This dissertation considers the literary treatment of revenge in medieval England and Iceland. Vengeance and feud were an essential part of these cultures; far from the reckless, impulsive action that the word conjures up in modern minds, revenge was considered both a right and a duty and was legislated and regulated by social norms. It was an important tool for obtaining justice and protecting property, family, and reputation. Accordingly, many medieval literary works seem to accept revenge without question. Many, however, evince a great sensitivity to the ambiguities and paradoxes inherent in an act of revenge. In my study, I consider three works that are emblematic of this responsiveness to and indeed, anxiety about revenge. Chapter one focuses on the Old English poem Beowulf; chapter two moves on to discuss Chaucer’s Reeve’s Tale and Tale of Melibee from the Canterbury Tales; and chapter three examines the Old Icelandic family saga, Ljósvetninga saga. I focus in particular on the treatment of the avenger in each work. The poet or author of each work acknowledges the perspective of the avenger by allowing him to express his motivations, desires, and justifications for revenge in direct speech. Alongside this acknowledgement, however, is the author’s own reflection on the risks, rewards, and repercussions of the avenger’s intentions and actions. The resulting parallel but divergent narratives highlight the multiplicity of viewpoints found in any act of revenge or feud and reveal a fundamental ambivalence about the value, morality, and necessity of revenge. Each of the works I consider resists easy conclusions about revenge in its own context and remains incredibly current in the way it poses challenging questions about what constitutes injury, punishment, justice, and revenge in our own time.

This dissertation considers the literary treatment of revenge in medieval England and Iceland. Vengeance and feud were an essential part of these cultures; far from the reckless, impulsive action that the word conjures up in modern minds, revenge was considered both a right and a duty and was legislated and regulated by social norms. It was an important tool for obtaining justice and protecting property, family, and reputation. Accordingly, many medieval literary works seem to accept revenge without question. Many, however, evince a great sensitivity to the ambiguities and paradoxes inherent in an act of revenge. In my study, I consider three works that are emblematic of this responsiveness to and indeed, anxiety about revenge. Chapter one focuses on the Old English poem Beowulf; chapter two moves on to discuss Chaucer’s Reeve’s Tale and Tale of Melibee from the Canterbury Tales; and chapter three examines the Old Icelandic family saga, Ljósvetninga saga. I focus in particular on the treatment of the avenger in each work. The poet or author of each work acknowledges the perspective of the avenger by allowing him to express his motivations, desires, and justifications for revenge in direct speech. Alongside this acknowledgement, however, is the author’s own reflection on the risks, rewards, and repercussions of the avenger’s intentions and actions. The resulting parallel but divergent narratives highlight the multiplicity of viewpoints found in any act of revenge or feud and reveal a fundamental ambivalence about the value, morality, and necessity of revenge. Each of the works I consider resists easy conclusions about revenge in its own context and remains incredibly current in the way it poses challenging questions about what constitutes injury, punishment, justice, and revenge in our own time.

In Modern English, EACH OTHER and ONE ANOTHER are morphologically fixed as reciprocal compound pronouns. The reciprocal construction has been developed and used in every period of the English language. The main purpose of this study, nevertheless, was to investigate the ways to express the notion of reciprocity in Middle English and Early Modern English.The morphological analyses of the citations demonstrate that Middle English employed a great variety of head words and phrases than does Modern English in reciprocal structures. EACH, EITHER, EVERY, and ONE most frequently appear as head words of Middle English reciprocal construction, and OTHER usually occurs as a subsequent elements. OTHER, however, may also serve as the head word. Middle English also permits EACH MAN, ILLC MANN, EACH ONE, ILLC ONE, EVERY MAN, EVERY ONE, and THE ONE to function as head phrases. In Early Modem English, Malory employs various structures in his writings, but he prefers EITHER, EITHER OF (US, YOU, THEM) as the head of reciprocal patterns. Shakespeare, nevertheless, more frequently uses ONE as the head word.In Middle English, according to the data, the reciprocal sequence (EACH, EITHER, ONE) / OTHER stands in subject position in twenty examples between c. 1200 - c.1450. Rarely, however, do the pronouns function as a compound subject (subject / complement). The underlying structure of the sentence pattern SOV, nevertheless, is SVO. The need to rhyme, therefore, may cause the change of the word order in the period.(EACH, EITHER, EVERY, ONE, OTHER) may be compounded with the pronoun OTHER in forty examples between c. 1285 - c.1513, but the sequence most frequentlyoccur as direct / indirect object. (EACH, EITHER, EVERY, ONE, OTHER) + OTHER functions as object of preposition in four examples between c.1328 - c.1440.The modem usage of EACH OTHER as a compound object is established in Early Modern English learned, imaginative texts, and the use of ONE ANOTHER as the compound direct object and object of preposition are being established in that period.Since the rules for compounding reciprocal pronouns and for their morpho-syntatic features were not restrictly established before the time of Shakespeare, OTHER could function as an uninflected, separable pronoun in Middle English. In position except modification. the development of OTHER as a nominal occured after Middle English except where the head word is ONE. In Modem English, OTHER must be used as a nominal if the reciprocal pronouns are not compounded. / Department of English

Four Middle English Charlemagne Romances are examined with the intention of disproving conventional claims that English romances of the 'Matter of France' are typically undistinguished. The manuscript of the Ashmole Sir Ferumbras is a holograph; preserved with it, on sheets which originally formed the binding, is a portion of the poem's rough draft. Comparison of the draft with the fair copy reveals something of the romancer's translational and compositional method, and illustrates well his enthusiasm for, and ability occasionally to improve upon, his French source. The fragment of The Song of Roland displays some sensitivity to the heroic essence of its famous French model. The poem also displays, however, a free, sensitive, sometimes eloquent and technically complex, adaptation of notable features of that model. The Sege of Melayne has been recognized for its energy; but extensive studies of the poem appear to have been prevented by an inability to account for the poem's lack of known sources and its use of extraordinary episodes and unusual narrative techniques. Analogues and possible influences do, however, exist; and most reveal the poem's remarkable affinity with propagandistic crusading literature. This affinity goes some way toward explaining, and allowing us to appreciate, the poem's unusual features. Rauf Coilyear is unusually described as a competent and straightforwardly humorous tale similar in spirit to its analogues. A closer look, however, shows the humour to be complicated by the seriousness of a social critique; at times the hero's experiences is far from laughable. There is, in fact, some similarity, both of incident and theme, with the best poems of the 'Gawain-group'. That a comparison with such poems (and, indeed, with 'serious' elements in the other Charlemagne romances) can convincingly be made suggests that our expectations of the poem's literary significance should be revised accordingly.

This thesis reveals the considerable influence of contemplation (sometimes referred to as mysticism) on Anglo-Saxon literature, manifested through the arrangement of narratives according to the theological concepts of apophasis and kenosis. This is demonstrated through a lengthy contextual discussion of the place of contemplation in Anglo-Saxon spirituality, and close analysis of four poems and a prose text. Although English mysticism is commonly thought to start in the High Middle Ages, this thesis will suggest that this terminus post quem should instead be resituated to the Anglo-Saxon period. The first chapter seeks to reveal the centrality of contemplation to Anglo-Saxon spirituality through analysing a range of diverse material, to evidence the monastic reader borne from this culture capable of reading and composing the texts that make up the rest of the thesis in the manner suggested. The thesis places chronologically diverse Anglo-Saxon texts in a contemplative context, with close reference to theology, phenomenology, and narrative structure, to suggest that our interpretation of them should be revised to apprehend the contemplative scheme that they advocate: to cleanse the reader of sin through inspiring penitence and kenosis (humility and emptying of one's will) and direct the mind intellectually beyond the words, images and knowledge of the terrestrial sphere (apophasis), so as to prepare them for the potential coming of God's grace in the form of a vision. This reading is supported by the close taxonomical resemblance of each text's narrative structure. The thesis thus suggests that contemplation was central to Anglo-Saxon spirituality, producing an elite contemplative audience for whom certain texts were designed as preparative apparatus.

This thesis examines suffixation in Middle English in the periods 1200-1299 and 1300-1399. More specifically, the work is focussed on nominal coinages of native origin only, formed with the suffixes -ness, -head / -hood, -ship and -dom, where the aim is to observe their productivity in time. In the theoretical part, we explore the contribution of external (socio-political) and internal (typological and word-formational) factors to changes in the English language, including word-formation processes. Our hypothesis is that suffixation as a word-formation process will continue strongly, despite the ongoing language-internal changes and the overwhelming influx of foreign words. Data for this research was collected from The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) through Advance Search. The data retrieved for each suffix was considered from a morphological, structural and lexico-semantic perspective. The analyses were performed to detect changes in the behaviour of each suffix and to discover the realities attesting their productivity. Moreover, the analyses uncovered additional phenomena: types that had only one quotation (hapaxes) and competition occurring between the selected suffixes. The hapaxes were also investigated for their morphological, structural and semantic features so as to identify any common...

Le but de cette thèse est de mettre en évidence, au-delà des spécificités propres à chaque poème, les caractéristiques communes aux emplois du discours direct dans la poésie narrative vieil-anglaise. À cet effet, un groupe de huit textes a été choisi, représentant au mieux la variété du corpus poétique subsistant, tant par leur sujet que par leur style ou leur rapport éventuel à une source connue : Beowulf, la Genèse A et B, Christ et Satan, Andreas, Elene, Juliana et Guthlac A. Il ne s'agit pas ici simplement d'étudier la forme prise par le discours direct, mais aussi ce que cette forme révèle sur la conception que les poètes se faisaient de la parole et de la place de sa représentation dans le récit.La première partie de la thèse cherche à déterminer si les caractéristiques traditionnellement reconnues au discours direct en poésie vieil-anglaise - un goût pour la solennité au détriment de la caractérisation des personnages et du progrès de l'action - sont fondées et si elles concernent également tous les poèmes du corpus.La seconde partie s'intéresse à la nature des voix représentées au discours direct : dans quelle mesure elles permettent d'exprimer une subjectivité (et quel type de subjectivité) et quel est leur statut par rapport à la voix du narrateur.Les résultats indiquent que dans la poésie narrative vieil-anglaise, le discours direct n'est pas conçu comme un objet fondamentalement distinct du récit, ou comme l'expression d'une voix et d'un point de vue autre au sein de la voix du narrateur. Le discours direct apparaît comme une modalité actualisée du récit, un procédé dramatique et didactique qui adopte le même vocabulaire et le même point de vue que le récit. / The aim of this work is to identify the shared characteristics of direct speech in Old English narrative poetry, beyond the specificities of each text. So as to best reflect the diversity of the extant poetic corpus (in terms of topic, style or source), eight texts were selected for this study: Beowulf, Genesis A and B, Christ and Satan, Andreas, Elene, Juliana and Guthlac A. The aim of this thesis is not only to examine the form of direct speech, but also what it reveals concerning how poets viewed speech and the place of its representation in narrative.The first section of the thesis tries to determine whether the characteristics traditionally attributed to direct speech in Old English poetry - a taste for formality to the detriment of characterization and the progress of action - are valid and whether they are equally represented in all poems.The second section is concerned with the nature of the voices represented through direct speech: to what extent they express a form of subjectivity (and what type of subjectivity) and what their status is, compared with the narrator's voice.Results show that, in Old English narrative poetry, direct speech is not conceived of as an object radically distinct from narrative, or as the expression of another voice and point of view within the narrative voice. Direct speech appears as an actualized form of narrative, a dramatic and didactic device, using the same vocabulary and the same point of view as the narrative.

This paper is concerned with an investigation of four Old English adverbials with respect to where they are base-generated within the substructure of clauses which serve as examples of Old English prose. There are three structures in which base-generation of clausal constituents is deemed to occur: the CP, the IP, and the VP. Function and derivational movement are the governing factors which regulate the possibility of base-generation occurring within a particular structure. The movements undergone by clausal constituents, from their places of origin within the ‘underlying structures’ to their syntactic realization in the ‘surface structures’ of Old English clauses, are founded upon the model outlined in Johannesson (2009a) which is based on the tenets of Government and Binding theory. As there are no native speakers of Old English, the functions of these adverbials within their clausal environments are determined by their Modern English interpretations. Due to time and space constraints, four Old English adverbials were analysed within the context of one-hundred and twenty clauses which were extracted from The Dictionary of Old English Corpus (2004). Cases deemed to be ambiguous are addressed and classified separately; only one such case was encountered in the course of this study. The results should exhibit proof that base-generation of the four Old English conjunct and disjunct adverbials investigated occurs within one of the aforementioned structures. Note that any conclusions drawn are based upon Modern English translations and that the results pertain to the genre of Old English prose.

This small study concerns occurrences of metaphor, metonymy and conceptual metaphor in the Old English poem Beowulf. The first 224 lines of Beowulf were searched for non-literal passages. Thefound passages were sorted into the groups conventionalized metaphor, metonymy and innovativemetaphor. The conceptual metaphors were in turn sorted into target domains and source domains and grouped within the domains. These were then compared to Modern English and Modern Swedish metaphors and conceptual metaphors with the help of dictionaries and corpus studies. Beowulf was also looked at as a small corpus. Words which were suspected to be used inmetaphorical senses were searched for in the full text and the results were examined and comparedwith modern language usage. It was found evident that Old English and Modern English, as well as Modern Swedish, have many conceptual metaphors in common both when in comes to experiential metaphors and culturally grounded metaphors.

Tradition in the study of Beowulf has held that the discussion between Beowulf and Unferth regarding Beowulf’s victory over Breca concerns a swimming competition. However, some scholars have suggested that this section refers to a rowing or sailing adventure, due to some ambiguity in the language of the passage. Linguistic evidence for the rowing interpretation, mostly from the 1970's, is well-known but has been neither accepted by editors nor effectively countered by subsequent scholarship. By applying literary, dramatic and cultural theoretical principles to the two alternative explanations it became apparent that the rowing interpretation of the Breca episode is more appropriate within the literary and social context of Beowulf. This more-or-less ambiguous episode has been modified to fit Beowulf into a folk-tale ethos in which scholarship no longer admits it has a place. This nineteenth-century interpretation has now passed out of favour, but recent scholarship has remained committed a traditional interpretation of the Breca episode which now is clearly incongruous.