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Queer Authority in Old and Middle English Literature

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Queer Authority in Old and Middle English Literature University of South Florida Scholar Commons Graduate Theses and Dissertations Graduate School July 2019 Queer Authority in Old and Middle English Literature Elan J. Pavlinich University of South Florida, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd Part of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies Commons, Medieval Studies Commons, and the Women's Studies Commons Scholar Commons Citation Pavlinich, Elan J., "Queer Authority in Old and Middle English Literature" (2019). Graduate Theses and Dissertations. https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/8400 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Queer Authority in Old and Middle English Literature by Elan J. Pavlinich A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English College of Arts and Sciences University of South Florida Major Professor: Nicole Guenther Discenza, Ph.D. Anne Latowsky, Ph.D. Tison Pugh, Ph.D. Laura Runge, Ph.D. Date of Approval: June 26, 2019 Keywords: Anglo-Saxon, Boethius, Rood, Chaucer, Margery Kempe Copyright © 2019, Elan J. Pavlinich ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First and foremost, Nicole Guenther Discenza deserves more credit and praise than this page can contain. She refined this project through tireless efforts and meticulous comments across numerous drafts. Nicole has singularly exerted the most influence on my scholarship and my character. I am honored to have learned from her, a distinguished mentor. I am thankful for my dissertation committee, Anne Latowsky, Tison Pugh, and Laura Runge, for providing valuable criticism and encouragement both over the course of my writing this dissertation and through my later professional development. Mary Rambaran-Olm and Erik Wade have also kindly offered feedback and direction for my research. Mary Jane Ulmer and Diane Wakefield of the Beaver Area Memorial Library provided me with resources necessary to complete my research, much of which was made possible thanks to institutional support provided by the Department of English and the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of South Florida, as well as the LGBT Research Award granted by USF Libraries Special Collections. I am happy to share this project with my Mother, Kathy Roberts, who has made substantial sacrifices for me to take this path through academia; none of my work would have been possible without her support. I am also grateful for colleagues such as Marisa Iglesias, Jay Zysk, Kelly Williams, Hilary Fox, Colin Gillis, Jordan Zweck, Rob Wakeman, Jacob Tootalian, and Jaime Meyers, who have helped me to understand the importance of public humanities. Finally, I am thankful for Thorn, my feline companion, who continues to provided invaluable comfort and vital perspectives about personhood that influence my evolving hermeneutic. Thank you to everyone who has helped me to improve. Any remaining flaws are my own. TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ........................................................................................................................................... iii Introduction: Queer Medieval English Authority ............................................................................ 1 Medieval Cultural Authority ............................................................................................... 3 Queering Medieval Authority ............................................................................................ 20 Chapter One: Alfred’s Queer Wisdom in the Old English Boethius ............................................. 31 Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 31 Boethius’s Consolation and Systems of Masculine Domination ...................................... 33 Alfred’s Authority and Anglo-Saxon Orientations to Power ............................................ 45 Mommie Queerest: Speaking the Father’s Prose with the Mother Tongue ...................... 56 Queer Wisdom as Alfred’s Innovation .............................................................................. 75 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... 88 Chapter Two: Rood Disruption: Queer Orientations in Dream of the Rood ................................. 90 Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 90 Conventional Anglo-Saxon Orientations .......................................................................... 94 Cult of the Cross Conventions ......................................................................................... 102 Speaking of Power: Translatio Studii and Anglo-Saxon Confessions of Faith ............... 112 The Anglo-Saxon Rood ................................................................................................... 117 Anglo-Saxon Culture as Eschatological End and Soteriological Center ......................... 131 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 140 Chapter Three: Same-Sex Desires in Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women ................................. 142 Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 142 Gendered Epistemologies ................................................................................................ 150 Homosocial Bonds of Auctorite and the Promise of Fin’Amor ...................................... 162 The Deviant Desires of Chaucer’s Fin’Amor Auctor ...................................................... 176 Simulations of Feminine Experience as Expressions of Same-Sex Desires ................... 185 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 193 Chapter Four: Margery Kempe’s Authority and Excess ............................................................. 196 Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 196 Authorizing Subversion ................................................................................................... 202 Playing by the Roles ........................................................................................................ 221 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 249 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................... 251 i References ................................................................................................................................... 261 ii ABSTRACT I argue that select early English texts queer normative authorizing conventions to authorize Old English and Middle English literatures. During the European Middle Ages, Latin cultures and literatures were privileged with authority that extended to and subverted the cultural capital of the inhabitants of England at the edge of the known Western world. I identify four exceptional English texts that employ authorizing conventions to disrupt normative networks of power that traditionally privilege Latin and to authorize English literature instead. The Norman Conquest had altered the English language and social structures; still, these altered networks of power continued to marginalize English cultural identities, and thus the means by which literary authority was constructed. Among the texts I focus on, Old English texts promote Anglo-Saxon cultural cohesion, whereas Middle English texts promote the author’s personal desires. Across the divide between Old English and Middle English, literary authority intersects with nonnormative genders and sexualities to encode England’s marginalized orientations to dominant cultural authorities. My first chapter focuses on Alfred’s Old English translation of Boethius’s Latin Consolation of Philosophy. The narrator is a fictionalized version of the author, Boethius, and Alfred’s translation characterizes him as a Roman. Alfred situates the Roman Boethius in conversation with Wisdom, an allegorical figure whom Alfred characterized as an Anglo-Saxon mother with masculine pronouns. The dynamic between the maternal Anglo-Saxon Wisdom and her foster-child, the Roman Boethius, shifts power from Latin sources to Alfred’s present Old iii English philosophical contributions. In my second chapter, I argue that Dream of the Rood queers conventional orientations of time and space to locate Anglo Saxons at both the inception of and conclusion to salvation history. The Rood is imagined as an Anglo-Saxon warrior actively participating in Christ’s passion, and thus facilitating salvation. Warning the Dreamer and the poem’s audience of the looming Judgment Day, Dream implicates England as a geographical and temporal end. Displacing cultural centers like Rome and Jerusalem, Anglo-Saxon England is privileged within Dream’s reorientations of salvation narratives. Then, I work across conventional historical
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