New Perspectives on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Patience
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University of Calgary PRISM: University of Calgary's Digital Repository Graduate Studies The Vault: Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2015-01-23 Conquest, Identity, and Colonial Discourse in Medieval England: New Perspectives on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Patience Carter, Jaclyn Carter, J. (2015). Conquest, Identity, and Colonial Discourse in Medieval England: New Perspectives on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Patience (Unpublished master's thesis). University of Calgary, Calgary, AB. doi:10.11575/PRISM/25421 http://hdl.handle.net/11023/2022 master thesis University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission. Downloaded from PRISM: https://prism.ucalgary.ca UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY Conquest, Identity, and Colonial Discourse in Medieval England: New Perspectives on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Patience by Jaclyn Carter A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS GRADUATE PROGRAM IN ENGLISH CALGARY, ALBERTA JANUARY, 2015 © Jaclyn Carter 2015 Abstract Recent scholarship has introduced the possibility of literary analysis of medieval texts from the perspective of contemporary postcolonial theory. Although a burgeoning field in medieval studies, postcolonial medieval studies has been met with significant opposition from those scholars who feel it does a disservice to contemporary postcolonial studies and the events that warranted that field’s creation. Nevertheless, aspects of conquest and foreign estrangement, and the building of a national identity through political rhetoric and literary output, while illuminated by a postcolonial perspective, were just as present in medieval England as they were in recent times—for example in the colonial occupation of Wales. Using prominent theorists such as Stuart Hall and Homi Bhabha, and their theories of diaspora and hybridity, mimicry, and ambivalence respectively, this investigation analyses Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Patience—two poems written in the late fourteenth century in the Welsh Marches—with postcolonial reading strategies. ii Acknowledgements I wish to thank the following individuals for their support and individual contributions to the overall success of this project: 1. My thesis supervisor, Dr. Murray McGillivray, for his endless encouragement, constructive criticism, and seemingly blind faith in my abilities. I am a better writer and thinker as a result of his guidance. 2. My thesis defense committee, Dr. Jacqueline Jenkins and Dr. Ken McMillan, for taking time out of their own busy schedules to support and improve this project. 3. The Department of English at the University of Calgary and the Government of Alberta, for their financial support. 4. My parents, Monty and Linda Carter, and my siblings Lisa and Michael, for putting up with my endless anxiety and weeping as I moved towards the completion of this project. For all the loads of laundry they washed, and for all the tuition fees and dinner bills they footed on my behalf—I thank them. iii Dedication For Dr. Kenna Olsen. I never would have made it this far if not for your unfailing faith in me. Thank you. iv Table of Contents Abstract...................................................................................................................................ii Acknowledgements................................................................................................................iii Dedication..............................................................................................................................iv Table of Contents....................................................................................................................v Chapter 1: Introduction.......................................................................................................1 1.1 Applying Postcolonial Theory to Medieval Literature: Current Trends......................2 1.2 The Cotton Nero A.x. Manuscript and the Gawain-Poet...........................................12 1.3 Research Methodology...............................................................................................14 Chapter 2: Historical Context............................................................................................19 2.1 Early Anglo-Norman-Welsh Relations......................................................................22 2.2 Colonizing Wales.......................................................................................................31 2.3 Welsh Identity............................................................................................................38 Concluding Remarks........................................................................................................41 Chapter 3: Contemporary Postcolonial Theory...............................................................44 3.1 The Modern Postcolonial...........................................................................................51 3.2 Diaspora.....................................................................................................................56 3.3 Hybridity……………………………………………………………………………61 3.5 Mimicry and Ambivalence…......…………………………………………………...65 3.4 Concluding Remarks..................................................................................................69 Chapter 4: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight....................................................................73 4.1 Previous Scholarship..................................................................................................74 4.2 Diaspora.....................................................................................................................80 4.3 Hybridity, Ambivalence, and Mimicry......................................................................92 v 4.3 Concluding Remarks................................................................................................102 Chapter 5: Patience...........................................................................................................105 5.1 Diaspora...................................................................................................................113 5.2 Hybridity, Ambivalence, and Mimicry...................................................................120 5.3 Concluding Remarks................................................................................................125 Chapter 6: Conclusion......................................................................................................127 Works Cited........................................................................................................................133 vi Chapter 1: Introduction Patricia Clare Ingham has said, “empires need to tell the stories of their pasts” (61). England proves no exception to this need. Marked in postcolonial studies as the ultimate colonizing force, England took advantage of its superiority in the eighteenth through twentieth centuries when the rest of the world was still one step behind, and conducted unforgiving economic and imperial expansion in countries with little to no power to resist. The irreparable damage to the colonized psyche is permanent, and the field of contemporary postcolonial studies is rich with voices of resistance and rebellion, however subdued. Yet while the lines between England and its modern colonies have already been permanently etched into history, what consideration should be given to England’s premodern expansionist projects? When a colony was set up in a neighbouring nation, as in the colonies premodern England established in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, rather than in a foreign country separated from England by vast expanses of water, as was the case with Canada or the Caribbean in the eighteenth through twentieth centuries, is the significance of these smaller-scale colonial projects somehow diminished? Postcolonial theory’s emergence is marked by an overwhelming desire for a return to what has been lost, for the recovery of an identity erased, and for entire cultures of forgotten traditions to be recaptured. But if we consider postcolonial studies only as it exists in the modern and postmodern context, emerging as a practice in the twentieth century, we are missing a substantial portion of the history that came before this. That earlier history was characterized by similar colonial practices, and was perhaps different only in terms of the scale of those practices and their impact. Until Ingham claimed in 2001, “postcolonial studies share with medieval studies a poignant concern for things fading away, and a desire to respond to loss” (69), the possibility of ties between medieval 1 episodes of colonization and medieval literature was largely overlooked. However, as Ingham points out, colonization was an active practice in the late fourteenth century, and several of the effects that these practices induced are reflected in such Middle English works as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Patience. 1.1 Applying Postcolonial Theory to Medieval Literature: Current Trends Scholarship pertaining to medieval literature has, in recent decades, been strongly influenced by the still up-and-coming idea