Mining, Metalworking, and the Epic Underworld: The Corruption of Epic Heroism and the Emergence of Commercial Ethos as Represented in the Epic Line from Homer to Milton By: Warren Tormey May 2008 UMI Number: 3309131 INFORMATION TO USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleed-through, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. ® UMI UMI Microform 3309131 Copyright 2008 by ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 E. Eisenhower Parkway PO Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Mining, Metalworking, and the Epic Underworld: The Corruption of Epic Heroism and the Emergence of Commercial Ethos as Represented in the Epic Line from Homer to Milton Warren Tormey vJftUiAfr- CLA^-UsC*^ Dr. Tom Strawman Dissertation Director Dr\. Bill Connelly / Dissertation Reader fl-uXlAJJK Dr. Tom Strawman English Department Chair (JLMI& o«k/ Michael D. Allen Dean, College of Graduate Studies 1 Dedication I consider this dissertation as an exercise in recovery and an effort to revisit those aspects of reading and literary study that compelled me first to major in English as an undergraduate. However, no dissertation is written autonomously. The input of others helps to provide shape and direction for any project, and in this space I would like to offer my sincere thanks to those who made this particular effort possible. First, to my two readers: Drs. Connelly and Strawman, thank you for your patience, support, supervision, and encouragement in what I'm afraid was a very demanding and time- consuming experience. Dr. Strawman, I particularly appreciate your meticulous attention to the quality of my work, and your willingness to read page after page and offer suggestions, even as your own department duties grew more pressing. I also appreciate the conversations we've had about this topic, especially those that took place on trails in the Smoky Mountains and in the South Cumberland State Recreation Area. I look forward to many more such conversations and to our continuing friendship and exchange of ideas. Dr. Connelly, I particularly appreciate your encouragement to continue in my pursuit of a doctorate after my abortive first effort, and your continuing interest in a project that continued into your own retirement. Your allowing me to sit in your Medieval Literature seminars as an unattached adjunct faculty member helped to rekindle my interest in the topics I'd set aside. Thank you especially for allowing me to discuss the matter of lynx urine (and other peculiarities of medieval lapidaries) with your graduate students, and for your effective and thoughtful stewardship of a department in transition. Also, I thank other members of the MTSU English department and community who provided support and mentoring along the way: Drs. Kevin Donovan, Michael Neth, and Julia Fesmire provided models for effective research and scholarship in their graduate seminar classes. Dr. Alan Boehm provided valuable input as a reader of early drafts of the first few chapters, and served at points as a sounding board when my ideas were still in development. His input helped greatly to shape the current project. Drs. Keith Taylor and Pete McCluskey helped in similar ways, and to all I offer my appreciation tor your helpful and timely guidance. I also express thanks for the help and instruction offered by select faculty members at the University of Arizona, who planted the seeds that took almost two decades to take root in this project. Friends provided valuable diversions and consistent encouragement along the way. To Drs. Michael and Sara Dunne, I thank you for the friendship which has developed in both personal and professional spheres. Your timely mentoring over the course of my dissertation experience provided valuable support at times when motivation was waning. And to Drs. Ron and Jenn Kates, thank you also for the many diversions and timely distractions which helped remind me about what was truly important in the whole process of dissertation writing. And to my family members, who accepted my undertaking and didn't ask too many questions during the lengthy process of its composition Finally, to my wife, Kim. Thank you for taking a chance on a struggling graduate student and for sharing the journey with me. It's been a great ride, and you've been around for just about all of it. You've helped make the job worthwhile, and I'm excited about what the future will bring with it now behind us. Thanks also for the family we've created together. 2 Dissertation Abstract Mining, Metalworking, and the Epic Underworld: The Corruption of Epic Heroism and the Emergence of Commercial Ethos as Represented in the Epic Line from Homer to Milton By: Warren Tormey I contend that economic realities and practices give shape to the epic form and define its motifs as much as the traditions and conventions of the genre that epic poets inherit and reinvent. Epic poetry is traditionally read as a repository for values associated with heroism in Western Civilization. My focus instead seeks to establish that the epic text also reflects and comments upon a culture's identity in economic and social spheres. Moreover, when biographical and historical details about the epic writer's life are available, these likewise help to reveal the pool of imaginative resources that the epic poet draws upon. In this way, epic literature documents the economic and social lives of a developing tribal culture as much as it does the chivalric ethos or proto-mercantile dimensions, or the colonial ambitions or early industrial efforts of a more developed national entity. This pattern of economic and social development is evident in the "epic line" that connects the battle and underworld images in the pre- Christian works of Homer and Virgil, the anonymously composed tribalism depicted in Beowulf and chivalric grandeurs of the Song of Roland, the proto-commercial travel narratives of Dante's Inferno and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the colonial subtext of Spenser's Faerie Queene, and the incipient industrial motifs used to depict Hell in Milton's Paradise Lost. I read all of these texts with an eye on the economic and social systems which shape and are represented in them, and I locate the common symbol that connects the epic genre to the economic and social life of a culture in the symbols and imagery of metals and metalworking. Metals are the materials of empire, as they are essential and fundamental to a culture's immediate survival, as well as to its long- term economic health. They help to define and transform its social hierarchy, and most frequently represent the currency that defines its class system. Moreover, they figure prominently in the common epic motifs of battle (weapons), journey, underworld descent, and the articulation of social strata. Likewise, mining is the activity that makes metals available to human commerce and industry, and it requires both a large-scale manipulation of the landscape and a descent into underworld regions. The significance of underworld imagery in epic is in part determined by the essential importance of mining and metalworking to cultures of varying degrees of development. Within the epic narrative, the underworld regions represent a problematic, morally ambiguous space where metals figure prominently and comment most vividly on the commercial and social ambivalences of the epic poet's world. Whether represented by the prophetic visions worked by Olympian smiths, in the arms and armor donned by epic heroes, the currencies that both dictate the interactions within emergent mercantile societies and determine their moral standards, or in the weapons of warfare used by celestial rebels, metals constitute the essential imagistic substance of epic. They are drawn from subterranean recesses which shed light on the economic realities of the epic poet's world, and in the line connecting Homer and Milton the conjoined motifs of metals and the underworld depict important stages in a larger pattern of economic and social development in western civilization that proceeds in close conjunction with the perpetuation and reinvention of the epic genre. 3 Table of Contents Dedication: 1 Abstract: 2 Contents: 3 Introduction: Mining, Metalworking, and the Epic Underworld: The 4 Formation of State Identity to the Seventeenth Century, or The Epic Line from Homer to Milton and its Economic and Military Foundations. Chapter 1: Metals, Money, and Militarism: Milton's Ambivalence 31 Toward Early Industrial and Commercial Progress in Paradise Lost. Chapter 2: The Homeric Epics: Introducing Metalworking Motifs, 83 Defining Class Relations, and Establishing a Basis for the Christian Underworld. Chapter 3: The Politicized Underworld: The Imperial Incentive in 128 the Aeneid. Chapter 4: Christianizing Virgilian Images: Syncretizing the Aeneid, 171 the Chruch Fathers, and the Epic influences from the Nordic and Germanic Worlds. Chapter 5: The Appropriation of Virgilian Motifs into Ideals of Germanic 209 Heroism in Beowulf, and the Development of an Anglo-Saxon National Consciousness. Chapter 6: The Sword and the Coin I: The Monetary Perversion of 250 Chivalric Idealism in the Song of Roland. Chapter 7: The Sword and the Coin II: The Appropriation of Chivalry, 297 and the Confrontation of Godly Morals with the Mercantile Economy in Dante's Inferno. Chapter 8: Negotiating Salvation and Reconciling God and Commerce 345 in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Chapter 9: Revisiting Virgil: Propagandizing Colonial Hegemony and 389 Realizing Social Mobility in Spenser's Faerie Queene.