Thinking through Time in the Middle English Romances Jennifer Reid Barton Bird Doctor of Philosophy University of York English and Related Literature March 2014 3 Abstract This thesis investigates how the Middle English romances use time as a framework for the shaping of individual identity. It uses linguistic and narrative analysis, with a consideration of context, to illuminate the romances’ portrayal of human experience in time, arguing that the romances are attuned to the shaping forces of agency, remembrance, and narrative structure. In this way, these texts stand as examples of reflective thought and identity formation. Via the exemplarity produced through ethical reading, romances equip their gentry and mercantile readership to reflect on their own identities with the romances as models. As its sources, this thesis uses a selection of Middle English romances focusing on the individual lifetime and preserved in manuscripts for household readership. The introduction will position the work within current scholarly interest in temporality, define views on romance audience, and propose a model of ethical reading, or ‘romance exemplarity’, which will shape an understanding of how medieval readers would have applied romance to themselves. Chapter One considers the ‘pastness’ of romance, and argues that the nostalgic effects of romance are crafted to foster a sense of continuity between the past and present, thereby overcoming resistance to change and channelling readers’ desire towards an exemplary model. Chapter Two examines how the romances use temporal models to structure personal remembrances of failure and rupture, and argues that the romances adopt temporalities from religious discourse to interrogate the intersections between spiritual and secular life. Chapter Three examines the use of the future tense in romance, whereby characters negotiate personal desire and social authority, fantasising a world in which social hierarchies merge with and support the desires of the protagonist. Chapter Four uses narrative theory to explore how romances articulate the relationship between human temporality and divine intervention, locating ethical puzzles which inscribe a narrative attempt to think through individual life confronting the omnitemporal power of God. Finally, the conclusion draws together the findings of the study to argue that temporal readings of romance are a neglected but necessary component in assessing the genre, and can contribute answers to ongoing debates in romance criticism, particularly where atemporal models of interpretation have traditionally prevailed. Temporality in romance vitally shapes the genre’s relation to other medieval discourses, its preoccupations, and its relationship with its audience. 5 Table of Contents Abstract ...................................................................................................................... 3 Table of Contents ....................................................................................................... 5 Acknowledgements .................................................................................................... 7 Author’s Declaration .................................................................................................. 9 Introduction .............................................................................................................. 11 Chapter 1: The Nostalgic Past of Romance ............................................................. 45 Chapter 2: The Autobiographical Past in Romance ................................................. 69 Chapter 3: Agency and Authority in Shaping the Future ...................................... 101 Chapter 4: Temporal Narrative Structures and Agency ......................................... 139 Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 171 Abbreviations ......................................................................................................... 195 Works Consulted: Primary Sources ....................................................................... 197 Works Consulted: Secondary Sources ................................................................... 203 Works Consulted: Databases and Online Sources ................................................. 229 7 Acknowledgements First of all, I must give my sincere thanks to my supervisor, Nicola McDonald, who championed this project from the beginning. She gave much valuable insight with great patience. I never had to complain of a supervisor who was inaccessible or aloof, because she never begrudged me her time. In addition, I am grateful to Helen Fulton for her input and encouragement along the way, and Elizabeth Tyler for her role on my upgrade panel. For both friendship and help, I owe much thanks to my fellow PhD students at the University of York. I have fond memories of our shared attic workspace. Amongst these friends, my thanks go to Katherine Bilous Handel and Hollie Morgan for their help with Old French; Deborah Thorpe for her advice about legal documents and medieval households; and Victoria Flood for her direction on the topic of political prophecy. Beyond such practical help, these and others gave me daily support. To Hollie Morgan in particular I must extend my gratitude for her companionship as we began our PhDs at the same time and together wrestled with complex texts and the other challenges of postgraduate work. Beyond that, I have enjoyed the enduring support of many friends I knew before my time at York, and though I cannot name them all here, I am flattered and thankful that they have continued to share their company and conversation with me, often despite great distances. Aside from my supervisor, a few other academics have generously lent their time and advice to me as a junior colleague. I am grateful to Michael Johnston for allowing me to see, before its publication, the typescript for his upcoming book, as well as an article for an upcoming volume of Studies in Bibliography. I am also thankful to Ad Putter for time spent discussing our favourite romances and his reading suggestions early in my project. My thanks go to Heather O’Donoghue for her support both during my MPhil and, later, during my PhD; I spent several happy and productive summers house-sitting for her, and her continued interest in my work has been a great encouragement. Finally, I am grateful to the attendees at the Oxford Medieval Graduate Seminar in October 2011, where I presented a portion of Chapter Four and received valuable feedback and encouragement. I must also thank the wonderful staff at the University of York, both in the English Department and the Centre for Medieval Studies, as well as the J.B. Morrell and King’s Manor libraries. Equally, I extend my thanks to the staff at the British Library and the Bodleian Library, where I completed significant portions of my research. 8 On a more personal note, I must acknowledge a great debt to my mother, Susan Barton Neal, with whom my education began and who carried it through my school years. She and my father, until his death, always championed my education as well as my aspirations. In particular, their supervision of my education meant that I had greater freedom than most of my peers to pursue my own interests, and was encouraged to develop the research and writing skills that have served me well for years since. Not all twelve- year-olds have the luxury of parents who avidly encourage and facilitate what, for me, were many happy afternoons on the floor between the stacks of the local libraries, combing through whole piles of books. Much love and gratitude go, finally, to my husband Michael. He supported me in my research from the time we first met, even when it meant having to look things up on Wikipedia to understand what I was talking about. Since then, he has supplied steady friendship and unconditional love, washed many dishes when I needed time to work, and provided for me in all kinds of ways. Our marriage has been occasion indeed for the happiest ending this world and its narratives can afford, an earthly ‘joy and blysse’. But lest that should fill our final vision, may we always remember the better bliss to come with Him in whom all things are possible, including, surprisingly, this thesis. 9 Author’s Declaration I certify that to the best of my knowledge, all of the work contained in this thesis is my own, except where sources are cited. No portion of this thesis has been published prior or submitted for any other examination. 11 Introduction Mony aunterez here-biforne Haf fallen suche er þis. Now þat bere þe croun of þorne, 1 He bryng vus to his blysse! AMEN. These are the closing lines of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. I first encountered them in translation in an undergraduate British literature textbook, sitting in an empty teaching room to do my reading between classes. Even in translation, they impressed me immensely, but I scarcely knew why, though I mulled over the passage through the years. I did not know, at the time, that it was ‘convention’ to end a romance with a prayer, or to address the audience directly. But knowing that does not, and should not, diminish the quality of these lines that impressed me then: their brief evocation of vast spaces of time. These lines are provocative in many ways, but especially, I am now able to say, temporally. They hint at many other adventures, specifically ones which take place ‘er þis’. Why is that? Why not ‘at the same