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Sounds and Otherness in Medieval and Early Modern English Literature

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Sounds and Otherness in Medieval and Early Modern English Literature NOISY ISLES: SOUNDS AND OTHERNESS IN MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN ENGLISH LITERATURE A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI‘I AT MĀNOA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN ENGLISH MAY 2018 By Rawitawan Sophonpanich Thesis Committee: Judith Kellogg, Chairperson Karen Jolly Peter Nicholson Valerie Wayne Mark Heberle Richard Rath Keywords: Medieval, Early Modern, Sound Studies, History of the Senses Dedication In loving memory of my late husband, Ithi Sophonpanich (1983-2016) 2 Acknowledgements Writing is a solitary journey. This axiom is especially true in my case of writing this dissertation. Most of the work was completed far away from my cherished and loving academic community at the University of Hawai’i. Luckily, modern technologies make it possible to connect and make the loneliness more bearable. I consider myself one of the most fortunate persons to have a chance to know and work with Judith Kellogg. Without her stimulating conversations, her dedication to my work, and most importantly, her confidence that this task could be done, this dissertation would never have had a chance to see the light. She has been my advisor, my role model, and my inspiration to never give up and to become an academic. I owe a great debt to her teaching and guidance. She has read many versions of this dissertation with great care and attention for so many times that it is impossible to count. To her I offer my heartfelt gratitude and to say that I am grateful is quite an understatement. I am very fortunate to have such a great committee to work with. Peter Nicholson is a great, patient scholar who has guided me through the labyrinthine details of medieval literature. From him I have learned to love literature more and more to the point that it has become my obsession. Without Professor Nicholson, I will not be able to finish this task. I am grateful to have had a chance to learn so much from him. His patience for answering my endless questions is also greatly appreciated. Knowing and working with Valerie Wayne has been such a delight. Her knowledge of texts and theories absolutely fascinates me. I found her suggestions, comments, and corrections of my work very constructive and inspiring. Mark Heberle helped me understand the perplexing world of early modern historiography. His comments on bibliography also saved my life. Working far away from Honolulu, I miss those times when I used to drop by 3 Karen Jolly’s office and talked to her for hours about the enthralling early medieval world. I am grateful to have her as the university representative for this dissertation. Her suggestions are also thought provoking and allow me to think beyond the scope of this work. Lastly, I am gratified to have a chance to work with Richard Rath. For the dissertation focusing on sounds before the modern period, I cannot think of anyone more suitable than Professor Rath to work with. He constantly guided me through the quandaries of debates on sounds, for which I am truly grateful. My beloved husband, Ithi Sophonpanich, to whom this work is dedicated, had passed away before its completion. No words in this world can express how much I miss him and how very much I wish that he could see the finished version of this work. He had been with me through my academic and spiritual journeys, through sickness and health, through thick and thin, through poverty and wealth. He had read the early versions of this dissertation and helped me tremendously with everything imaginable. He went to the libraries with me everytime to help me carry the books back home. He listened to my ideas tirelessly and took care of our daughter when I needed time to work. He was the only person in this world who truly knew what it means for me to have this dissertation finished. I hope we could meet again someday so I could show him this work. Our daughter, Plern Alana, is now my one true joy. I thank her for coming into my life and putting smiles back on my face. 4 Abstract This dissertation explores the representations of sounds in medieval and early modern English literature. Such representations reveal that despite the attempts of the English government to exert hegemony over other polities and peoples on the Atlantic archipelago as well as to centralize jurisdictional and political authority, diversity and heterogeneity still existed, persisted, and resisted. Many times such diversity and resistance have been manifested in sonic forms, such as war cries of the Irish, or the protesting noises of the peasants from the countryside. These sounds were considered as dissonance and disturbing to the harmonious state that the English government had attempted to construct and impose upon its subjects. This condition perpetuated several medieval and early modern English writers to code and castigate such disturbing sounds as meaningless and threatening noises, even though they always contained meanings for both the speakers and their intended audiences. In so doing, this study contends that even though sound has been long overlooked in literary studies due to the prioritization of vision and visual representations, sound is a powerful tool that humans utilize to unite, divide, colonize, and decolonize one another. 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................................... 3 ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................... 5 CHAPTER 1 .................................................................................................................................. 7 INTRODUCTION: HEARING THE TEXTS, HEARING HISTORY, HEARING COMMUNITIES CHAPTER 2 ................................................................................................................................ 30 LIVELY NATURE: LISTENING TO BIRDS FROM THE OWL AND THE NIGHTINGALE TO SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT CHAPTER 3 ................................................................................................................................ 72 THE NOISY COUNTRYSIDE: THE 1381 PEASANTS’ REVOLT AND THE SENSORY DISSONANCE CHAPTER 4 .............................................................................................................................. 134 THE IRISH HUBBUB: COLONIAL HEARING IN SPENSER’S IRELAND CHAPTER 5 ............................................................................................................................ 1700 CONCLUSION: SOUNDS MATTER WORKS CITED ......................................................................................................................... 174 6 Chapter 1 Introduction: Hearing the Texts, Hearing History, Hearing Communities Introduction This dissertation is about sounds in literature and their roles in expressing and negotiating diversity and heterogeneity in the British Isles. At the center of its arguments are my own curiosity and fascination with sounds. Such inquisitiveness primarily stemmed from my interest in music as well as tonality found in Thai language, which is my native tongue. This language is a tonal language with five tones and multiple consonantal sounds. When I first learned music theory, I was immediately attracted to concepts such as tonal / atonal music as well as counterpoint. When I was later introduced to several foreign languages and started reading literature, I always wanted to know what each language or unfamiliar words sounded like. I often listened to each foreign word closely and let it echoed time and again in my mind. Likewise, when reading literary works, I always wondered what I would hear if I were to live in the world of a novel, a play, or a poem. To my younger self, sounds always came first. Grammar, semantics, narratives, characters and everything else were secondary. When I first took an introduction to a medieval and early modern literature course, it was not surprising that I was fascinated by the representations of sounds so vivid and varied in those texts. Take William Langland’s Piers Plowmanor a group of William Shakespeare’s plays for instance. In Piers Plowman, I noticed right away that these works were so alive with sounds. In the B text of Piers Plowman, for example, the dreamer-narrator Willbegins his journey hoping to 7 “wente wide in this world wondres to here”1 (Prologue 4, my italics). The “marvelous dream”leads Will to a vision of “a fair feeld ful of folk,” a landscape full of noises and voices. There are lawyers in silk gowns making speeches; cooks with their servants crying “Hote pies, hote!/ Goode gees and grys! Go we dyne, go we!” and inn-keepers bawling “Whit wyn of Oseye and wyn of Gascoinge,/ Of the Ryn and of the Rochel, the roost to defie!” (Prologue 226-230)In one of the most intriguing scenes of the story, the seven deadly sins all make noises appropriate to their character. Petronella and Lust cry out for God’s mercy. Envy speaks with anguished tones of all his jealousies. Anger growls. Greed mutters his confession. Sloth yawns and snores. Glutton laughs and calls for drink. At the end of the night, his guts rumble and he “blew his rounde ruwet at his rigge-bon ende” (B.5.353). From time to time the dreamer awakes to the sound of the church’s bells or he hears the bells ringing in his dream, signifying the end of a section in the text and the beginning of a new one. Shakespeare’s plays are also imbued with sounds varied and vast.
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