the representation of lovesickness in fiction, which contributes to the originality of medieval literature.

In the wake of the recent wave of interest in the ties between Early Rus and the Latin world, this dissertation investigates conceptions and depictions of Latin Christians in Early Rusian texts. Unlike previous smaller-scale studies, the present study takes into consideration all indigenous Early Rusian narrative sources which make reference to Latins or the Latin world. Its contribution is twofold. Firstly, it overturns the still prevalent assumption that Early Rusian writers tended to portray Latins as religious Others. There was certainly a place in Early Rusian writing for religious polemic against the Latin faith, but as I show, this place was very restricted. Secondly, having established the considerable diversity and complexity of rhetorical approaches to Latins, this study analyses and explains rhetorical patterns in Early Rusian portrayals of Latins and Latin Christendom. Scholars have tended to interpret these patterns as primarily influenced by extra-textual factors (most often, a text’s time of composition). This study, however, establishes that textual factors—specifically genre and theme—are the best predictors of a text’s portrayal of Latins, and explains the appearance and evolution of particular generic and thematic representations. It also demonstrates that a text’s place of composition tends to have a greater influence on its depictions of Latins than its time of composition. Through close engagement with the subtleties and ambiguities of Early Rusian depictions of Latins, this study furthers contemporary debate on questions of narrative, identity and difference in Rus and the medieval world.

This PhD dissertation examines narrative in early Welsh and English poetry, and more particularly how, where, and why we find temporal progression and radiality in the poetic narrative of both literatures. The term ‘radiality’ is discussed by Joseph Clancy, who, in introducing his translations of medieval Welsh poems, describes them as generally having ‘“radial” structure, circling about, repeating, and elaborating the central theme’. In making this investigation, this PhD dissertation is informed by narrative theory, particularly the model proposed by William Labov, and it contains a detailed methodological section, highlighting how I adapt this model to make it work better with my corpus. The model is further developed so as to enable the creation of some statistical data, which is deployed alongside close reading in looking at trends over a corpus and between different corpora. My corpus consists on the one hand in all Welsh poems composed before c. 1250 with significant narrative elements or containing a list-like narrative. These are set in contrast with English poems composed before c. 1250 narrating the same subjects or containing the same stylistic features. Although the comparison is primarily between Welsh and English poetry, I also compare texts to their sources or analogues, primarily in Latin or French, as looking at how the poems depart from shared traditions is key in examining the particular tendencies of each literature. Following the model developed by Sarah Higley, the Welsh and English texts are contrasted with one another to highlight the idiosyncracies of both. In the first chapter, I examine the role temporal markers and direct speech play in the progression and radiality of early Welsh and English secular battle poetry. In most but not all cases, there is a clear opposition between extended and clearly marked narrative in the English and shorter narratives with less temporal deixis in the Welsh. Following this, Chapter 2 moves to the future to look at narrative at the End of Days, where markedly different patterns of contrast are found between the poems. I seek to explain why this is the case, looking in particular at the role of time-reference in determining narrativity. Chapter 3 begins with a detailed study of Iesu a Mair a’r Cynhaeaf Gwyrthiol (‘Jesus and Mary and the Miraculous Harvest’) and compares the way it tells its story with the narration found in its analogues, noting how and why this Welsh text has particularly clear, in some ways almost prose-like, narrative. The chapter then expands to compare narratives of Christ’s birth and early life in early Middle Welsh and Middle English poetry more generally, while investigating their relative absence in Old English. IChapter 4 moves away from thematic comparison to examine a particular structure: the list. Y Gofeiss6ys Byt, an early Welsh narrative poem in many ways exceptional, is studied in detail, and the way in which listing interacts with narrative in that text serves as a springboard for a wider discussion of list/narrative interplay in early Welsh and English poetry.

abstract: As a contribution to what has emerged categorically in medieval scholarship as gentry studies, this dissertation looks at the impact the development of obligatory taxation beyond customary dues and fees had on late medieval English society with particular emphasis given to the emergent view of the medieval subject as a commercial-legal entity. Focusing on Middle English popular romance and drawing on the tenets of practice theory, I demonstrate the merger of commerce and law as a point of identification in the process of meaning and value making for late medieval gentry society. The introductory chapter provides an overview of the historical development of taxation and the emergence of royal authority as an institutionalized form of public welfare, or a state. The second chapter examines the use of contractual language in Sir Amadace to highlight the presence of the state as an extra-legal authority able to enforce contractual agreements. The attention paid to the consequences of economic insolvency stage a gentry identity circumscribed by its position in a network of credit and debt that links the individual to neighbor, state, and God. The third chapter explores conservative responses to economic innovation during the period and the failure of the state to protect the proprietary rights of landowners in Sir Cleges. Specifically, the chapter examines the strain the gradual re-definition of land as a movable property put on the proprietary rights of landowners and challenged the traditional manorial organization of feudal society by subjecting large estates to morcellation in the commercial market. The fourth chapter examines the socioeconomic foundations of late medieval English sovereignty in Sir Gawain and the Carle of Carlisle. By dismissing the cultural fantasies of power and authority bound up in the Arthurian narrative, the author reveals the practical economic mechanisms of exchange that sustain and legitimize sociopolitical authority, resulting in a corporate vision of English society. Collectively, the analyses demonstrate the influence the socioeconomic circumstances of gentry society exerted on the production and consumption of Middle English popular romance and the importance of commerce, law, and taxation in the formation of a sense of self in late medieval England. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation English 2015

abstract: Anglo-Saxon women wielded a remarkable amount of power in the early English church. They founded some of the country’s most influential institutions, and modern Christians continue to venerate many of them as saints. Their path to canonization, however, was informal—especially compared to men and women who were canonized after Pope Gregory IX’s decree in 1234 that reserved those powers for the pope. Many of Anglo-Saxon England’s most popular saints exhibited behaviors that, had they been born later, would have disqualified them from canonization. This project examines how the problematic lives of St. Æthelthryth of Ely and St. Edith of Wilton were simultaneously doubted and adopted by post-Norman Christians. Specifically, it considers the flawed ways that the saints, petitioners, and their communities were simultaneously doubted and legitimized by late-medieval hagiographers. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation English 2018