Grief, Gender and Mourning in Medieval North Atlantic Literature

Grief, Gender and Mourning in Medieval North Atlantic Literature by Kristen Mills A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Centre for Medieval Studies University of Toronto © Copyright by Kristen Mills, 2013 Grief, Gender, and Mourning in Medieval North Atlantic Literature Kristen Mills Doctor of Philosophy Centre for Medieval Studies University of Toronto 2013 Abstract This dissertation explores the relationship between grief, cultural constructs of gender, and mourning behaviour in the literatures of medieval Britain, Ireland, Scandinavia, and Iceland. The Introduction situates my analysis within an ongoing conversation about the relationship between gender and mourning in classical, medieval, and modern cultures. In the first two chapters I consider the representation of mourning men in medieval texts, arguing that male grief has been neglected as a field of study, and that male weeping and lament in these cultures are incorrectly assumed by modern scholarship to have been considered effeminate. Through a careful reading of primary sources, I argue that there was a broader range of mourning behaviour available to men in these cultures than is typically assumed to have been the case. My third chapter, “Perilous Grief,” is a comparative analysis of the gendering of death from grief and suicide. I consider the portrayals of male and female deaths related to bereavement, focusing on the contexts in which suicide and death from grief occur. I conclude this chapter with a discussion of the relationship between emotional distress and the gendered body, demonstrating that the somatic response to negative emotions is heavily gendered in medieval Scandinavian texts. In female bodies the negative emotion remains centralized in the ii chest, often causing death by bursting, while male bodies swell outwards in their grief, permitting release. The only men who die from grief in these texts are presented as old and infirm. In contrast, medieval Irish texts show the same range of somatic responses to grief in both women and men. My final chapter, “Envisioning the Afterlife,” offers a sustained comparison of the development of the idea of the afterlife and the otherworld in medieval Irish and Norse literature. I argue that the connection between female supernatural figures, death, and the erotic is strongly established in Old Irish and Old Norse-Icelandic texts, and that the pairing of the macabre and the erotic in these traditions is related to a well-established association between female sexuality and the pollution of death occurring in many cultures. iii Acknowledgments First of all, I want to thank the School of Graduate Studies, which funded a large portion of my graduate work through Open Fellowships and the Doctoral Completion Award. Many thanks are owed to the faculty and staff of the Centre for Medieval Studies, especially to Grace Desa, who consistently creates order out of chaos. I would like to thank my parents, Christie and Charles Mills, my siblings, Charlie and Hailey Mills, and my grandparents, Ethel and Charles Thomas, for their unwavering love, support, and encouragement. I especially want to thank my parents for nurturing my childhood love of books, and for paying the small fortune in late fees that I incurred at the local library (like mother, like daughter...). I would also like to thank Elaine Meagher, whose friendship and generosity I have been privileged to enjoy since we met on the playground at the tender age of five. I want to thank the wonderful community of medievalists at CMS. I am especially grateful to Dan Brielmaier, “my friend in all things North Atlantic,” for countless hours spent in some of the best coffee shops in Toronto, translating, writing, and (last but not least) talking, about medieval literature and everything else. I want to thank Tadhg O’Muiris for countless hours spent in some of the worst pubs in Toronto, and for his unstinting conversation, good humour, and friendship. Along with many others, Jaclyn Piudik, Veronica Crookall, Colleen Butler, Chris Landon, Emily Blakelock, and Steffany Campbell brightened my time in Toronto. Thanks also to the current incarnation of the House of Cheese, Dan Brielmaier, Susannah Brower, and Beth Watkins, for helping to keep me sane in the liminal period between submitting and defending the thesis. Thanks also to the many new friends met in the last year. I owe a special debt to Giselle Gos. Without her friendship, support, advice, and encouragement, especially during the last two years of writing, I suspect this thesis would never have been completed. If my thesis has a midwife, it is Giselle, although fairy godmother might be a more appropriate designation. Great thanks are owed the members of my thesis committee, David Klausner and Ian McDougall, for the heroic levels of support, encouragement, and commentary they provided during the planning and writing stages. Great thanks are also owed to my external reader, Joe Harris, and my internal reader, Andy Orchard, for their insightful and helpful comments on the thesis. I am also grateful to Tom Hill and Wayne Harbert for introducing me to the wonders of Old English and Middle Welsh, and for their mentorship and friendship, both during and after my time as an undergraduate. Finally, I owe an incalculable debt to my supervisor. Ann Dooley’s kindness, generosity, and guidance have been a constant balm during this long and arduous process. Her mentorship went far beyond what could be expected, and I am grateful to have been her student and her friend. While writing on grief, loss, and change, the exchange between Caílte and Oisín when they contemplate the disbanding of their company has been much on my mind: These reminiscences caused a great silence to fall on them. Caílte then said, ‘Just as painful for us as these memories is the fact that the eighteen of us, the only survivors of that great and noble fellowship, must now part from one another.’ iv Oisín replied, ‘I swear there will be little fight or strength left in me when the others have gone.’1 Fortunately, technology has improved both communication and travel since Oisín and Caílte’s day, and I may look forward to many future encounters with my friends and colleagues. 1 Ann Dooley and Harry Roe, Tales of the Elders of Ireland, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 3-4. v Table of Contents ABSTRACT..............................................................................................................................................................II ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .......................................................................................................................................IV GENERAL INTRODUCTION................................................................................................................................ 1 TAMING GRIEF ...........................................................................................................................................................................1 OVERVIEW OF THESIS............................................................................................................................................................ 13 CHAPTER ONE.....................................................................................................................................................16 MOURNING MEN: MALE WEEPING AND LAMENTING IN MEDIEVAL IRELAND AND WALES .....16 MEN’S GRIEF IN MIDDLE WELSH TEXTS ........................................................................................................................... 18 Math, Owein, and Peredur.............................................................................................................................................. 19 Y Cynfeirdd............................................................................................................................................................................ 25 Y Gogynfeirdd a'r Cywyddwyr ...................................................................................................................................... 29 TO WEEP IRISH: MALE WEEPING AND LAMENT IN MEDIEVAL IRISH SOURCES........................................................ 43 CHAPTER TWO ...................................................................................................................................................67 MASCULINITY AND MOURNING IN MEDIEVAL SCANDINAVIA AND ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND 67 WEEPING IN THE MYTH OF BALDR’S DEATH AND SCANDINAVIAN ROYAL FUNERALS............................................. 66 MEN’S TEARS IN ANGLO-SAXON TEXTS............................................................................................................................. 95 Hroðgar’s Farewell............................................................................................................................................................ 96 Wolfish Weeping...............................................................................................................................................................108 CHAPTER THREE............................................................................................................................................. 114 PERILOUS GRIEF ............................................................................................................................................. 114 GRIEVING WOMEN IN IRISH SOURCES..............................................................................................................................120

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