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Constructing the Female Subject in Anglo-Norman, Middle English and Medieval Irish Romance

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Constructing the Female Subject in Anglo-Norman, Middle English and Medieval Irish Romance Constructing the Female Subject in Anglo-Norman, Middle English and Medieval Irish Romance by Giselle Gos A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Centre for Medieval Studies University of Toronto © Copyright by Giselle Gos, 2012 Constructing the Female Subject in Anglo-Norman, Middle English and Medieval Irish Romance Giselle Gos Doctor of Philosophy Centre for Medieval Studies University of Toronto 2012 Abstract Female subjectivity remains a theoretical question in medieval romance, a genre in which the feminine and the female have often been found to exist primarily as foils for the production of masculinity and male identity, the Other against which the masculine hero is defined. Woman‘s agency and subjectivity are observed by critics most often in moments of transgression, subversion and resistance: as objects exchanged between men and signs of masculine prestige, female characters carve out their subjectivity, agency and identity in spite of, rather than with the support of, the ideological formations of romance. The following study makes a case for the existence of a female subject in medieval romance, analogous to the oft- examined male subject, a subject in both senses of the term: subjected to the dominant ideology, the subject is also enabled in its agency and authority by that ideology. I combine a feminist poststructuralist approach to discourse analysis with a comparative methodology, juxtaposing related romance texts in Anglo-Norman, Middle English and Medieval Irish under the premise that stress-points in ideological structures must be renegotiated when stories are revised and recast for new audiences. The principal texts considered are Roman de Horn, King Horn, Horn Childe and the Maiden Rimnild; Gamair‘s Haveloc episode, Lai ii d’Haveloc, Havelok the Dane; Gui de Warewic, Guy of Warwick, The Irish Lives of Guy of Warwick and Bevis of Hampton; The Adventures of Art, Son of Conn, Mongán’s Love for Dubh Lacha. Through close attention to textual change over time, a profound shift can be seen in the emergence of female characters which cease to be symbols, signs and objects but through a variety of discourses and narrative strategies are established as subjects in their own right. iii Acknowledgments I have a lot of people to thank. First of all, I want to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for the generous Canada Graduate Scholarship, through which a large portion of this degree was funded. Many thanks as well to the faculty and staff of the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto for their help and support throughout the many years. I would like to thank my parents, Silvana and Elci Gos, and my sister Gesseca Gos for their support and encouragement and for always believing I could do it. I am also grateful to Freyja for keeping me company during many long days of writing. I want to thank Susan McNair, Elvina Chow, and Randy Ornstein for over a decade of devoted friendship and emotional support. In addition to his constant support, I want to thank my husband Sébastien Rossignol for being so understanding and patient and for reminding me that scholarship should be fun even when it is hard. I think the process of going through a Ph.D. together is a bonding experience like no other and so I owe a special thanks to my medievalist friends and colleagues, especially Rachel Kessler, Jen Konieczny and Kristen Mills, who were always there with sound advice and shoulders to lean on. For help with proof-reading, I am grateful to Jen, as well as Emily Blakelock and Tadhg O‘Muiris, to whom I am grateful for insightful comments on the introduction, conclusion and my Irish chapters. I look forward to returning the favour. I am expecially indebted to Victoria Goddard, my out-of-town thesis buddy: I still can‘t believe she read everything! Her comments were invaluable, and constant support even more so. I would not have been able to finish this dissertation without her. My thesis committee was invaluable. I want to thank Ian McDougall, who was a great help in the early stages when Norse was still a chapter. I look forward to going back to his always detailed and helpful notes and comments in my post-doctoral work. Thanks as well to David Townsend, whose critical theory class changed the course of my dissertation and who was so helpful with the theoretical side of my thesis. I also want to thank the members of my defence committee, Will Robins, David Klausner and my external Ivana Djordjević, for their thoughtful questions, suggestions and detailed comments. Finally, last but not least, I owe special thanks to my two wonderful supervisors. My Middle English supervisor, Suzanne Akbari, I want to thank for being so helpful, insightful, demanding and encouraging, not only with my thesis, but the myriad of professional academic challenges. I have learned so much from her and I count myself so very lucky for having been her student. Ann Dooley, my Irish supervisor, has been so much more than a doctoral supervisor to me over the past ten years. I walked into her Celtic Culture class at eighteen years old, and it changed my life. Ten years later, here I am. I wouldn‘t be here without all of her inspiration, support, encouragement, knowledge and wisdom, warmth and kindness. I am so grateful to her for everything, for being not only my mentor, but also my friend. iv Table of Contents Abstract ...................................................................................................................................................ii Acknowledgments ................................................................................................................................. iv Table of Contents.................................................................................................................................... v Introduction: Introducing the Female Subject of Romance.................................................................... 1 Women in Medieval French and Middle English Romance.......................................................3 Gender and Genre: Romance as Ideology and Masculine Subject-formation..........................12 Subjectivity ...............................................................................................................................17 Comparative Methodology .......................................................................................................30 Part One: Romance in England............................................................................................................. 34 Chapter One: Desire, Agency and Women‘s Exchange in the Narratives of King Horn..................... 34 Manuscripts, Texts and Textual Relationships .........................................................................35 Sexual Politics and the ‗Wooing Woman‘: Gift-Exchange, Desire and Subjectivity ..............38 Attempting to Break the Rules: Anglo-Norman Rigmel‘s Transgressive Subjectivity...........47 Breaking the Rules? : The Subjectivities of Rimenhild and Rimnild in Middle English Horn Narratives..................................................................................................................................63 Hagiographic Interconnections .................................................................................................74 Chapter Two: ―Quen and levedi‖: Goldeboru‘s suffering, sainthood and sovereignty in Havelok the Dane............................................................................................................................................... 80 Manuscripts, Texts and Textual Relationships .........................................................................81 Argentille‘s Disappearance in Gaimar‘s Haveloc Narrative and the Lai d’Haveloc................85 ―Þe gest of Hauelok and of Goldeboru‖: Parallelism and Goldeboru‘s Subjectivity ...............90 ―Quen and levedi‖: Goldeboru‘s Formal Access to Power ......................................................97 Wisdom, Piety, Chastity and Suffering: Goldeboru‘s Hagiographic Life ..............................101 Chapter Three: Countess of Warwick: Felice‘s Penitence, Piety and Praise in Gui de Warewic and Guy of Warwick ........................................................................................................................... 114 Introduction: What‘s at stake in the story of Felice? ..............................................................114 Texts, Manuscripts and Comparative Methodology...............................................................117 Gender and Subjectivity in Alfred Ewert‘s edition of Gui .....................................................123 Felice‘s Subjectivity ...............................................................................................................134 Translation and Transformation in the Middle English Versions of Guy of Warwick ...........138 ―In all the world ys none here pere‖: Felice‘s Praise and Piety in the Later Middle English Versions of Guy ......................................................................................................................158 Part Two: Romance in Ireland ............................................................................................................ 178 Interlude: Romance and Rómánsaíochta in Hiberno-Norman Ireland ............................................... 178 Chapter Four: Translating Romance in Hiberno-Norman Ireland....................................................
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