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Time's Reckoning TIME’S RECKONING: TIME, VALUE AND THE MERCANTILE CLASS IN LATE MEDIEVAL ENGLISH LITERATURE DISSERTATION Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Dawn Simmons Walts, M.A. ********* The Ohio State University 2007 Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor Lisa Kiser, Adviser Professor Richard Firth Green ___________________________ Associate Professor Ethan Knapp Adviser Graduate Program in English Copyright by Dawn Simmons Walts 2007 ABSTRACT In Book 11 of The Confessions, St. Augustine asks the now famous question, “What, then, is time?” But whereas St. Augustine is interested in defining time, I am more interested in determining man’s relationship to time. The anonymous author of the early-fifteenth century treatise Dives and Pauper makes clear that God created the celestial clockwork to serve man. Man is not to serve time, he writes, but rather, time was created to serve man. Analyzing three late medieval English texts (the York Corpus Christi Cycle, Pearl, and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales), my project examines how the practice of time, who reckons time and how it is reckoned, in late medieval English literature serves as a way to measure the status of the rising mercantile class. The purpose of my introductory chapter is twofold. First, I provide a historical overview of methods practiced and instruments used to tell time in late medieval England. This section pays particular attention to the material culture of time-telling and questions the significance scholarship has traditionally placed on the introduction of mechanical clock time to England. Second, I trace the main approaches to the cultural history of time in modern scholarship. Specifically, I explain how my work draws upon and departs from French historian Jacque Le Goff’s famous thesis which views “merchant’s time” in direct competition with “Church time.” My readings of the primary texts, supported by historical evidence, indicate that “Church time” and “merchant’s time” were not mutually exclusive ways of understanding and using time, as Le Goff suggests. Rather members of the Church ii profited from the increasing commodification of time, practices criticized by the anti- clerical literature of the day, and merchants employed religious notions of time to secure their superior social status. As a civic event performed to mark and celebrate a religious festival, the York Cycle was directed by the powerful merchants’ guild of York. The work of the cycle— redemptive, practical, and theatrical—is inextricably bound to time. While all late medieval Corpus Christi Cycles are organized around a typological time-scheme (based on the life of Christ), the York Cycle in particular invokes the theme of time as central to the issue of labor and production. My analysis of the York Cycle’s temporal discourse, particularly the conflation of religious time with quotidian time, highlights the way in which the reckoning of time is used to assert rank and status, especially as that status relates to the mercantile class. Perhaps no other poem from late medieval England better illustrates the relationship between the transience of human life and the permanence of spiritual salvation than the Middle English poem Pearl. Meditating on the death of a young child, the poem shifts between descriptions of a mutable earthly realm and an eternal heavenly realm. As the dream vision progresses through different locales, the poet imbues the narrative with landscapes, seasons, temporally loaded biblical allusions, and the medieval calendar scheme. In Pearl, time reveals itself in space. As the Pearl-poet employs various complex temporal systems and symbols, he links the religious and the economic, the spiritual and the social. In so doing, the poem addresses the unsettled status of the rising mercantile class in late medieval England. In linking, and at times conflating, the iii earthly and heavenly systems, the Pearl poet reveals an important underlying principle: the relationship between social rank and time. As author of A Treatise on the Astrolabe and controller of customs in the port of London, Chaucer was intimately aware of time’s social value. Examining the Miller’s and Shipman’s Tales, this chapter argues that the ability to reckon time functions as a means of asserting, and sometimes undermining, characters’ social status, especially the increasingly wealthy mercantile and artisan class. For instance, the clerk in the Miller’s Tale owns an astrolabe and can, reportedly, read what the stars portend. The Shipman’s monk carries a portable sundial and possesses a profitable knowledge of the commercial value of timing exchanges. In both tales, the tricks hatched hinge on the trickster’s ability to read time and thereby dupe two unsuspecting husbands. My analysis of these texts reveals not only an increasing commodification of time during this period, but also a new understanding of how that commodity could be translated into social status, specifically in regards to the rising mercantile class. These texts show how late medieval English writers employed time-reckoning to function both as a signifier of social relations and the tool by which those relationships were established. iv Dedicated to Nick Howe v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am unable to thank all of the people to whom I am indebted for the completion of this project. Yet, I need to at least try to express my gratitude to the big ones. I thank my adviser, Lisa Kiser, for her continual support and encouragement at every stage of this project. Thank you for your guidance and for reading my work with such care. I could not have asked for a better reader of my work. I also thank the remaining members of my committee, Ethan Knapp, whose detailed written and oral feedback on each chapter substantially helped shape the project, and Richard Firth Green, whose interest and excitement were always welcome. I also wish to thank all of the kind people who provided encouragement and feedback on sections of the dissertation for no other reason than I asked and they were willing. All of the panelists who presented on New Chaucer Society panel “Time, Value, and Measure in Chaucer’s Art and World,” Carloyn Collette, Nancy Bradbury, Cara Hersh, Eleanor Bradbury Johnson, Glending Olson, Dan Ransom, and Robert Epstein were so generous with their time and support. I appreciate all of the invaluable feedback they provided for my discussion of the Miller’s Tale. I am also thankful for the early feedback I received from my dissertation writing group comprised of Kyoung-Min Han, Mark Rankin, and Jefferson Slagle. vi I am so grateful for the wonderful training I received from my professors at San Francisco State University. My Latin professors, Pamela Vaughn and Pamela Morgan, taught me so much more than how to conjugate verbs; they taught me how to think like a scholar and challenged me to define what kind of scholar I wanted to be. Emma Lipton introduced me to medieval drama and prepared me well for my doctoral work. Finally, my advisor, George Tuma taught me that there is a place for compassion in the halls of academia. The most patient professor I have ever had the privilege of studying under, it is clear why his students sometimes refer to him as St. George. I hope this dissertation is worthy of all the support and kindness he has shown me over the years. I would also like to thank my good friend Nancy Pine for always returning my phone calls and e-mails so I could “talk out” some of my sections. Mostly, she provided me with an excuse to take a break when I most needed it and encouraged me to follow my gut and back it up. I am also grateful for all of the babysitters who freed up my afternoons for research and writing. I am especially proud of my boys, Matthew and Benjamin, for filling the house with an overwhelming sense of joy and play. Finally, I thank my husband, David Walts, for believing in me always. I am so grateful to have such an intelligent, patient, and supportive partner beside me. David, you inspire me to be greater than I am. Thank you. vii VITA July 27, 1970........................................................................Born – Long Beach, California 1994...................................................................................................................B.A. English Mercyhurst College Erie, Pennsylvania 2000.................................................................................................M.A. English Literature San Francisco State University San Francisco, California 2000 – 2007............................................. Graduate Teaching and Administrative Assistant The Ohio State University Columbus, Ohio FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: English viii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT....................................................................................................................... ii DEDICATION....................................................................................................................v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ............................................................................................... vi VITA................................................................................................................................ viii INTRODUCTION THE MATTER OF TIME IN LATE MEDIEVAL ENGLISH LITERATURE…….1 CHAPTER 1 STAGING TIME: REGULATING STATUS IN THE YORK CORPUS CHRISTI CYCLE…………………………………………………………………………………..23 CHAPTER 2 TIME’S BOUNDARIES: THE ENDS OF TIME IN PEARL
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