Reading and Visionary Literature in Pearl, Piers Plowman, a Revelation of Divine Love, and the Book of Margery Kempe

NECESSARY FICTIONS: READING AND VISIONARY LITERATURE IN PEARL, PIERS PLOWMAN, A REVELATION OF DIVINE LOVE, AND THE BOOK OF MARGERY KEMPE A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Hannah Marie Byland December 2017 © 2017 Hannah Marie Byland NECESSARY FICTIONS: READING AND VISIONARY LITERATURE IN PEARL, PIERS PLOWMAN, A REVELATION OF DIVINE LOVE, AND THE BOOK OF MARGERY KEMPE Hannah Marie Byland, Ph. D. Cornell University 2017 When the Dreamer of Pearl first encounters the Maiden, he attempts to describe a giant pearl affixed to her bosom and finds he can only say, “A manneʒ dom moʒt dryʒly demme / Er mynde moʒt malte in hit mesure. / I hope no tong moʒt endure / No sauerly saghe say of þat syʒt.” Just when he hopes to be able to say something about the Maiden, the Dreamer's language fails him and he has to give an approximation of what he sees. In my dissertation, I explore the outcomes of such failures of language in visionary writing. Instead of dwindling into silence in the face of the ineffable, as one might expect, English visionary writing exploits language’s fecundity. Past work on visionary literature separates so-called mystic visions from what are supposed to be their more poetic counterparts, identifying mystic visions as primarily religious texts and poetic dream visions as primarily literary texts. I argue instead that mystic, what I call “waking,” visions and dream visions are inextricably linked through the way they engage the reader in the work of the vision. I identify waking and dream visions as a part of visionary literature, a body of writing that questions the sufficiency of language even as it reaches out to the reader to recuperate some of language’s failures. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Hannah Byland grew up in the corn fields and red dirt roads of Oklahoma, where she spent most of her time reading science-fiction and exploring dry creek beds. As a college freshman, Hannah took a course on Dante’s works and has been a medievalist since then. Currently, Hannah lives in Pennsylvania with her husband, David. She teaches critical writing at the University of Pennsylvania. Hannah is also a yoga teacher and finds a balance in her life through teaching and practising yoga. When not teaching or writing, Hannah enjoys hiking, baking, and knitting. iv Dedication For my family and my friends. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My first thanks go to my graduate community at Cornell and beyond. I could not have finished in such good spirits if I didn’t have you all there with me. I’ve loved our family dinners and wine nights and making fun of Mike’s “jokes.” I’m so lucky to be part of such a smart, fierce bunch of people. To my committee, more thanks than tongue can tell. You have pushed me to be better than I thought possible. You’ve given me intellectual freedom and respected my ideas and interpretations the whole way through. Masha, thank you for coffee shop meetings and for grounding me in reality. Thank you for your frank advice and your kindness. Andrew, thank you for dealing with my poor Latin and for introducing me to philosophical and linguistic concepts I’d never encountered. Andy, I will miss our hours-long conversations in the basement of Goldwin. Thank you for always being excited about my incoherent thoughts and helping me string them into something that makes sense. I also want to thank the people at the Knight Institute. Thank you for believing I have potential as a teacher and for letting me work with you. To Elliot, you’ve been an amazing mentor and friend. I’ve really valued our work together over the past few years. I thank the Graduate School, the Einaudi Center, the Cornell Library, the Center for Teaching Excellence, and the Medieval Studies Department for funding my endeavors over the years. Finally, I need to thank my family. Not every family looks at their 17-year old daughter who says she wants to be a medievalist and answers “yes.” Thanks for “yes- and-ing” me for my whole life. I couldn’t be who I am without you. To my new family, thank you for loving and supporting me from the first minute we met. David, you are the best partner I could have dreamed of. I love you more than pizza. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Biographical Sketch iv Dedication v Acknowledgments vi Preface viii Chapter 1, Forming Visions 1 Chapter 2, Seeing Spots: Reading the Middle English Pearl 40 Chapter 3, ‘Rule Thi Tonge Bettre:’ Seeking Silence in Piers Plowman 69 Chapter 4, (Re)vision in Julian of Norwich’s Revelations 103 Chapter 5, Performing the Book: Margery Kempe and Textual Authority 140 Epilogue, Reading Visionary Literature 173 References 182 vii PREFACE WRITING VISIONARY LITERATURE ‘His deeth saugh I by revelacioun,’ Seide this frere, ‘at hoom in oure dortour. I dar wel seyn that, er that half an hour After his deeth, I saugh hym born to blisse In myn avision, so God me wisse!’ (SumT. III 1854-8) In the Canterbury Tales, the Wife of Bath’s Tale, the Friar’s Tale, and the Summoner’s Tale are often linked in an irreverent triumvirate. Alisoun’s audacity to claim an authoritative voice stings the Friar and pushes him to tell a tale about a wicked summoner. This, in turn, spurs the Summoner to tell his story of a friar whose greed ends up forcing him to share even a fart with his brethren. When we read these three tales together, we are more often interested in their wickedly sharp wordplay and search for authority than we are for their visionary elements. However, Alisoun’s tale begins with an (unfulfilled) quest to see fairies; the Friar’s tale invokes a short aside from the Summoner about a friar he once knew who “ravysshed was to hele / In spirit ones by a visioun” (CT Sum. Prol. 1676-7). The Summoner’s Tale includes a little revelacioun that Friar John has of Thomas’ dead son, though it is often pushed aside in favor of the larger problem of how to share a fart among thirteen men. Yet, the desire to see fairies, the vision of hell, and Friar John’s speech taken together invite the reader to consider the role of visionary moments in these three tales. Twice in the Summoner’s Tale Friar John uses the word “saugh” to describe his supposed interaction with the dead child, and the thing that he “saugh,” he alternately calls a “revelacioun” and an “avision.” Although John and the Summoner are not reliable viii narrators by any measure, we do start to wonder if there is a distinction between revelation and vision and if he saw these things, how he saw them.1 The twelfth -century abbess, Hildegard of Bingen, perhaps a more reliable narrator than John, describes her visionary sight in equally ambiguous terms. In the introduction to Scivias she claims, The visions I saw I did not perceive in dreams, or sleep, or delirium, or by the eyes of the body, or by the ears of the outer self, or in hidden places; but I received them while awake and seeing with a pure mind and the eyes and ears of the inner self, in open places, as God willed it. How this might be is hard for mortal flesh to understand.2 While it does not matter to John to justify or explain the nature of his seeing (for, as we suspect, he saw nothing), Hildegard is completely aware that she needs to express how she experienced her visions. Christopher Cannon claims that “thinking occurs by means of that ‘infinite wealth of forms, shapes, appearances’ which constitute the material world, that ideas are simply the ‘inward pulse’ that can be detected ‘still beating’ in those ‘outward appearances’ we call things.”3 Hildegard’s internal, waking sight is at once representative of that ‘inward pulse’ and opposite of it. By articulating this complex experience in a language that other human persons can comprehend, Hildegard has created a textual object that itself represents both more and less than whatever it is and 1 Chaucer himself famously wonders about the distinction between different kinds of vision. See HF 1.3-11 and 2.509-28. Unless otherwise noted, all references to Chaucer are to line numbers from The Riverside Chaucer, 3rd ed, ed. Larry Benson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). This project will not engage significantly with Chaucer beyond these first few pages, but in the longer project I hope to add a chapter that inquires after Chaucer’s place in the development of visionary literature. 2 Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, trans Columba Hart and Jane Bishop (New York: Paulist Press, 1990), 60. 3 Christopher Cannon, The Grounds of English Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 9. Here Cannon is referencing Hegel, see fn. 21. ix however it was that Hildegard experienced her vision. It is indeed difficult for a human person to understand. John, however, experiences no such problem in the recounting of his relationship to his “vision” and Christ. He confidently tells Thomas and his wife, Oure orisons been moore effectueel, And moore we seen of Cristes secree thynges, Than burel folk, although they weren kynges (III 1870-2). John claims that his prayers have given him visions and those visions have revealed Christ’s “secret things.”4 Embedded as they are in self-aware layers of fiction, John’s visions are empty for the reader; they contain none of the compelling concerns for the problematic process of making a visionary text that the visionaries studied in this project deal with.

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