DOCSLIB.ORG

Towards a Poetics of Marvellous Spaces in Old and Middle English Narrative

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Towards a Poetics of Marvellous Spaces in Old and Middle English Narrative Towards A Poetics of Marvellous Spaces in Old and Middle English Narrative by Ioana Alexandra Bolintineanu A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for Doctor of Philosophy Centre for Medieval Studies University of Toronto © Copyright by Ioana Alexandra Bolintineanu, 2012 Towards A Poetics of Marvellous Spaces in Old and Middle English Narrative Ioana Alexandra Bolintineanu Doctor of Philosophy Centre for Medieval Studies University of Toronto 2012 Abstract From the eighth to the fourteenth century, places of wonder and dread appear in a wide variety of genres in Old and Middle English: epics, lays, romances, saints’ lives, travel narratives, marvel collections, visions of the afterlife. These places appear in narratives of the other world, a term which in Old and Middle English texts refers to the Christian afterlife: Hell, Purgatory, even Paradise can be fraught with wonder, danger, and the possibility of harm. But in addition to the other world, there are places that are not theologically separate from the human world, but that are nevertheless both marvellous and horrifying: the monster-mere in Beowulf, the Faerie kingdom of Sir Orfeo, the demon-ridden Vale Perilous in Mandeville’s Travels, or the fearful landscape of the Green Chapel in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Fraught with horror or the possibility of harm, these places are profoundly different from the presented or implied home world of the text. My dissertation investigates how Old and Middle English narratives create places of wonder and dread; how they situate these places metaphysically between the world of living mortals and the world of the afterlife; how they furnish these places with dangerous topography and monstrous inhabitants, as well as with motifs, with tropes, and with thematic concerns that signal their marvellous and fearful nature. ii I argue that the heart of this poetics of marvellous spaces is displacement. Their wonder and dread comes from boundaries that these places blur and cross, from the resistance of these places to being known or mapped, and from the deliberate distancing between these places and the home of their texts. This overarching concern with displacement encourages the migration of iconographic motifs, tropes, and themes across genre boundaries and theological categories. iii Acknowledgements It is such a pleasure to acknowledge the guidance and help that I have received from so many exceptional people during the course of this project. My thanks, first of all, to Andy Orchard, my advisor, for his astonishing erudition, unstinting support, and high expectations. I was sure, in the beginning of this project, that my impression of his omniscience about Old English was youthful naiveté and that eventually I would bring him a question he could not answer; so far, I have not found that question. I am also grateful to my dissertation committee, Antonette diPaolo Healey and Suzanne Conklin Akbari. I can never thank them enough for their cheerful encouragement, their generous engagement with my work, their insights and helpful advice. I am also extremely grateful to Ian McDougall for reading the dissertation and offering such interesting questions and comments, and to my external examiner, Mark C. Amodio, whose insights, generous comments, and searching questions made my dissertation defence so much more fruitful and enjoyable a process than I could have ever hoped for. My debt of gratitude to Professor Healey goes much farther back, for she introduced me to the study of Old English words and Anglo-Saxon culture when I was still a high school student. Before I even began my university studies, she opened a new world of learning and embodied, through unfailing kindness, curiosity, imagination, and relentless logical rigour, the ideal of a scholar. I am so grateful for her support throughout my dissertation, in times of doubt and anxious floundering, in times of happy researching and writing, and in the time just before my daughter’s birth, when she ordered me to stop dissertating and start stocking up on sleep. My warm thanks go out to Judith Deitch, who taught me how to read Old English, introduced me to the awesomeness of Old English poetry, and gave me encouragement and excellent advice throughout my studies; to Will Robins, for an enthralling Chaucer course that iv accelerated my slide into medieval scholarship; to Caroll Balot, for her kind mentorship and teaching advice; to Sabine Süsstrunk, for so hospitably offering me excellent writing advice, encouragement, adoptive supervisorship, and a “study home” during my year in Switzerland; to Fabienne Michelet, for generously reading and commenting on portions of this dissertation. I am enormously grateful to Alice Cooley, for her staunch support, good advice, mind- clearing questions, nonsense-eradication capabilities, and amazing friendship; to David Clark, for so many midnight-oil-burning discussions that inspired this project; to Bronwen Moore, Leslie Carscadden, and James Carscadden, for needful sanity checks along the way. I am grateful to my parents, who raised me with so much love in a house full of books, who filled my childhood with fantastic stories, and who first set my feet on the path of learning; and to my brother, who shared first the childhood stories, and then the trials and tribulations of an academic career. And I am grateful beyond words to my husband, Francisco, for his generous support and patience, his faith in this project, his love that sustains me in this and in all other endeavours; and to my daughter Sofia, simply for herself. v Table of Contents Introduction: A Map of Wonder .................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: The Prisoners of Faerie and the Inmates of Hell ........................................................ 22 Chapter 2: Declarations of Unknowing in Old English ............................................................... 63 Chapter 3: Spatial Indeterminacy in Middle English ................................................................. 130 Chapter 4: The Shadow of Paradise ........................................................................................... 180 Conclusion: Haunted by the Other World ................................................................................. 243 Works Cited ................................................................................................................................ 276 vi Introduction: A Map of Wonder Medieval world maps place marvels and monsters at the round world’s imagined edges. Take, for instance, the famous Hereford map of the world, created in the thirteenth century.1 The Hereford map unfolds the earth’s geography and history on twelve square metres of vellum. Jerusalem is at the centre; marvels and monsters crowd into the margins. The Earthly Paradise sits at the very top of the map, in the uttermost East. The monstrous nations, from blemyae to sciopods, march along the southernmost edge. Amazons, griffins, and the cannibal nations of Gog and Magog populate the extreme North. In the words of a fourteenth-century historian, Ranulph Higden, “At the farthest reaches of the world often occur new marvels and wonders, as though Nature plays with greater freedom secretly at the edges of the world than she does openly and nearer us in the middle of it.”2 To judge by the world maps, the centre is the place of normality, of civilized humankind; the edges are the place of marvels and monsters, of the supernatural and the uncanny. Yet as soon as we enter the world of medieval English narrative, this neat partition dissolves. In the Old English Beowulf, the monsters’ home is not at the world’s edge; on the contrary, it is “not far from here by the count of miles”--not far removed, in physical terms, from the home of humankind, Heorot. In the Middle English Sir Orfeo, the perilous realm of Faerie lies both far and near the human world. Orfeo himself reaches Faerie by a long, weary road 1 Harvey, Mappa Mundi: The Hereford World Map 1-11. For an overview of medieval mappae mundi, their structure, and their uses, see Woodward, “Reality, Symbolism, Time, and Space in Medieval World Maps,” 510-52. For the traditional representation of marvelous and monstrous races, see also Friedman, The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought. For the theological and cartographic place of the Earthly Paradise in the Middle Ages, see Scafi, Mapping Paradise: Heaven on Earth in the Middle Ages. 2 Ranulph Higden, cited in Daston and Clarke, Wonders and the Order of Nature 25. 1 through the wilderness; yet his wife Heurodys is first taken to Faerie in a dream. In the Ebstorf world map, we see Paradise, the lost Eden, at the top of the map in the easternmost corner of the world. In the mid-fourteenth century, the narrator of Mandeville’s Travels assures his readers that “no lyvynge man may go to Paradys,” to the lost Eden in the uttermost East of the world, because of all the obstacles, physical and supernatural, that bar the way.3 Yet in the legend of Saint Patrick’s Purgatory, current and widely popular across Europe since the twelfth century, the way to the Earthly Paradise lies not through India, Prester John’s Kingdom, and the dark lands beyond them, but through a cave in Lough Dergh, Ireland, and after that through the regions of punishment where the dead endure torment for their sins.4 In yet other visions, the way to the regions of the afterlife transcends earthly geography altogether. Pilgrims such
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Raquel Prado Romanillos1
    Raquel Prado Romanillos1 "EVEN IF THEY CALL US CRAZY": A DE (DEVELOPMENT EDUCATION) EXPERIENCE BASED ON CLASSICAL LITERATURE TEXTS Abstract By means of this article I just want to share an experience on how to apply the global gaze (Education for Development, DE) to the daily routine of a Spanish Language and Literature class, based on an interdisciplinary project carried out together with the teachers of Mathematics and Biology of 3rd Grade ESO (Compulsory Secondary Education). The project addressed the values of environmental care and global citizenship. The starting point for Language and Literature class was the topic of the "locus amoenus", the myth of the four ages in Ovid's Metamorphoses, and fragments of Don Quixote of La Mancha. Key-words Literature, interdisciplinary project, environment, global citizens. 1 Raquel Prado Romanillos has worked as a Secondary Education teacher of Language and Literature since 1998. As a volunteer from a young age, she has taken part in development projects both in her hometown, Madrid (in toy and leisure libraries in areas of Vallecas), and abroad (neighbourhoods on the outskirts of Havana and in Sahrawi camps in Algeria). At present, her efforts are focused on her work as a teacher at María Reina de las Hijas de Jesús School, in the neighbourhood of Orcasur (Madrid), the educational project of which is, in itself, a community development project. Since 2012, she has coordinated the "Global Cities" project in the school, through which the way to introduce a more human and curriculum-committed perspective is beginning to gain ground and to be implemented.
    [Show full text]
  • THE MYTH of ORPHEUS and EURYDICE in WESTERN LITERATURE by MARK OWEN LEE, C.S.B. B.A., University of Toronto, 1953 M.A., Universi
    THE MYTH OF ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE IN WESTERN LITERATURE by MARK OWEN LEE, C.S.B. B.A., University of Toronto, 1953 M.A., University of Toronto, 1957 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OP PHILOSOPHY in the Department of- Classics We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA September, i960 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the Head of my Department or by his representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Department of The University of British Columbia Vancouver 8, Canada. ©he Pttttrerstt^ of ^riitsl} (Eolimtbta FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES PROGRAMME OF THE FINAL ORAL EXAMINATION FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY of MARK OWEN LEE, C.S.B. B.A. University of Toronto, 1953 M.A. University of Toronto, 1957 S.T.B. University of Toronto, 1957 WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 1960 AT 3:00 P.M. IN ROOM 256, BUCHANAN BUILDING COMMITTEE IN CHARGE DEAN G. M. SHRUM, Chairman M. F. MCGREGOR G. B. RIDDEHOUGH W. L. GRANT P. C. F. GUTHRIE C. W. J. ELIOT B. SAVERY G. W. MARQUIS A. E. BIRNEY External Examiner: T. G. ROSENMEYER University of Washington THE MYTH OF ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE IN WESTERN Myth sometimes evolves art-forms in which to express itself: LITERATURE Politian's Orfeo, a secular subject, which used music to tell its story, is seen to be the forerunner of the opera (Chapter IV); later, the ABSTRACT myth of Orpheus and Eurydice evolved the opera, in the works of the Florentine Camerata and Monteverdi, and served as the pattern This dissertion traces the course of the myth of Orpheus and for its reform, in Gluck (Chapter V).
    [Show full text]
  • Into the Wild: the Role of the Forest in Sir Orfeo, Sir Perceval of Galles And
    Into the Wild: The Role of the Forest in Sir Orfeo , Sir Perceval of Galles and Ywain and Gawain Annick Pin • 0013064 • Docteraal Thesis • Utrecht University • August 2008 First Supervisor: dr. Erik Kooper • Second Supervisor: dr. Thea Summerfi eld Into the Wild: The Role of the Forest in Sir Orfeo , Sir Perceval of Galles and Ywain and Gawain Annick Pin • 0013064 • Docteraal Thesis • English Language & Culture • August 2008 First Supervisor: dr. Erik Kooper • Second Supervisor: dr. Thea Summerfield For my parents TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE.................................................................................................. VII INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................ 1 CHAPTER 1: THE ROMANCE FOREST................................................ 3 § 1.1. INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................... 3 § 1.2. THE ROMANCE FOREST ........................................................................................... 3 § 1.3. THE ADVENTUROUS FOREST ................................................................................... 6 § 1.4. THE TESTING OF CHIVALRY .................................................................................... 9 § 1.5. TRANSFORMING THE WILD ................................................................................... 12 § 1.6. CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................ 17 CHAPTER
    [Show full text]
  • 1 4 Henry Stead Swinish Classics
    Pre-print version of chapter 4 in Stead & Hall eds. (2015) Greek and Roman Classics and the British Struggle for Social Reform (Bloomsbury). 4 Henry Stead Swinish classics; or a conservative clash with Cockney culture On 1 November 1790 Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France was published in England. The counter-revolutionary intervention of a Whig politician who had previously championed numerous progressive causes provided an important rallying point for traditionalist thinkers by expressing in plain language their concerns 1 Pre-print version of chapter 4 in Stead & Hall eds. (2015) Greek and Roman Classics and the British Struggle for Social Reform (Bloomsbury). about the social upheaval across the channel. From the viewpoint of pro- revolutionaries, Burke’s Reflections gave shape to the conservative forces they were up against; its publication provoked a ‘pamphlet war’, which included such key radical responses to the Reflections as Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Man (1790) and Tom Paine’s The Rights of Man (1791).1 In Burke’s treatise, he expressed a concern for the fate of French civilisation and its culture, and in so doing coined a term that would haunt his counter-revolutionary campaign. Capping his deliberation about what would happen to French civilisation following the overthrow of its nobility and clergy, which he viewed as the twin guardians of European culture, he wrote, ‘learning will be cast into the mire, and trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude’. This chapter asks what part the Greek and Roman classics played in the cultural war between British reformists and conservatives in the periodical press of the late 1810s and early 1820s.
    [Show full text]
  • The Significant Other: a Literary History of Elves
    1616796596 The Significant Other: a Literary History of Elves By Jenni Bergman Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Cardiff School of English, Communication and Philosophy Cardiff University 2011 UMI Number: U516593 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U516593 Published by ProQuest LLC 2013. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 DECLARATION This work has not previously been accepted in substance for any degree and is not concurrently submitted on candidature for any degree. Signed .(candidate) Date. STATEMENT 1 This thesis is being submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of PhD. (candidate) Date. STATEMENT 2 This thesis is the result of my own independent work/investigation, except where otherwise stated. Other sources are acknowledged by explicit references. Signed. (candidate) Date. 3/A W/ STATEMENT 3 I hereby give consent for my thesis, if accepted, to be available for photocopying and for inter-library loan, and for the title and summary to be made available to outside organisations. Signed (candidate) Date. STATEMENT 4 - BAR ON ACCESS APPROVED I hereby give consent for my thesis, if accepted, to be available for photocopying and for inter-library loan after expiry of a bar on accessapproved bv the Graduate Development Committee.
    [Show full text]
  • Shakespeare and the Tree Catalogue in Early Modern Literature
    ISSN 2249-4529 Lapis Lazuli An International Literary Journal WWW.PINTERSOCIETY.COM VOL.6 / NO.1-2/SPRING, AUTUMN 2016 Shakespeare and the Tree Catalogue in Early Modern Literature Nivedita Basu* Abstract: This paper is going to discuss what has been termed as the 'tree catalogue' and its significance for the Renaissance texts. I would attempt to look at Shakespeare's comedies alongside The Old Arcadia and The Faerie Queene in order to find out the various ways in which catalogue of flora in the early modern period could become a site for articulating complex set of cultural and symbolic values. Through a focused study of the densely figurative language of these texts may help us to rethink the human-centered worldview of Renaissance humanism. While generally forming the backdrop to conflict between human protagonists, nature is rendered as invisible and non-significant. However, as my paper would attempt to show through a discussion of Thomas Hariott's famous travel account how a detailed inventory of trees could often voice the nascent colonial drive of the Renaissance intellectual. At other times, through traditional associations derived from classical mythology, scripture, and popular folklore, trees and forests could underpin the protagonist's psychological and sexual yearnings. Reading certain instances of the tree catalogue in early modern literature reveals how the nature versus culture binary is becoming increasingly unsustainable. Key Words: Shakespeare, Thomas Hariott, Tree Catalogue, Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, Faerie Queene, Old Arcadia, Colonialism * Assistant Professor, Department of English, Kirori Mal College, University of Delhi. 9 Lapis Lazuli An International Literary Journal The poetic device sometimes referred to as a tree catalogue goes back to classical literature.
    [Show full text]
  • Siân Adiseshiah University of Lincoln, UK [email protected] The
    Siân Adiseshiah University of Lincoln, UK [email protected] The unbridgeable bridge to utopia: Howard Brenton’s Greenland Written and performed just after Thatcher’s third election victory in Britain in 1987, Howard Brenton’s Greenland is an isolated example durinG this period of a Left playwright’s attempts to represent utopia on staGe. Unlike the savaGely satirical approaches of other Left plays around the same time, such as Brenton and David Hare’s Pravda and Caryl Churchill’s Serious Money (both sardonic travesties of the riGht-winG press and the City of London in Thatcher’s Britain) Greenland attempts to reconstruct a utopian future. The second act of Greenland partially resembles a utopian space usually encountered in a conventional utopian narrative, and in doinG so, has led some commentators to dismiss the play as tedious and lackinG in dramatic interest. Its lack of conflict and the contentment of its inhabitants have led to it being described as static and dull. This interpretation has brouGht with it a readinG that concurs with the character, Severan-Severan, whose view is that misery and sufferinG are essential to the human condition and that liberation is a living death. However, this approach neglects a more complex engagement with utopia that can be traced in the play. Spectators of the play - along with the non-utopian character, Joan - respond to Greenland in a way that can be illuminated by Frederic Jameson’s idea of the ‘terror of obliteration’. This paper will explore ways in which Greenland exposes psycho-political barriers to utopia, barriers that frame the spectator’s view of the play, and it will also reveal ways in which bridGes to utopia are constantly at stake.
    [Show full text]
  • Revelation 21:1-22:5: an Early Christian Locus Amoenus? Fergus
    Revelation 21:1-22:5: An Early Christian Locus Amoenus? Fergus J King D Th (University of South Africa) Dept of Philosophy, Religious Studies & Theology University of Newcastle, University Drive Callaghan NSW 2305 [email protected] Keywords Pastoral* Revelation* Johannine Literature *Apocalyptic* locus amoenus*eschatology ABSTRACT The visons of the Heavenly Jerusalem (Rev. 21) have a utopian feel. This essay suggests that ancient writers from a Graeco-Roman background might have read these visons through the lens of the locus amoenus (pleasant place)- a utopian prototype. Whilst associated primarily with pastoral poetry, the motif also served wider theological and philosophical purposes in the late Roman Republic and early Imperial periods and had spread beyond purely literary confines. The genre also engaged with philosophical, theological and eschatological themes. Thus engaging with Revelation 21 as an locus amoenus, as a contextually appropriate form, may have served as a jumping-off point into the less familiar realms of Judaic eschatological symbolism. Lastly, it is suggested that the appearance of the motif within what would become the Scriptures of emerging Christianity may provide a reason for the later more explicit developments of the genre in patristic writing. 1 Introduction The literary character of Revelation embraces many different types and genres. In this article, it is suggested that the literary motif of the locus amoenus, found predominantly, but not exclusively, in pastoral poetry provides a literary form which may be helpful in analyzing the visions of the heavenly Jerusalem given in Revelation 21-22. It is worth, as a preliminary question asking whether it is appropriate to explore revelation for a Graeco-Roman literary motif.
    [Show full text]
  • The Significance of Sir Orfeo's Self-Exile
    THE SIGNIFICANCE OF SIR ORFEO'S SELF-EXILE By KENNETH R. R. GROS LOUIS Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/res/article/XVIII/71/245/1537229 by guest on 02 October 2021 ^ I ^HE second section of Sir Orfeo, says A. J. Bliss in his standard X modern edition of the poem, 'tells of Orfeo's long search for Heurodis, and of his eventual success.'1 We may be surprised to hear that Orpheus succeeds, but we expect him to make a 'long search' for his wife. We know that in Ovid, Virgil, and Boethius,2 the primary sources of the Orpheus story in the Middle Ages, Orpheus enters the underworld to attempt the recovery of Eurydice, who has been fatally stung by a serpent. If we have read about the Celtic influences on Sir Orfeo, we know that in its Irish analogue, 'The Wooing of Etain', the hero Eochaid retrieves his wife by leading an army to the mound of her fairy-abductor. 3 We may also be aware that in 'King Orfeo', the ballad derived from the romance-lay, a 'lady was carried off by fairies; the king went in quest of her'.4 Indeed, the more information we have about Orpheus-type legends—in North American Indian tribes, in the Pacific islands, in Japan, in India,s the more certain we are that Orfeo must undertake a 'long search for Heurodis'. We are so well conditioned, in other words, to having Orphic husbands boldly seek their wives in dark and mysterious regions that we accept Bliss's statement (and he is, of course, simply reporting the 'obvious') without a second thought.
    [Show full text]
  • Reading Landscapes in Medieval British Romance
    READING LANDSCAPES IN MEDIEVAL BRITISH ROMANCE DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Andrew Murray Richmond, M. Phil. Graduate Program in English The Ohio State University 2015 Dissertation Committee: Dr. Lisa J. Kiser, Adviser Dr. Richard Firth Green Dr. Ethan Knapp Dr. Karen Winstead Copyright by Andrew Murray Richmond 2015 ABSTRACT My dissertation establishes a new framework with which to interpret the textual landscapes and ecological details that permeate late-medieval British romances from the period of c.1300 – c. 1500, focusing on the ways in which such landscapes reflect the diverse experiences of medieval readers and writers. In particular, I identify and explain fourteenth- and fifteenth-century English and Scottish conceptions of the relationships between literary worlds and “real-world” locations. In my first section, I analyze the role of topography and the management of natural resources in constructing a sense of community in Sir Isumbras, William of Palerne, and Havelok the Dane, and explain how abandoned or ravaged agricultural landscapes in Sir Degrevant and the Tale of Gamelyn betray anxieties about the lack of human control over the English landscape in the wake of population decline caused by civil war, the Black Death, and the Little Ice Age. My next section examines seashores and waterscapes in Sir Amadace, Emaré, Sir Eglamour of Artois, the Awntyrs off Arthure, and the Constance romances of Chaucer and Gower. Specifically, I explain how a number of romances present the seaside as a simultaneously inviting and threatening space whose multifaceted nature as a geographical, political, and social boundary embodies the complex range of meanings embedded in the Middle English concept of “play” – a word that these texts often link with the seashore.
    [Show full text]
  • Fairies, Kingship, and the British Past in Walter Map's De Nugis Curialium and Sir Orfeo
    UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Fairies, Kingship, and the British Past in Walter Map's De Nugis Curialium and Sir Orfeo Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8zh4b6x4 Author Schwieterman, Patrick Joseph Publication Date 2010 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Fairies, Kingship, and the British Past in Walter Map’s De Nugis Curialium and Sir Orfeo by Patrick Joseph Schwieterman A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Maura Nolan, Chair Professor Jennifer Miller Professor John Lindow Fall 2010 Fairies, Kingship, and the British Past in Walter Map’s De Nugis Curialium and Sir Orfeo © 2010 by Patrick Joseph Schwieterman Abstract Fairies, Kingship, and the British Past in Walter Map’s De Nugis Curialium and Sir Orfeo by Patrick Joseph Schwieterman Doctor of Philosophy in English University of California, Berkeley Professor Maura Nolan, Chair My dissertation focuses on two fairy narratives from medieval Britain: the tale of Herla in Walter Map’s twelfth-century De Nugis Curialium, and the early fourteenth-century romance Sir Orfeo. I contend that in both texts, fairies become intimately associated with conceptions of the ancient British past, and, more narrowly, with the idea of a specifically insular kingship that seeks its legitimization within that past. In Chapter One, I argue that Map’s longer version of the Herla narrative is his own synthesis of traditional materials, intended to highlight the continuity of a notion of British kingship that includes the pygmy king, Herla and Henry II.
    [Show full text]
  • 'Fairy' in Middle English Romance
    'FAIRY' IN MIDDLE ENGLISH ROMANCE Chera A. Cole A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD at the University of St Andrews 2014 Full metadata for this item is available in St Andrews Research Repository at: http://research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk/ Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/10023/6388 This item is protected by original copyright This item is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence ‘FAIRY’ IN MIDDLE ENGLISH ROMANCE Chera A. Cole A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the School of English in the University of St Andrews 17 December 2013 i ABSTRACT My thesis, ‘Fairy in Middle English romance’, aims to contribute to the recent resurgence of interest in the literary medieval supernatural by studying the concept of ‘fairy’ as it is presented in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Middle English romances. This thesis is particularly interested in how the use of ‘fairy’ in Middle English romances serves as an arena in which to play out ‘thought-experiments’ that test anxieties about faith, gender, power, and death. My first chapter considers the concept of fairy in its medieval Christian context by using the romance Melusine as a case study to examine fairies alongside medieval theological explorations of the nature of demons. I then examine the power dynamic of fairy/human relationships and the extent to which having one partner be a fairy affects these explorations of medieval attitudes toward gender relations and hierarchy. The third chapter investigates ‘fairy-like’ women enchantresses in romance and the extent to which fairy is ‘performed’ in romance.
    [Show full text]