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The Evolution of the Individual in Medieval Literature Christopher Michael Flavin Southern Illinois University Carbondale, [email protected]

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The Evolution of the Individual in Medieval Literature Christopher Michael Flavin Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Christopher.M.Flavin@Gmail.Com Southern Illinois University Carbondale OpenSIUC Dissertations Theses and Dissertations 5-1-2011 The elS f, the Church, and Medieval Identities: The Evolution of the Individual in Medieval Literature Christopher Michael Flavin Southern Illinois University Carbondale, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/dissertations Recommended Citation Flavin, Christopher Michael, "The eS lf, the Church, and Medieval Identities: The vE olution of the Individual in Medieval Literature" (2011). Dissertations. Paper 335. This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses and Dissertations at OpenSIUC. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of OpenSIUC. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE SELF, THE CHURCH AND MEDIEVAL IDENTITIES: THE EVOLUTION OF THE INDIVIDUAL IN MEDIEVAL LITERATURE by Christopher M. Flavin B.A., Austin Peay State University, 1999 M.A., Middle Tennessee State University, 2006 A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy. Department of English in the Graduate School Southern Illinois University Carbondale May 2011 DISSERTATION APPROVAL THE SELF, THE CHURCH AND MEDIEVAL IDENTITIES: THE EVOLUTION OF THE INDIVIDUAL IN MEDIEVAL LITERATURE By Christopher M. Flavin A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the field of English Approved by: Dr. Mark Amos, Chair Dr. Dan Wiley Dr. Jane Elizabeth Dougherty Dr. Michael Humphries Dr. Holly Hurlburt Graduate School Southern Illinois University Carbondale March 4, 2011 AN ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION OF CHRISTOPHER MICHAEL FLAVIN, for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in ENGLISH, presented on MARCH 4, 2011, at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. TITLE: THE SELF, THE CHURCH AND MEDIEVAL IDENTITIES: THE EVOLUTION OF THE INDIVIDUAL IN MEDIEVAL LITERATURE MAJOR PROFESSOR: Dr. Mark Amos This dissertation examines the construction of literary identities by medieval women, recognizable as an authorial voice that is distinct from those of her contemporaries yet congruent with the gender norms and expectations of her contemporary culture, in both religious and secular literatures from late antiquity through the waning of the Middle Ages. The argument posited here is that texts authored by women, as informed by concurrent male texts and the literary traditions in which individual authors seek to participate, can be read as a taxonomy of responses to the traditions individual authors appropriate and to their contemporaries, directly responding to and incorporating elements from each in order to position themselves within the literate culture by accessing the shared traditions, norms and memories of the community. Focusing on primary texts authored by women makes it possible to more fully examine the intertextual nature of women‘s identity in medieval literature, the impact of male discourse on the identities available to women as writers and as women, and the diverse positions they assign to themselves through the construction of literary identities, both orthodox and heterodox. The delimination of the culture and the traditions in which individual authors participate clarifies both the self-positioning engaged in by individual authors and the function of their text, in its native context, while placing these texts and their authors in a meaningful context for modern scholars. i The project is divided into six broadly chronological chapters which engage with key authors and place them in dialogue with both their male contemporaries and previous generations of women‘s writings. The first chapter, ―(En)Gendering Texts,‖ focuses on the texts from late antiquity which have the most measurable and lasting impact on subsequent women‘s writings and engage directly with the patristic sources for communal Christian identity in the period. The second chapter, ―Perpetua and Her Daughters,‖ highlights the role of women‘s texts in the education of both genders throughout the period and begins the process of contextualizing women‘s independent identities within the rubric of the Christian West. Chapter Three, ―Constructing a New Self,‖ approaches the letters of Heloise to Abelard and her other correspondents as a model for women‘s writing and the construction of polysemic identities within the traditions. Chapter Four, ―Re-Envisioning the Passions,‖ places mystics such as Hildegard of Bingen and Julian of Norwich in dialogue with the patristic traditions and medieval philosophy in order to illustrate the degrees of self-determination possible in women‘s texts while continuing to be viewed as orthodox. The fifth chapter examines the phenomena of affective piety, ascetic mysticism, and the uses of the body in creating a tangible identity for women writers in the period. The final chapter examines the tensions between the medieval and patristic traditions and the changing political and social geography of the later Middle Ages and the impact of these cultural shifts on women‘s writing and their access to the traditions. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to formally thank Dr. Mark Amos for serving as the director for this project, as well as for being a sounding board for numerous other projects and the source of much good advice over the past several years. I would also like to thank the other members of my committee for their contributions to the project, especially Dr. Wiley and Dr. Humphries for their comments and suggestions on the early chapters while they were still in progress. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE ABSTRACT ......................................................................................................................... i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................... iii CHAPTERS INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................. 1 CHAPTER 1 – (EN)GENDERING TEXTS: THE ESTABLISHMENT OF WOMEN‘S LITERARY TRADITIONS .............................................................. 15 CHAPTER 2 – PERPETUA AND HER DAUGHTERS: MYSTICS, MOTHERS, MARTYRS, AND TEXTS ................................................................................... 54 CHAPTER 3 – CONSTRUCTING A NEW SELF: HELOISE, ABELARD, AND TRUTH ................................................................................................................. 86 CHAPTER 4 – RE-ENVISIONING THE PASSIONS: HILDEGARD VON BINGEN, JULIAN OF NORWICH, AND MONASTIC WOMEN‘S VISIONARY LITERATURE ............................................................................. 123 CHAPTER 5 – ―TEXTS WITHOUT BODIES, CHURCHES WITHOUT WINDOWS‖: ANCHORETISM AND AFFECTIVE PIETY IN MEDIEVAL WOMEN‘S AUTOBIOGRAPHY ...................................................................... 152 CHAPTER 6 – READING THE MEDIEVAL WOMAN‘S BODY .................. 186 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................... 198 VITA ............................................................................................................................... 221 iv 1 INTRODUCTION The construction of literary identities for medieval women, recognizable as an authorial voice that is distinct from those of her contemporaries yet congruent with the gender norms and expectations of her contemporary culture, is grounded in and partially determined by the literary and cultural traditions in which the author seeks to participate. In many ways, their texts form a taxonomy of responses to the traditions they appropriate and to their contemporaries, directly responding to and incorporating elements of each in order to position themselves within the literature by accessing the shared traditions and memories of the community. By focusing on primary texts authored by women and contemporary accounts which provide outside referents for their specific texts, it is possible to examine the intertextual nature of women‘s identity in medieval literature and the traditions within which these women saw themselves as participating. The delimination of the culture and the traditions in which the individual authors participate clarifies the function of the text itself in context and allows the reader to engage with the ways in which specific elements of their culture and material environments impact modern perceptions of medieval literature and society. In this context, the literature and the culture can be examined as separate but overlapping areas of study. This separation makes it possible to identify the impact of individual texts and events on medieval literature and thought as a whole, and helps to place these texts and their authors in a meaningful context for the modern scholar. Examining the traditions as the basis for later women‘s writings, and the representation of women as a part of the tradition, necessitates an examination of the earliest representations of women within the community, an attempt to find the origins of 2 feminine identity within the community. This is complicated by the number of representations of women which survive from the early periods, and the polysemic nature of their appearance within the community. Margot H. King‘s analysis of the origins of the anchoretic tradition provides a virtual catalog of women‘s lives from the early centuries of the church which were in wide circulation in the
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