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Refashioning Allegorical Imagery: from Langland to Spenser

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Refashioning Allegorical Imagery: from Langland to Spenser Refashioning Allegorical Imagery: From Langland to Spenser DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By John Slefinger Graduate Program in English The Ohio State University 2017 Dissertation Committee: Ethan Knapp, Advisor Hannibal Hamlin, Advisor Sarah-Grace Heller Copyrighted by John Slefinger 2017 Abstract Scholars often frame allegory as if it were tied to stable signifiers (i.e. white as purity) and therefore insulated from material concerns. I argue, however, that allegorical clothing is always-already material. That is, it is necessarily tied to material concerns either with respect to fashion or status, and therefore all allegorical costume should be seen as a comment on contemporary material culture. In order to make this argument, this dissertation tracks allegorical costume in English poetry from Langland to Spenser. Starting in the 14th century, there was a rapid expansion of access to and variety in fashion, and there was an increased awareness that identity could be donned and therefore bought and sold. This troubled contemporary moralists, who struggled to define how clothing worked in the public sphere, and it troubled allegorical poets, who struggled to apply stable literary markers in a shifting discursive field. Because allegory is only able to signify through a shared contemporary discourse, I thus argue that fashion both disrupted the discursive field around dress and destabilized allegorical imagery. Chapter 1 examines William Langland’s Piers Plowman and The Book of Margery Kempe to see how allegorical conventions conflict with the way characters read each other’s clothing, and how the access to power and institutional backing allows certain characters to define how their clothing is read. Chapter 2 explores the rise of the morality play by perusing The Castle of Perseverance, Mankind, and Hyckescorner. ii While, morality plays are often assumed to be heavy handed lectures that impose categorical imperatives on their audience members, this chapter shows that English morality plays are inescapably material. Even though their structure remains consistent, their descriptions and staging of righteousness shifts along with East Anglian politics. Chapter 3 compares Skelton’s Bowge of Court to his one surviving morality play, Magnyfycence. While both are courtly, dramatic allegories, they establish different rules under which clothing can signify and include different individuals into those systems. Chapter 4 analyzes Britomart in Spenser’s Faerie Queene in order to show how the transformative potential of Britomart’s armor shifts with Spenser’s waning enthusiasm for Elizabeth I. This dissertation contends that material valences of allegorical imagery contend with and sometimes overwhelm classical models or literary convention, and that struggle within the mode demonstrates profound continuity between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. iii Acknowledgments I’d like to start by thanking the dozens of people who have patiently listened to me obsess over historical points of contention, literary quandaries, and details about sumptuary laws for the past few years. Large projects only come together through a dialectic process, and I was lucky enough to have friends, both academic and lay, who were willing to take part in that process even if my research was not in their field. I’m pretty certain I bored a lot of rugby players at a lot of pubs, but they were always polite. Of course, I’d also like to thank the members of my committee, who were so good at pointing me to resources that would refine my argument, and so patient in providing helpful feedback throughout the drafting process. To my fellow medievalists at the Ohio State University, thanks for setting up a Dissertation Reading Group, going through drafts, and pushing me to be clearer. In the scholarly realm, where so many graduate students feel like pretenders, the Ohio State contingent always made me feel like my work was interesting, welcome, and challenging. I’m looking forward to Kalamazoo 2018. Lastly, I want to thank my wife, whose approval I continually sought as I wrote. Thanks for the midnight margaritas, the random road trip songs, and the impromptu clubs we set up in the kitchen. Two are just two. iv Vita June 2003 .......................................................Wheaton-Warrenville High School 2007................................................................B.A. English, Colgate University 2013................................................................M.A. English, The Ohio State University 2011 to present ..............................................Graduate Teaching Associate, Department of English, The Ohio State University Publications “The Two Alisouns: The Miller’s Use of Costume and his Seduction of the Wife of Bath.” Fall 2015, Essays in Medieval Studies. Fields of Study Major Field: English v Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgments.............................................................................................................. iv Vita ...................................................................................................................................... v Introduction: Allegory and the “Birth” of Fashion ............................................................ 1 Chapter 1: Langland, Kempe, and the Politics of Shame ................................................. 40 Chapter 2: Morality Plays and the Paradigms of Redemption .......................................... 86 Chapter 3: Skelton’s Conservatism and the Look of Magnificence ............................... 134 Chapter 4: Britomart and the Gravity of Time................................................................ 186 Conclusion: the Continuity of Change ............................................................................ 256 Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 260 vi Introduction: Allegory and the “Birth” of Fashion In Passus XIII of Piers Plowman, we meet Hawkin the Active Man, whose coat is “moled” in “many sondri plottes,” signifying both his sins and distance from salvation. While critical reception has varied widely on the meaning of this episode, it is clear that the fate of Hawkin’s coat will be the fate of his soul: for better or worse his identity is conflated with his dress. In another allegory written over 200 years later, Spenser’s Fairie Queene, Britomart’s armor in Book III reflects her changing identity within the narrative. As a young, unarmed girl she is “froward” and cautious, but once she dons just a few straps and a bit of plate, Britomart transforms herself into a confident and powerful character, emasculating her male rivals with every joust. From the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, we can find dozens of similar examples where characters’ identities are wrapped up in their costume. But in the same period, authors make fundamentally different assumptions about the elasticity of performed identity. In the above pair of examples, Langland’s clothing ties Hawkin down and limits the waferer’s ability to change his identity. Spenser, by contrast, gives us a protagonist who can transcend gender through dress at will: so long as she is wearing mail, she can be male. The Middle Ages introduced fashion to Western Europe, and that in turn spurred radical disagreement as to the transformative potential of clothing. This dissertation will examine several conflicting examples like the ones above. The goal is to answer how 1 shifts in the discourse surrounding clothing along with the material conditions of costume production were reflected in allegory. Doing so illuminates medieval and Early Modern understandings of the embodied self, and how literature both reflected and helped produce the cultural norms of appearance. 1. The Regulation of Identity The story of fashion is a story about defining difference. In the middle of the 14th century, one of clothing’s primary functions in Western Europe was to distinguish between estates and occupations within those estates. Perhaps a definitive example of this function is described by Stella Mary Newton in Fashion in the Age of the Black Prince when she examines the Royal Wardrobe for the 1360 Christmas celebration.1 The records provide a nearly exhaustive picture of the clothing afforded to everyone in the court from the king to the minstrels. Edward III’s outfit is laid out in exact detail, from the tightness of the fit (in accordance with the new fashion) to the gold ribbon trimming that differentiated his outfit from the rest of the attendees’. We learn that Queen Philippa’s outfit was nearly identical to that of Edward’s sister, Joan, except for the extra and expensive ermine that Phillippa’s tailor had to work with. We also learn that 1 Stella Mary Newton, Fashion in the age of the black prince: a study of the years, 1340-1365 (Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK: Boydell Press, 1999). Besides the incredible detail that Newton offers, I focus on Edward III for a couple of reasons: 1) we have more detailed records of his Wardrobe than we do of Richard II’s. In fact, details about Richard’s wardrobe exist (see W. Paley Baildon, "XXII.—A Wardrobe Account of 16–17 Richard II, 1393–4",.Archaeologia 62 (1911): 497-514.), but they are hard to find
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