i Unfinished Quests from Chaucer to Spenser A dissertation submitted by Adam Spellmire in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Tufts University May 2016 Advisor: John M. Fyler ii Abstract Late medieval English texts often represent unfinished quests for obscurely significant objects. These works create enchanted worlds where more always remains to be discovered and where questers search for an ur-text, an authoritative book that promises perfect knowledge. Rather than reaching this ur-text, however, questers confront rumor, monstrous babble, and the clamor of argument, which thwart their efforts to gather together sacred wholeness. Yet while threatening, noise also preserves the sacred by ensuring that it remains forever elsewhere, for recovering perfect knowledge would disenchant the world. Scholarship on medieval noise often focuses on class: medieval writers tend to describe threats to political authority as noisy. These unfinished quests, though, suggest that late medieval literature’s complex investment in noise extends further and involves the very search for the sacred, a search full of opaque language and unending desire. Noise, then, becomes the sound of narrative itself. While romance foregrounds questing most clearly, these ideas appear in a variety of genres. Chapter 1 shows that in the House of Fame rumor both perpetuates and undermines knowledge, so sacred authority must remain beyond the poem’s frame. Chapter 2 juxtaposes the Parliament of Fowls and the Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale, in which lists replace missing quest-objects, the philosopher’s stone and certainty about love. Chapter 3 centers on Piers Plowman, which becomes encyclopedic as one attempt to “preve what is Dowel” leads to another, and Will never definitively learns how to save his soul, the knowledge he most wants. Chapter 4 turns to Julian of Norwich’s search for divine “mening” and her confrontation with an incoherent fiend, an anxious moment that aligns her with these less serene contemporaries. Chapter 5 argues that Thomas Malory’s iii elusive, noisy Questing Beast at once bolsters and undermines chivalry. The final chapter looks ahead to Book VI of The Faerie Queene, where the Blatant Beast, a sixteenth- century amalgam of the fame tradition and the Questing Beast, menaces Faery Land yet, as a figure for poetry, also contributes to its enchantment. In trying to locate and maintain the sacred, these unfinished quests evoke worlds intensely anxious about “auctoritee.” iv Acknowledgments This dissertation would have remained unfinished without help from dozens of teachers, friends, colleagues, and family members. Wendy Medeiros, Douglas Riggs, Noah Barrientos, and Chantal Hardy make East Hall a great place to learn, and I am in their debt for assistance with many questions and for their daily efforts in running the department. In 2011, a Graduate Institute for Teaching fellowship afforded me a summer stipend and the wisdom of numerous teachers, including Sinaia Nathanson, the ideal person to run such a program. In summer 2014, I produced a chapter thanks to Chris Strauber’s expertise and a Tisch Library Graduate Student Research Fellowship. I am very grateful to Jonathan Wilson and Dean Robert Cook for this fellowship and for a 2015-16 fellowship at the Center for the Humanities at Tufts that allowed me to finish my dissertation. By providing opportunities to teach, Hilary Binda also created time for me to read, think, and write for which I am deeply appreciative. I have had marvelous teachers. As an undergraduate, Mel Cohen, Bill Gracie, and Stephen Norris offered inspiration and encouragement. Mary Jane Brown’s friendship and enthusiasm for literature led me to read more widely and find my way to graduate school. I owe much to a number of Tufts teachers, particularly Carol Flynn, who asked me to try to have fun with this work, and Carol Wilkinson and Carl Beckman, whose kind and expert mentoring steered me during my first year of teaching and beyond. My dissertation committee has been remarkable. With unfailing energy, Judith Haber has supported me since I took her graduate seminar in my first semester at Tufts. Kevin Dunn consistently articulated my chapters’ ideas and problems more clearly than I could, and our talks remind me why I spend time with poems, plays, and novels. James Simpson, v who read my dissertation with extraordinary care and offered energizing advice, once described John Fyler as one of the truly learned and most humane people in the field, and it has been an honor to have John’s guidance and example. I am delighted to thank colleagues and friends who made graduate school memorable and all the more engaging. Huai-Ti Lin and Kosta Tsioris showed me how to live as a grad student, and we have had many discussions full of laughter and questions. I have also enjoyed mulling a range of topics with Ian Scott Todd, and I feel particularly fortunate for library study sessions with Sara Hasselbach. Barbara Orton distinguishes between “lyric” and “narrative” friendships and has helped me to appreciate both. Thanks especially to Mark Kaufman for many long conversations about life and books. My family has supported my education for decades. My grandmother once told me to stop reading Hardy Boys mysteries and “try something else,” an invaluable instruction that continues to send me questing for new reading experiences. In August 2002, Tom urged me to sign up for fall classes at Miami University Middletown, and I wish I had managed to thank him. My thanks also go to Patty and Kim for our car rides to and from the farm and for their many other kindnesses. John has always asked me what I’m reading, and Ted has long been a model of wide intellectual travel. I feel lucky that my brother Jason and I have had a conversation going since were children, and I look forward to it continuing. When I pick up my ringing phone, I always smile to see my sister Emily’s name on the display. My parents, Karen and Bill, read to me as a child, took me to the library, and when the downstairs bookshelves began to overflow built more upstairs. Thank you all for your generosity, and thank you for understanding. vi My deepest gratitude I offer to Cheryl Alison, whose company fills life with richness and possibility. I am so glad, Cheryl, that we get to share space, plans, ideas, and love. I can’t wait for more adventures. vii Contents Introduction 1 Chapter 1 Names and Frames in the House of Fame 38 Chapter 2 Chaucer and the “Slydynge Sciences” of Alchemy, Poetry, and Love 76 Chapter 3 Langland’s Lifetime Writing Plans 112 Chapter 4 Julian of Norwich and the Muttering Fiend 153 Chapter 5 The Questing Beast and the Noise of Adventure 188 Chapter 6 Spenser’s Medieval Monster 227 Bibliography 265 1 Introduction To look for a lost collar button is not a true quest. – Auden 1. As the Parliament of Fowls opens, Chaucer laments that something eludes him: “The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne, / Th’assay so hard, so sharp the conquerynge, / The dredful joye alwey that slit so yerne” (1-3). We might wonder what “craft” the poet has in mind, and given his adaptation of “ars longa, vita brevis” we might guess the craft of writing poetry, but in the next line he declares, “All this mene I by love” (4). Soon he remarks that he is reading a book and hoping to find a “certeyn thing”: “Nat yore / Agon it happede me for to beholde / Upon a bok, was write with letters olde, / And therupon, a certeyn thing to lerne, / The longe day ful faste I redde and yerne” (17-21). What is this “certeyn thing”? Because Chaucer has explained that by “dredful joye” he means love, the “thing” may concern love, but he does not elaborate. Soon the poet puts aside this nighttime reading, Macrobius’ commentary concerning Cicero on “commune profyt” (47), and observes that he has found some unsought “thyng” but still lacks what he wanted: “For bothe I hadde thyng which that I nolde, / And ek I ne hadde that thyng that I wolde” (90-91). A dream follows in which birds gather on Valentine’s Day to choose their mates, and a rivalry emerges among three tercel eagles for a single formel. The competition provokes a noisy parliament in which the other birds, eager to get on with choosing their own mates, offer her advice. But the female eagle, unwilling to decide among her suitors, receives a dispensation from Nature to defer her choice to next year. The avian parliamentarians, finally released from the frustrating delay, burst forth together in song, and the vision ends. In the poem’s last stanza, Chaucer, indecisive like 2 the formel, wakes and says that he plans to take himself to still other books so that he may dream something to help him fare better: “I hope, iwis, to rede so som day / That I shal mete som thyng for to fare / The bet, and thus to rede I nyl nat spare” (697-9). Here at the poem’s close, he recalls that mysterious “thyng” for which he had been searching, and he has neither found nor defined it. Unwilling to quit looking, though, the poet plans to take himself to other books. I began this dissertation by asking what contributes to Chaucer’s unfinished quest for an imprecisely defined object in the Parliament. The poem itself offers some answers. Like many of Chaucer’s works, this dream vision includes an imperfect authority figure. Nature, somewhat like the eagle in the House of Fame or Harry Bailly in the Canterbury Tales, has only partial authority over the various voices in the poem (Burrow, Ricardian Poetry 125).