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Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, Dept. of English, 1965. / [Typescript]. Includes bibliography.

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This study examines the description of characters' education in twelfth- and thirteenth-century French epic and romance with two broad aims: to establish how education is described, and to suggest reasons why it is portrayed in the particular way that it is. The discussion is divided into three parts. The first provides the contextual framework for the second two, and presents a brief overview of the history of education in the period, together with a survey of the theory and practice of education in school and at home. Critics and historians have noted the link between education and literature and we provide a model of contemporary educational background, theory and practice, against which literary descriptions may be compared and understood. In Part II we analyse these literary descriptions, hitherto not comprehensively explored. Taking a large corpus of works, we examine the content of characters' education, drawing comparisons across genre and timespan, and with the model from Part I. This, together with further examination of where poets draw their inspiration, what they choose to include and how it is presented, provides a context within which particular features, descriptions or texts may be discussed. Part III examines particularly interesting treatments of education. Five different studies of individual works or groups of texts illustrate the range of ways education may function, and help us to establish the status of the education description in Old French literature. We conclude that poets deliberately describe and exploit education in various ways. These range from delineation of character, where we see authors shaping the raw material of narrative for their own ends, to major thematic use, essential for understanding a text. Study of the theme of education reveals its contribution to and reflection of the importance of medieval education and its influence on vernacular literature.

Missing page 58. Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University / From the time of its first publication in 1864 interest in Pearl has steadily increased. In the late nineteenth century the poem, primarily because of its difficult dialect, was a scholar's curiosity. Today, thanks to carefully prepared editions, translations and critical studies by English, American, German, French, Italian, Frisian and Japanese scholars, Pearl has rightfully achieved international renown. A clearly discernible shift in critical attitudes accompanied this increase in interest. Early sentimental views of the poem and its author were gradually supplanted by more accurate historical and textual criticism with the result that recent critical opinion is of one mind in its emphasis upon multiple levels of meaning within the poem. This study also employs a combined historical-textual approach as it interprets Pearl by means of the medieval fourfold method. Beginning with a brief sketch of allegory in pre-Christian times, the origin and development of the fourfold system is chronologically defined and this definition, supplemented by textual criticism, supplies the basis for an understanding of the poem as a product of its time. After a review of previous Pearl scholarship the interpretation also demonstrates how the fourfold method provides a frame of reference in which previous divergent interpretations of the poem can be reconciled. [TRUNCATED]

The late Middles Ages saw the development in Europe of increasingly complex, ambitious, and self-conscious forms of creative literature. In the works of poets such as Dante, Petrarch and Chaucer new models of authorship and poetic identity were being explored, new kinds of philosophical and aesthetic value attributed to literary discourse. But these creative developments also brought with them new dangers and tensions, a sense of guilt and uncertainty about the value of creative literature, especially in relation to the dominant religious values of late medieval culture. In this thesis I explore how these doubts and tensions find expression in Chaucer’s poetry, not only as a negative, constraining influence, but also as something which contributes to the shape and meaning of poetry itself. I argue that as Chaucer develops his own expansive, questioning poetics in The House of Fame and The Canterbury Tales, he problematises the principle of allegory on which the legitimacy of literary discourse was primarily based in medieval culture and the final fragments of The Canterbury Tales see Chaucer struggling, increasingly, to reconcile the boldness and independence of his poetic vision with the demands of his faith. This struggle, which emerges most strongly and polemically in the final fragments, I argue, runs in subtle and creative forms throughout the whole of Chaucer’s work. By seeing Chaucer in this light as a poet not of fixed, but of conflicted and vacillating intentions – a poet productively caught drawn between ‘game’ and ‘earnest’, radical ironies and Boethian truths – I attempt to account, in a holistic manner, for the major dichotomies that characterise both his work and its critical reception.

This dissertation examines the evolution of poetic theory in English and Scottish writing between c.1470 and 1530. By examining important but neglected works by Stephen Hawes, Gavin Douglas, and Alexander Barclay, as well as influential poetry by Robert Henryson and John Skelton, it demonstrates that the contours and preoccupations of rhetorical poetics in England and Scotland emerged long before the appearance of such seminal works as Philip Sidney’s Apologie for Poetrie (c.1580) and George Puttenham’s Arte of English Poesie (1589). The poets at the heart of this dissertation did not assert their authority by writing rhetorical treatises or formal defences, but by critiquing their predecessors, by insulting their peers, and by showing an occasional disregard for the ‘gruntynge hogges’ of their audience. Some of them, such as Robert Henryson, praised the ‘polit termes of sweit rhetore’, while others, such as Gavin Douglas, argued that poetry was a source of ‘hie knawlage’ and profound philosophical truths. But their opponents claimed that ‘the knowlege of poetes’ simply ‘vanissheth awey’ when compared to that of the Bible. On the eve of the English Reformation this struggle for authority intensified, with at least one English writer declaring that ‘God maketh hys habitacion | In poetes’. Unlike previous scholarship, which attributes such idealism to emerging humanist influences, this dissertation argues that the early defenders of poetry in England and Scotland were motivated not by the transcendent idealism they frequently espoused, but by less noble impulses, such as bitterness, disillusionment, and the struggle for court favour. These writers sought to redefine the relationship between literature and the rest of life, and in the process, they formulated new reasons for their own importance as moral authorities in an increasingly unstable world.

Orientador: Marcos Antonio Siscar / Banca: Susanna Busato / Banca: Wilton José Marques / Resumo: Esse trabalho analisa a presença de ecos medievalizantes na poesia de Manuel Bandeira como exercício de aprendizagem poética. Para isso, selecionamos alguns poemas de Bandeira que possuem uma vinculação mais explícita com a lírica medieval, seja pela temática, seja pela forma, embora esses ecos perpassem por toda sua produção poética. A influência decisiva da poesia medieval portuguesa é apontada pelo próprio poeta em suas cartas, crônicas e na autobiografia intelectual Itinerário de Pasárgada e se manifestam de modo exemplar nos poemas analisados neste trabalho ("Cantiga de amor", de Mafuá do Malungo; "Canção das muitas Marias", de Opus 10; "Cantar de amor" e "Cossante", de Lira dos Cinquent'anos; "Solau do desamado", de Cinza das horas; e "Rimancete" e "Baladilha arcaica", de Carnaval). Cada um deles empreende uma relação diferente com o medieval, ora pela negação dos arquétipos da poesia antiga, ora pelo tom de homenagem. Enfatizando o modo como se realiza essa recuperação da poesia medieval, o trabalho dá destaque ao fato de que a poesia de Bandeira modula e problematiza os pressupostos de liberação do passado e do lusitanismo característicos do Modernismo de 1922. Esse gesto não se baseia em um espírito de continuidade, mas funciona como experimentação que permite a Bandeira se especializar e se singularizar dentro de um campo que destaca o caráter rítmico e profano da poesia. / Abstract: The aim of this work is to analyze the presence of medieval echoes in Manuel Bandeira‟s poetry as an exercise of poetic learning. To this end, some of Bandeira‟s poems which a more explicit connection with medieval lyrics either thematic or formal were selected, although these echoes can be identified throughout his poetic works. The crucial influence of Portuguese medieval poetry is pointed out by the poet himself in his personal letters, chronicles and intellectual autobiography named Itinerário de Pasárgada, and in an exemplary way in "Cantiga de amor"(Mafuá do Malungo); "Canção das muitas Marias" (Opus 10); "Cantar de amor" and "Cossante" (Lira dos Cinquent'anos); "Solau do desamado" (Cinza das horas); "Rimancete" and "Baladilha arcaica" (Carnaval), poems analyzed in this work. Each poem undertakes a different relationship with the medieval element, either by the denial of traditional poetry archetypes or by showing signs of respect. When emphasizing how this return of medieval poetry is realized, this work highlights the fact that Bandeira‟s poetry modulates and problematizes the presuppositions of rupture from (Luso-medieval) tradition, characteristics of Brazilian Modernism in 1922. The poet‟s attitude is not based on a spirit of continuity. It works as an experiment that allows Bandeira to have a specific and singular style within a field which emphasizes the rhythm and profanity of poetry. / Mestre

This study explores how four medieval poems—the Junius manuscript’s Genesis B and Christ and Satan and Geoffrey Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde and The Parliament of Fowls—engage with medieval conjugal rights through their depictions of agentive female protagonists. Although many laws at this time sought to suppress the rights of women, especially those of wives’, both pre- and post-conquest poets illustrate women who act as subjects, exercising legal rights. Medieval canon and common law supported a certain amount of female agency in marriage but was not consistent in its understanding of what that was. By considering the shifts in law from Anglo-Saxon and fourteenth century England in relation to wives’ rights and female consent, my project asserts that the authors of Genesis B and Christ and Satan and the late-medieval poet Chaucer position their heroines to defend legislation that supports female agency in matters of marriage. The Anglo-Saxon authors do so by conceiving of Eve’s role in the Fall and harrowing of hell as similar to the legal role of a forespeca. Through Eve’s mimesis of Satan’s rhetoric, she is able to reveal an alternate way of conceiving of the law as merciful instead of legalistic. Chaucer also engages with a woman’s position in society under the law through his representation of Criseyde’s role in her courtship with Troilus in his epic romance, Troilus and Criseyde. Chaucer disrupts his audiences’ expectations by placing Criseyde as the more agentive party in her courtship with Troilus and shows that women might hope to the most authority in marriage by withholding their consent. In his last dream vision, The Parliament of Fowls, Chaucer engages again with the importance of female consent in marriage but takes his interrogation of conjugal rights a step further by imagining an alternate legal system through Nature, a female authority who gives equal consideration to all classes and genders.