Speculative Phantasms in Three English Chronicles of the 12Th and 13Th Centuries

Spectral Enmeshments: Speculative Phantasms in Three English Chronicles of the 12th and 13th Centuries by Emily Russell B.A. in English Literature, May 2004, William Tyndale College M.A. in English Literature, May 2009, Eastern Michigan University A Dissertation submitted to The Faculty of The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy August 31, 2018 Dissertation directed by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen Professor of English The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University certifies that Emily Russell has passed the Final Examination for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy as of May 9, 2018. This is the final and approved form of the dissertation. Spectral Enmeshments: Speculative Phantasms in Three English Chronicles of the 12th and 13th Centuries Emily Russell Dissertation Research Committee: Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Professor of English, Dissertation Director Holly Dugan, Associate Professor of English, Committee Member Jonathan Hsy, Associate Professor of English, Committee Member ii © Copyright 2018 by Emily Russell All rights reserved iii Dedication To my favorite animals: Julie, Don, Laura, Maddy. iv Acknowledgements It is common practice to begin a project like this with an acknowledgement that recognizes the vast community of others without whom this text certainly would not have been written. That is no less true in my case, though I do feel particularly fortunate to have among that group some of the most creative, innovative, and supportive people I have ever met. To those on my committee, your work and the ideas you have shared during our conversations have not only inspired me; they have been transformative. Because of your generosity with both your time and your knowledge, as well as your willingness to show me the vulnerability necessary for meaningful creation, I find that my perspective on what it means to be an engaged scholar greatly altered. Jeffrey, I am grateful for your generosity and your deep investment in fostering risk, possibility, attachment, and beauty in scholarly work. You have shown me what it looks like to be unashamedly human, even and especially when that leaves one vulnerable, avoiding the seeming safety of the status quo. Holly, your encouragement and insights have allowed me to push through this project when ideas seemed to stop coming and when I felt I might not be able to finish this dissertation. Your advice has been practical and compassionate. I have learned a great deal about teaching from you, and especially how to gracefully allow students to come to recognize their own preconceptions. I have watched you empower both graduate and undergraduate students as you have also empowered me to do own my work, take it seriously, and stand behind my ideas. Jonathan, I remember a particular interaction we had several years ago as I worked on the prospectus for this project. I was trying to figure out how to construct and justify my primary source archive. You sat with me for an entire hour discussing how I used the v term history in my explanation. You could see I was using a stunted definition of the term and you were unwilling to let me take the easy road and remain ambiguous in my usage. Time and again throughout this project, you have helped me take abstract ideas and ground them in an archive, insisting on both ingenuity and precision. Those conversations have helped me develop as a thinker. You have taught me the importance of specifics, even in the speculative. I want to thank each of you for giving me the gifts of your time, energy, creativity, and support. These are costly gifts to give someone and your largess has been vast—even wondrous. My family and friends have also been instrumental in the creation and completion of this project—it belongs to them as much as it belongs to me. Don, you are an amazing editor and an even more amazing partner. Thank you for meticulously going through my chapters, even when I stared nervously over your shoulder as you marked errors and made marginal comments. Thank you for not complaining when I couldn’t make plans over so many weekends and for dragging me out into the world when I began to get a little too attached to my computer and books. Thank you especially for keeping things in perspective. Jennifer Linhart Wood, you are an angel. I cannot begin to list all the things you did for me throughout this process. You made what seemed like an impossible task possible. You sent encouraging messages at just the right times. You let me vent about the process, but you never let me stop there, pushing me to keep going and conquer the next challenge. vi Abstract of Dissertation Spectral Enmeshments: Speculative Phantasms in Three English Chronicles of the 12th and 13th Centuries The stories in this project, and the story of this project, are intimately invested in creating and exploring spectral enmeshments that are poly-chronic, wonder-oriented and always more than human. The narratives I work with—found in the writings of Walter Map, Gerald of Wales, and Gervase of Tilbury—include apparitional figures, objects and spaces that reorient our relationships with the natural and fantastical enmeshments we inhabit. To varying degrees, each of these authors celebrate the ambiguous nature of the tales they tell. They often seem to relish the sense of wonder these stories about phantom islands and lovers back from the dead evoke in reader and writer alike. Real and imagined, living and dead, present and past merge in these tales that blur categorical lines. The affective and phenomenological experiences of wonder, enchantment, and horror that come with dwelling in these spaces of ambiguity allow us to perceive and practice a more enmeshed way of thinking about our human and nonhuman relationships, as well as our various relationships with modes of knowledge-making and storytelling. More than metaphors for anthropocentric experience, the specters I seek to evoke are sites of metamorphosis. By exploring the ways these spectral encounters create and hold open spaces for thinking enmeshments in more network-oriented ways, I work toward a more inclusive, more intimate and effusive, trans-substantial mode of engaging with social-political-material-narrative knowledge ecologies. The project revolves around a theory of spectral intimacy, or transformative affective and phenomenological enmeshment. It is very much informed by work of vii object-oriented ontology and speculative realist theorists, especially those who think in terms of enmeshment. The project is divided into three chapters. The first is about spectral embodiment, the second is about spectral relationality, and the third is about environmental spectrality. My primary texts are Walter Map's Courtiers’ Trifles (De Nugis Curialium), Gerald of Wales’s Topography of Ireland (Topographia Hibernica) and Journey through Wales (Itineraruim Cambriae), and Gervase of Tilbury's Recreation for an Emperor (Otia Imperialia). I am drawn to these three texts primarily because they are each collections of stories that are influenced by several different traditions—vernacular, romance, exemplar, travel narrative, and others. Each is a multi-genric enmeshment, offering proliferations of story encounters. Several of the tales I explore appear in more than one of these texts, offering me the opportunity to track the tale through diverse narrative networks. viii Table of Contents Dedication .......................................................................................................................... iv Acknowledgements ..............................................................................................................v Abstract of Dissertation .................................................................................................... vii Introduction: Encountering the Spectral ..............................................................................1 Chapter 1: Spectral Bodies.................................................................................................35 Chapter 2: Spectral Intimacies ...........................................................................................68 Chapter 3: Spectral Ecologies ..........................................................................................119 Bibliography ....................................................................................................................175 ix Introduction: Encountering the Spectral Many assert that they have often seen the band: but recently, it is said, in the first year of the coronation of our King Henry, it ceased to visit our land in force as before. In that year it was seen by many Welshmen to plunge into the Wye, the river of Hereford. From that hour the phantom journeying has ceased, as if they had transmitted their wanderings to us, and betaken themselves to repose. Yet if you are not willing to note how lamentable this unrest may be, not only in our own Court, but in almost all those of great princes, you will have to enjoin silence on me: I shall be quite satisfied, and it will assuredly be fairer. Will you listen for a brief space to an account of certain recent events? Walter Map, Courtiers’ Trifles, first distinction What are we to make of these stories of the dead and the undead, of ghosts and spectral being, and of magical thinking and uncanny events? Can these grave beliefs be written off as the products of unstable minds in highly

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