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HUNTER-DISSERTATION.Pdf Copyright by Brooke Marie Hunter 2010 The Dissertation Committee for Brooke Marie Hunter Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Chaucer‟s Poetry and the New Boethianism Committee: ___________________________________ Elizabeth Scala, Co-Supervisor ___________________________________ Marjorie Curry Woods, Co-Supervisor ___________________________________ Patricia Clare Ingham ___________________________________ Daniel Birkholz ___________________________________ Thomas Cable Chaucer‟s Poetry and the New Boethianism by Brooke Marie Hunter, B.A.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin August, 2010 Dedication To my parents, who taught me to love books Acknowledgements It is with great pleasure that I offer thanks to the many people who have helped and supported me as I wrote this dissertation. First and foremost, thanks goes to my mentor Elizabeth Scala, whose keen intellect and unwavering support have sustained me throughout my time at graduate school. It was in Liz‘s ―Chaucer and Psychoanalysis‖ course that the seed of this dissertation first sprouted, and her careful reading, spot-on advice, and good humor have caused that seed to come to fruition. Every page of this dissertation is profoundly influenced by Liz, often in ways I do not even recognize myself. I am also deeply indebted to Marjorie Curry Woods whose expertise and interest in the commentary tradition were deeply influential to this project. Jorie generously spent hours going over my Trevet translations when I was first learning Latin and fortified me with cookies and strong coffee. I am continually in awe of her dedication to her students and her work. I feel sincerely lucky to have had such inspirational and dedicated women to help me construct a professional identity and to shepherd me through my graduate training. Dan Birkholz deserves no less praise as an invaluable and enthusiastic commenter. He has provided a friendly ear to talk things through when I needed it most, often during impromptu discussions at Quack‘s. Dan is an inspiration to me as a teacher as well as a scholar. Finally, I would like to thank the rest of my dissertation committee, v Patricia Clare Ingham and Thomas Cable. Patty‘s guidance, support, and patience helped me transform a chapter into an article, and Tom Cable‘s good-natured humility, matched with his incredible intelligence, offers an exemplum for excellence in the academy. This dissertation could not have been written without the immense generosity of Dr. Lodi Nauta of the University of Groningen who loaned me the microfilm of E.T. Silk‘s complete but unpublished edition of Trevet‘s commentary. I am eternally grateful that he was willing to send that rare document halfway around the world so that an unknown graduate student could have a look. I understand that that sort of intellectual openhandedness is not uncommon for him, even if it is rare in the academy generally. He has my sincerest thanks and admiration. I have felt continually blessed to find such a large and congenial medieval faculty at The University of Texas. Thanks also go to Geraldine Heng and Mary Blockley for allowing me to sit in on their graduate seminars and for making the UT medieval concentration such a stimulating part of the department. This dissertation has benefited greatly from the comments and suggestions of the members of the medieval and Renaissance dissertation group, to whom I owe a large debt of gratitude. I always looked forward to discussions with them over a beer at the Hole in the Wall. Many thanks go to Joey Taylor, who has provided encouragement, advice, and quiet confidence, as well as to Tim Turner, Jonathan Lamb, Meghan Andrews, Chris Taylor, and Greg Foran. I am also pleased to thank the colleagues and friends who have read and commented on my work over the years: Joshua Gunn, George Edmondson, and Jillian Sayre. Special thanks go to Chris Bradley who read and commented on my entire dissertation when I needed it most; I hope that someday I will have the opportunity to vi pass on that kindness to another needy graduate student. I owe large debts to my friends and family who have been there for me as I travelled down the long and sometimes lonely road of graduate school. Jason Leubner has read and commented on these chapters more times than I can count. His incredible generosity, devotion, and encouragement are unmatched. My parents, John Hunter and Laura Drumheller, made this dissertation possible by instilling in me a love of learning and encouraging me to pursue my dreams. Joanne Drumheller, my dear grandmother, has helped fuel my dissertation-writing with praise, unwavering support, and chocolates. My brother Nicholas has encouraged me with his own academic dedication, and he and my sister-in-law Helen have urged me on in every possible way. My sister Katherine‘s incredible work ethic and kind and gentle nature are a source of constant inspiration. To all of my funny extended family, I owe a huge debt of gratitude for keeping me grounded. I could not have made it through the previous two years without the humor and emotional support of my roommate Amanda Moulder. We have laughed and cried our way through the dissertation writing process together, and I am deeply grateful for her zany humor as well as her seemingly endless empathy. Laura Smith has also been a sincerely appreciated force of support in the past year and has my deepest gratitude. Miss Lillian Beans and Mr. Capote Moulder have both provided the sort of unfailing devotion and non-judgmental listening skills that only quadrupeds can muster. Much of this dissertation was composed with Capote in my lap. vii Chaucer‟s Poetry and the New Boethiansim Publication No._____________ Brooke Marie Hunter, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2010 Supervisors: Elizabeth Scala and Marjorie Curry Woods My dissertation reexamines Chaucer‘s debts to the Consolation by reconciling Boethius‘s Neoplatonic distaste for the material world with Chaucer‘s poetic celebrations of the variety and sensuality of human life. I revise the understanding of Chaucer‘s poetry by recontextualizing it within a new Boethianism that stems from Chaucer‘s interaction with the scholastic commentary on the Consolation by Nicholas Trevet. Although critics have long known that Chaucer‘s Boece extensively borrows from, glosses, and cross references with Trevet‘s commentary, very little attention has been given to what effect this had on Chaucer‘s Boethian poetry. My dissertation argues that through Trevet‘s immensely popular commentary, Chaucer received a predominantly Aristotelian-Thomist reading of the Consolation, one that reinvents Boethius‘s Neoplatonic rejection of the sensual world as an apologetically materialist philosophy. The Aristotelian-Thomist influence of Trevet‘s commentary is most visible in Chaucer‘s treatment of the human interactions with the temporal world: in the functions of sense perception, the working of memory, and the desire to foresee the unknown future. viii Table of Contents Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………v-vii Introduction ...................................................................................................... 1-22 Chapter 1 The Ladder and the Wheel: Perspective and Gender in the Consolation of Philosophy. .................... 23-57 Chapter 2 Presenting Boethius: Nicholas Trevet and Chaucer's Boece ................................................... 58-103 Chapter 3 Remenants of Things Past: Memory in the Knight's Tale .............................................................. 104-154 Chapter 4 'Future tyme' and the Secret Subject in Troilus and Criseyde ............................................... 155-197 Epilogue……………………………………………………………………198-200 Notes……………………………………………………………………….201-234 Bibliography ................................................................................................ 235-247 Vita . ....................................................................................................................248 ix Introduction At the end of Chaucer‘s Troilus and Criseyde, the disembodied soul of Troilus laughs as he looks down on the wretched strivings of the ―litel spot of erthe‖ below.1 This moment that has often been read to exemplify the contemptus mundi sentiments of Boethius‘s Consolation of Philosophy. Ilan Mitchell-Smth argues that much of Chaucer‘s poetry has a ―Boethian theme,‖ in that it acts as a warning ―for readers to avoid the animalistic distractions and excesses of the secular realm, and by doing so, directs their attention and spiritual movement heavenward, toward that which is eternal.‖2 In the introduction to her recent collection The Erotics of Consolation, Catherine E. Léglu characterizes Boethius‘s Consolation as an ―emphatically Platonic text.‖3 In much Chaucer criticism Boethianism is used as philosophical shorthand for these two observations; Boethianism equals a Platonic rejection of the material world as a realm of false perceptions and bodily degradation.4 Many scholars attendant to Chaucer‘s Boethianism then, have found it difficult to reconcile the tender and sympathetically earthly love story of Troilus and Criseyde with the rejection and denigration of all things terrestrial advanced by the Consolation and apparently denoted in Troilus‘s laugh. Chaucer‘s translation of the Consolation, as the
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