<p>This study argues that Chaucer's poetry belongs to a far-reaching conversation about the forms of consolation (philosophical, theological, and poetic) that are available to human persons. Chaucer's entry point to this conversation was Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, a sixth-century dialogue that tried to show how the Stoic ideals of autonomy and self-possession are not simply normative for human beings but remain within the grasp of every individual. Drawing on biblical commentary, consolation literature, and political theory, this study contends that Chaucer's interrogation of the moral and intellectual ideals of the Consolation took the form of philosophical disconsolations: scenes of profound poetic rupture in which a character, sometimes even Chaucer himself, turns to philosophy for solace and yet fails to be consoled. Indeed, philosophy itself becomes a source of despair. In staging these disconsolations, I contend that Chaucer asks his readers to consider the moral dimensions of the aspirations internal to ancient philosophy and the assumptions about the self that must be true if its insights are to console and instruct. For Chaucer, the self must be seen as a gift that flowers through reciprocity (both human and divine) and not as an object to be disciplined and regulated.</p><p>Chapter one focuses on the Consolation of Philosophy. I argue that recent attempts to characterize Chaucer's relationship to this text as skeptical fail to engage the Consolation on its own terms. The allegory of Lady Philosophy's revelation to a disconsolate Boethius enables philosophy to become both an agent and an object of inquiry. I argue that Boethius's initial skepticism about the pretentions of philosophy is in part what Philosophy's therapies are meant to respond to. The pressures that Chaucer's poetry exerts on the ideals of autonomy and self-possession sharpen one of the major absences of the Consolation: viz., the unanswered question of whether Philosophy's therapies have actually consoled Boethius. Chapter two considers one of the Consolation's fascinating and paradoxical afterlives: Robert Holcot's Postilla super librum sapientiae (1340-43). I argue that Holcot's Stoic conception of wisdom, a conception he explicitly links with Boethius's Consolation, relies on a model of agency that is strikingly similar to the powers of self-knowledge that Philosophy argues Boethius to posses. Chapter three examines Chaucer's fullest exploration of the Boethian model of selfhood and his ultimate rejection of it in Troilus and Criseyde. The poem, which Chaucer called his "tragedy," belonged to a genre of classical writing he knew of only from Philosophy's brief mention of it in the Consolation. Chaucer appropriates the genre to explore and recover mourning as a meaningful act. In Chapter four, I turn to Dante and the House of Fame to consider Chaucer's self-reflections about his ambitions as a poet and the demands of truth-telling.</p> / Dissertation

<p>This dissertation identifies Cicero's <italic>Consolatio</italic>, Seneca's <italic>Ad Polybium de consolatione</italic>, and Boethius' <italic>De consolatione Philosophiae</italic> as self-consolations, in which these Roman authors employ philosophical argument and literary art, in order to provide a therapy for their own crippling experience of grief. This therapeutic discourse unfolds between two contradictory conditions, though, since the philosophers must possess the self-mastery and self-possession that qualifies the consoler to perform his task felicitously, and they must lack those very same qualifications, insofar as their experience of loss has exposed their dependence upon others and they thus require consolation. Foucault's theoretical treatment of ancient philosophical discourse is supplemented by Lacanian critical theory and the political theology of Giorgio Agamben to perform analyses of the consolatory texts and their political context. These analyses reveal that self-consolation overcomes the contradictory conditions that found this discourse through literary and rhetorical artifice. But this resolution then places the apparent completeness of the philosophical argument in doubt, as the consoled authors in each case finally call for a decisive action that would join philosophical reflection to the merely human world that philosophy would have these consolers leave behind. Each author's self-consolation therefore demonstrates a split allegiance to the Roman political community and to a Socratic philosophical heritage that advocates for withdrawal from politics.</p> / Dissertation

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

(in English): Intimacy and solitude in Chrétien de Troyes' works and in the Czech courtly romance The thesis studies some literary images of interiority, profound emotions and thougts, solitude and the need for privacy as these are depicted in the romances of Chrétien de Troyes and in the works of his continuators (namely those connected with the Tristan romances). They are interpreted as an expression of the medieval poets' effort to influence their public, to cultivate and to present some interesting subjects and important questions in the guise of a fictional story. There are striking descriptions of the unbalance between solitude and social duties, positive or negative evaluation of human solitude (always depending on the narrator's intention), or symbolical objects from the intimate sphere used as manifest means of political representation. Martin Šorm

This thesis is devoted to Guillaume de Machaut and his writings that depict the poet's views on the ideal monarch, and his memories of John of Luxembourg. In the opening chapters of this thesis the author presents a brief biography of Guillaume de Machaut, his literary work and historical context that influenced the poet's thinking. The thesis also examines Machaut's idea of an ideal ruler, mainly contained in his essay Comfort for a Friend. The last part of this thesis is devoted to John of Luxembourg. The author deals with the reasons that led to the fact that John of Luxembourg became in the Machaut's work the embodiment of the ideal ruler. She also compares the Machaut's representation of the Czech King with predominantly negative perception in Czech chronicles of 14th century. Machaut's testimony of the Czech King helps to understand the John's popularity in Western Europe and the divergence between Czech a French concept of ideal ruler.

L’étude explore les différentes composantes, anthropologiques aussi bien que littéraires, du rapport entre l’émotion du public et l’émotion des personnages. Cette problématique est au cœur du fonctionnement des chansons de geste qui reposent sur un paradoxe : susciter la peur par la description de faits violents et de protagonistes terrifiants, tout en célébrant l’intrépidité de leurs héros. La distance entre le public et les personnages relève en partie de raisons idéologiques : la représentation de figures inquiétantes cristallise l’angoisse collective sur des cibles désignées par les institutions dominantes, tandis que le déni de la peur par les héros participe à la construction d’une image idéalisée de la chevalerie. Par ailleurs, au-delà du lien entre les œuvres et leur contexte historique, la recherche d’un effet de peur procède d’une poétique spécifique. Ce sentiment soude l’auditoire dans l’inquiétude et dans l’admiration, permettant l’exaltation épique et la glorification du courage héroïque. La sublimation de la peur tient à une esthétique de la terreur qui transforme les motifs effrayants en objet de contemplation et la répulsion en attraction. Grâce à cette transfiguration du réel, le public peut opérer un transfert psychique qui confère aux textes une dimension cathartique. Les actions des héros impavides jouent ainsi le rôle d’exutoire pour les pulsions refoulées, et les poèmes contribuent à conjurer l’anxiété liée aux tensions et aux crises de la société féodale. / This work explores the various components, from an anthropological as well as a literary point of view, of the relationship between the emotions of the public and the emotions of the characters. This problem is at the heart of epic texts, which are based on a paradox: to create fear through the depiction of violent events and frightening characters, while celebrating the fearlessness of their heroes. The distance between the audience and the heroes is due to ideological reasons: on the one hand, the representation of disturbing figures crystallizes collective dread on targets designated by the dominant institutions, on the other hand, the heroes’s denial of fear by heroes allows the construction of an idealized image of chivalry. Moreover, beyond the link between the texts and their historical context, the search for a fear effect proceeds from a specific poetics. This emotion enables the epic exaltation and glorification of the hero’s courage by bringing the audience together in the same feelings of worry and admiration. The sublimation of fear depends on an aesthetics of terror which turns the reasons for fear into an object of contemplation and the attraction into repulsion. With this transfiguration of reality, the audience can make a psychic transfer which gives the texts a cathartic dimension. The feats of intrepid heroes are an outlet for repressed instincts, and the poems help to exorcise the dread related to tensions and to the crisis of feudal society.

This study offers a narrative comparison of A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman and A Revelation of Love, the two texts created by the first known English woman writer, Julian of Norwich (c. 1343 – c. 1416). It focuses Julian as a storyteller rather than as a theologian, mystic or visionary, concentrating particular on her narrative strategies, that is, on the strategic use of formal narrative features and the changes in these between Vision and Revelation. This dissertation therefore examines Vision and Revelation in terms of three narrative features: plot, characterization and perspective or point of view (termed ‘focalization’ here). These three narrative features are brought into dialogue with Julian’s theology. Three analytical angles help shed more light on Julian’s innovative use of these structures in her works: modern narratology, Middle English literary theory and practice, and the texts’ own literary concepts and self-referential comments. Two central narratological methods are used throughout. The first is to make a distinction between narrator Julian, who tells about the events, and character Julian, who experiences the events. The second is distinguishing several hermeneutic layers or levels of signification in a narrative. Following narratologist Mieke Bal, this discussion distinguishes between fabula (the raw material), story (the content of the text) and text (the linguistic construct). On the basis of this exploration, this study argues that Revelation includes, expands and transforms the narrative structures of Vision, and thereby consciously draws more attention to the structures themselves. At the same time, however, within Revelation a similar narrative reshaping can be seen as between Vision and Revelation. That is, Revelation reshapes its own new narrative structures, in order to hint at God’s greater structure and envelop its own in His. This greatest structure, however, is only glimpsed. As regards these narrative structures, this study argues that linear finite narrative desire driving the plot of Vision is taken up into an endless, greater narrative desire in Revelation, creating a circular plot. At the same time, narrator Julian constructs an omnitemporal, non-sequential plot. Moreover, this analysis shows that the focalization already found in Vision is made more demonstrative in Revelation, while the narrator directs this gaze more towards the apophatic and what is always hidden. Finally, this study explores how many of the characters from Vision are made twofold in Revelation, while Revelation at the same time foreshadows the union this doubleness will achieve at the end of time. Revelation, in short, utilizes Vision’s structures and its own to implode structure.  Julian’s poetics thus is one of continuous developing and enveloping, which allows her to depict God, herself and the reader as characters in each other’s narratives and as participating in each other’s storytelling: she authorizes her own story by making it God’s and the reader’s as well. This more conscious structuring and simultaneous reshaping of the new structure in Revelation forms Julian’s most innovative narrative strategy and the most striking interaction between her art and theology: narrator Julian depicts her own storytelling as simultaneously participating in that of God and foreshadowing God’s ultimate storytelling at the end of time.

The mythology of migration is deeply integral to the medieval Germanic societies peopling Northern Europe and the island nations of the North Sea. Anglo-Saxon and Icelandic society construct their identities through a memory of migration that takes places within a frontier that is mythic and historical in scope. By surveying eco-critical components of Anglo-Saxon poems such as “The Wife’s Lament” and “The Husband’s Message” alongside the Icelandic sagas Egil’s saga and The Vinland sagas, a shared tradition of the frontier ideal is revealed.

No ano de 1392, João d\'Arras começa a escrever um romance a pedido de um poderoso príncipe francês e conhecido mecenas da época: o duque João de Berry. Essa obra descreve a fundação de uma fortaleza e conta as aventuras da linhagem que lá se originou: os Lusignan. No entanto, aquela não era uma história de pessoas comuns. Os Lusignan eram descendentes da fada Melusina que todos os sábados se transformava em serpente da cintura para baixo. Mas Romance de Melusina ou a História dos Lusignan não deve ser interpretado tendo em vista apenas o aspecto surpreendente da história narrada. O interesse do duque de Berry em encomendar uma narrativa dessa natureza é de importância fundamental para que se compreenda o motivo pelo qual se elaborou uma narrativa sobre uma linhagem, cujos descendentes já haviam se extinguido na França. O objetivo desse trabalho é a análise do Romance de Melusina, sob o ponto de vista histórico, levando em conta a especificidade desse gênero narrativo e as estratégias textuais do autor na construção dessa história. Nela são marcantes as idéias de linhagem, pecado e penitência e a forma como são evocadas para ligar os Lusignan a sua ancestral mítica, Melusina. Algumas questões como a justiça, a guerra e as Cruzadas estão presentes nesse romance tendo relação com o contexto de sua elaboração. / In the year of 1392, João D\'Arras starts to write a romance at request of a powerful prince and known patron of the period: the duke of Berry. That work describes the foundation of a fortress and tells the adventures of a lineage that there originated itself: the Lusignan. However, that was not a story of ordinary people. The Lusignan were the descendant of the fairy Melusina that, every Saturday, turned into a serpent from her waist to below. The Romance of Melusina or the History of the Lusignan must not be interpreted only by having in mind the surprising aspect of the story narrated. The interest of the Duke of Berry in ordering a narrative of that nature is of fundamental importance so that can be understood the motivation behind the creation of a story about a lineage that had already been extinguished in France. The purpose of this work is the analysis of the Romance of Melusina under the historical perspective, taking in consideration the particularity of its narrative type and the author\'s textual strategies in the production of that story. In the romance are quite notable the ideas of lineage, sin, and penitence and the way they are evoked to connect the Lusignan to their mythical ancestor, Melusina. Some questions such as justice, war and the Crusades that are noticed in the Romance of Melusina have an important connection with the context of its creation.

A traição é um tema que temos estudado já faz algum tempo, utilizando como fontes as Canções de Gesta, um gênero literário poético corrente nas regiões que compunham o reino da França, entre o século XI e o século XV. O período áureo dessa poesia coincidiu com o governo da dinastia conhecida como dos Capetos diretos, cujo reinado e sucessão de pai para filho persistiu sem interrupção de 987 até 1328. Criadas e difundidas nos diversos senhorios territoriais da França, em especial no norte do reino, as Canções de Gesta tratavam em seus enredos de vários problemas de ordem moral e política vigentes na época. Em uma sociedade cuja coesão, ao menos na sua camada governante, era baseada na fidelidade e na criação de laços vassálicos, a traição constituía uma grave ameaça à estabilidade e à paz. Tanto a moral cristã quanto a moral cavaleiresca condenavam quem a praticasse, mas isso não evitou a sua constante ocorrência. Estudamos cinco poemas épicos: a Chanson de Roland (c. 1100), o Girart de Vienne (1180-1185), o Renaut de Montauban (início do século XIII), o Gaydon (1230- 1240) e o Jehan de Lançon (metade do século XIII). O Roland, sendo o mais antigo desses poemas, apresenta um monarca respeitado e difere dos poemas posteriores, cujos enredos valorizam os personagens conhecidos desde o século XIX como Vassalos Rebeldes. Da análise da traição nessa poesia e da relação entre vassalos e o rei pudemos extrair alguns pontos importantes. De início o ligado à questão vocabular, pois traïson / traïtre / traïr designam um dos mais graves crimes ali descritos, graças a sua ligação com a tradição neotestamentária da entrega de Jesus por Judas Iscariotis, suplantando outros termos de origem latina ou não (proditio, felonie). Nas Canções, a traição é dirigida primeiramente contra os barões e cavaleiros sendo os seus executores da mesma condição social de suas vítimas. Só tardiamente ela denomina um atentado contra o monarca. Outro ponto é a defesa, nos poemas, do direito à guerra ao senhor caso este não cumprisse suas obrigações de justiça para com seu vassalo. Assim, os heróis em luta contra Carlos Magno não eram mostrados pelo poeta como traidores e sim como vítimas de uma perseguição. Esses cavaleiros conservavam o respeito pelo seu senhor e aspiravam ser perdoados e reintegrados à corte régia. A responsabilidade pelas traições era direcionada para uma linhagem específica, a de Ganelon, responsável pelo desastre de Roncesvales na Chanson de Roland. Mas se aqui a traição fora um crime individual, desde fim do século XII há um trabalho de readaptação no qual o fato de se pertencer a essa família já tornava o personagem passível de ser um traidor. As suas traições podiam ir da falsa acusação até ao envenenamento de outros personagens. A prova da traição se dava frequentemente através do duelo judicial e os culpados, além de condenados à morte, podiam ter os corpos destruídos para evitar a ressurreição no final dos tempos. / Treason is a theme that we have been studying for some time, using as sources the Songs of Geste, a poetic genre current in the regions that made up the Frances kingdom, between the eleventh and the fifteenth centuries. That poetrys golden period coincided as the dynasty of government known as the \"direct Capetian\" which reign and father to son succession persisted without interruption from 987 to 1328. Created and disseminated in the various Frances territorial manorials, especially in the northern kingdom, the Songs of Geste treated in their plots of various problems of moral and political force at that time. In a society whose cohesion, at least in its ruling layer, was based on loyalty and creating vassalian ties, treason constituted a serious threat to stability and peace. Both Christian morality as the moral chivalry condemned those who practiced it, but that did not stop their constant occurrence. We studied five epic poems: the Chanson de Roland (C1100), the Girart de Vienne (1180-1185), the Renaut de Montauban (early thirteenth century), the Gaydon (1230-1240) and Jehan de Lançon (half of the century XIII). Roland, is the oldest of those poems, has a respected monarch, and differs from the later poems whose plots value the characters known since the nineteenth century as \"Vassals Rebels\". From the analysis of treason in this poetry and the relationship between vassals and the king, we could draw some important points. Initially the connected to the vocabulary question because traïson / traître / traïr designate one of the most serious crimes described there, thanks to its connection with the neo testamentary tradition of Jesus delivery by Judas Iscariot, supplanting other terms Latin or not (proditio, felonie). In Chansons, the treason is primarily directed against the barons and knights and the executors are of the same social condition of their victims. Only belatedly it calls an attack against the monarch. Another point is the defense, in the poems, from the right to the war to the lord if he does not achieve his justices obligations to his vassal. Thus, the heroes in the fight against Charlemagne were not shown by the poet as traitors but as victims of persecution. Those knights keep respect for their master and aspire to be forgiven and reintegrated to the royal court. Responsibility for treason is directed to a specific lineage, that of Ganelon, responsible for Roncesvales disaster in the Chanson de Roland. But if here the treason was an individual crime, since the end of the twelfth century there is a readjustment work in which the fact of belonging to that family already makes the character capable of being a traitor. Their treasons can go from false accusation to the poisoning of other characters. The proof of treason is often done through the judicial duel and the guilty, beyond sentenced to death, they might have their bodies destroyed to prevent the resurrection at the end of time.