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Chapter 1: Introduction – New Troys: the Construction of an English Literary The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School Department of English TROJAN WARS: GENRE AND THE POLITICS OF AUTHORSHIP IN LATE MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN ENGLAND A Thesis in English by Timothy D. Arner © 2007 Timothy D. Arner Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 2007 The thesis of Timothy D. Arner was reviewed and approved* by the following: Robert R. Edwards Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature Thesis Advisor Chair of Committee Caroline D. Eckhardt Professor of English and Comparative Literature Patrick G. Cheney Professor of English and Comparative Literature Sherry Roush Associate Professor of Italian Robert L. Caserio Professor of English Head of the Department of English *Signatures are on file in the Graduate School ABSTRACT This dissertation examines the writing of Trojan War narratives by major English authors from the late fourteenth to the early seventeenth centuries with a focus on how these authors appropriate various literary genres in response to their particular social and political circumstances. My project challenges prevailing notions of the function of Troy as England’s foundational myth in both the political and literary cultures of the medieval and early modern periods. In the Middle Ages the English claimed to be descended from the Trojans who had survived the war and participated in the founding of Rome alongside Aeneas. Many modern critics argue that the conflation of the historical and the literary in this myth of national origin worked to forward the imperial agendas of English monarchs, and that these agendas found support in the medieval retellings of the Trojan War narrative. I argue that the political formulation of England’s national identity puts certain pressures how a writer can express his own authorial identity and that one form of identity constantly threatens to undermine the other. My work locates authorial politics – that is, authorial self-definition in response to both literary tradition and issues in English court culture – within the Trojan narratives of Chaucer, Lydgate, Caxton, and Shakespeare. This approach demonstrates how authorial identity is expressed textually through the negotiation of genre and competing narrative forms with respect to cultural context. For medieval and early modern English authors, the truth of the story is merely a surface concern as the author seeks to lay claim not to the Trojan legend but simply the right to tell it. Whereas the Arthurian legend seems to be available to writers who wish to invent new episodes or reformulate established narratives, the Troy story necessitates that an author justify his literary project by showing appropriate deference to the other poetic texts in the Trojan tradition. In so iii doing, the writer claims a right to author his own account of the legend. No other story in English literature requires such a claim, and it is for this reason that the Trojan War narrative functions as an important site for investigating English authorship. The dissertation’s title, Trojan Wars, is meant to remind the reader of the multitude of competing narratives that constitute the legend of the destruction of Troy. At the center of the legend lies neither a war nor a city but a conspicuous absence, and it is around this absence that Trojan Wars have been fought by poets and historians trying to claim authority over a disputed territory that was never really there in the first place. The medieval Troy story conflates the historical and the literary, and recent scholarship on Trojan texts tends to privilege the former over the latter. My dissertation will use the important observations made by recent critics concerning the historiographic importance of Troy in order to highlight its significance in the formation of an English literary tradition as defined by the idea of authorship and negotiated through genre. My thesis that is each author’s appropriation and idiosyncratic fashioning of various genres, particularly epic, romance and history, allows him to claim authority over the Trojan legend that he chooses to tell while simultaneously critiquing any royal or imperial agenda that seeks to do the same. The specific choices in genre, I argue, are inherently intertextual and entirely self-conscious, as each Trojan text functions as a response to the other works in circulation as well as the political concerns of the nation during the time of its writing. Through this approach, I identify the emergence of an English authorial identity that begins with Chaucer and trace its development through the Middle Ages and Renaissance in order to demonstrate how literary authority functions in relation to political authority. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1: Introduction – New Troys: The Construction of an English Literary Tradition…………………………………………………………………..1 Chapter 2: Chaucer’s Second Hector: Diomede and the Possibilities of Epic in Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde…………………………………………..22 Chapter 3: Ulysses and the Threat of Romance in John Lydgate’s Troy Book…..74 Chapter 4: Caxton’s Trojan Authorship………………………………………….120 Chapter 5: “A Juggling Trick: To Be Secretly Open”: Intertextual Fetish and Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida…………………………...................163 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………….. 201 Works Cited……………………………………………………………………… 207 v Acknowledgements First, thank you to the members of my dissertation committee for their support and encouragement. The idea for this dissertation was born out of a seminar on Medieval History Writing taught by Alice Sheppard at Penn State in the Fall of 2000. My thinking about medieval and early modern literature, concepts of genre and authorship, and the importance of the Troy legend developed throughout my graduate career in challenging and stimulating courses taught by Sherry Roush, Caroline Eckhardt and Patrick Cheney. I want to thank them for the time spent discussing my work and for providing me with different ways of considering important issues in literary criticism. My dissertation advisor and mentor, Robert Edwards, has been a guiding voice from my arrival at Penn State in 2000 and has been the single greatest influence on my scholarly work. His generosity and sage advice on matters professional and personal have proven invaluable, and he provides a terrific model for how to manage a productive scholarly career balanced with a rewarding family life. Penn Staters who came before me have become friends and colleagues through our annual contact at Kalamazoo, MLA, and the New Chaucer Society. I have benefited greatly from conversations with Craig Bertolet and Wolfram Keller. Wolfram, as another “Trojan author,” is my German intellectual-doppelganger whose work on these same texts has helped me think about my own approach. Financial support came from Penn State’s Institute for Arts and Humanities, who provided me with a Summer Fellowship in 2005, and an award from the Penn State Graduate School Alumni Association. vi My peers at Penn State served not only as exceptional colleagues but also as amazing friends. Their intellectual contributions to this project are significant but cannot even begin to compare to their impact on my life beyond the academic world. I have often argued that even my least intellectual moments – time spent tailgating, playing softball, and singing karaoke – are all part of the writing process, and these people have been there for all of it. I have incurred social and intellectual debts that I can only hope to begin to repay. Christopher White, Lissette Szwydky, Dustin Stegner and Lindsey Jones read sections of the dissertation and offered valuable feedback. Marques Kem, amicus et magister, helped with Latin translation. Dan Hicks, though “only a historian,” amazed me with his intellect and his wit, and he has shared with me the taste of victory. Doc Rissel is the big brother I always wanted, and I thank him not only for his humor and good cheer but also for being there throughout the most important moments and events of the past seven years. Niamh O’Leary provided the epigraph for this dissertation and was a constant source of light throughout my darkest days of trying to finish this damn thing. Sarah Breckenridge showed up at just the right time and even as a rookie she was an amazing medieval colleague and a true friend. Steele Nowlin gets his own paragraph. He was there in the beginning, driving down dark and strange roads to Alice’s medieval seminar during our first semester of grad school. He was and always will be the consummate friend and roommate, always ready with advice and insight and an appropriate Star Wars reference. No amount of reading, coursework, or time in the library ever meant anywhere near as much as five minutes talking with Steele on the balcony of our Bellefonte apartment. My wife, Stacey, was with me throughout the whole writing process, displaying incredible compassion, love, and understanding as she lived with both Dr. Arner and Mr. Hyde. vii She has been and continues to be my greatest source of strength and support. She reminds me every day of what it means to be partners as together we teach our three-month-old Katie how to smile. Finally, my dissertation is dedicated to my parents, Patti and Gary, Dave and Mary Beth. They always trusted me to make good decisions with regard to my education and career, and they gave me the tools and the support to make sure that I would succeed. This work is the culmination of many years of study but it represents only a step on my continuing path of learning and teaching, a journey I take ever with my family at my side. viii Epigraph I have lived in important places, times When great events were decided, who owned That half a rood of rock, a no-man’s land Surrounded by our pitchfork-armed claims. I heard the Duffys shouting ‘Damn your soul’ And old McCabe stripped to the waist, seen Step the plot defying blue cast-steel– ‘Here is the march along these iron stones’ That was the year of the Munich bother.
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