UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara Emotional Ethics in Middle
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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara Emotional Ethics in Middle English Literature A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in English by Paul Megna Committee in charge: Professor L.O. Aranye Fradenburg, Chair Associate Professor Heather Blurton Professor John M. Ganim June 2015 The dissertation of Paul Megna is approved. _____________________________________________ Heather Blurton _____________________________________________ John M. Ganim _____________________________________________ L.O. Aranye Fradenburg, Committee Chair June 2015 ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project would not have been possible without the mentorship and guidance of my advi- sor L.O. Aranye Fradenburg whose insights will never cease to surprise and inspire me. She has challenged my tendancy to wallow in debilitating cyncism at every turn and, more im- portantly, she has taught me to do so for myself. Although I owe her an enormous intellectual debt, I am most grateful to have borne witness to her profound dedication to employing her genius to help others. A special thanks is also due to Heather Blurton who guided me through countless iterations of these chapters always providing challenging and insightful feedback. Her patience is an infinitely admirable point of virtue, although I can only imagine it dis- pleased oft. Likewise, I am forever indebted to Carol Braun Pasternack for warmly welcom- ing me not only to California but also to the wonderful world of Old English literature. I will never forget or repay Carol’s kind words after various oral exams and chapter meetings. She is a woman of great empathy and ethical intergrity. Having now retired, her presence is sore- ly missed in UCSB’s English department and Medieval Studies Program. I am so happy and proud to have been lucky enough to benefit from the mentorship, advice and example of the- se three wonderful scholars. I am forever grateful to John M. Ganim for generously agreeing to join my committee at a late date. I am quickly learning that he too provides an example of scholarly life to which I’ll forever aspire. I am extremely grateful to all of my teachers, espe- cially F. Anne Payne, Thomas Hahn, Russell Peck, Sarah Higley, Sharon Farmer, Edward English and Alan Lupack. Although she was never officially my teacher, Eileen A. Joy has taught me as much as anyone about what it means to be a scholar and an ethical human be- ing. Her bravery, kindness and hard-won optimism are unmatched in anyone I’ve ever known. While she is too rarely given credit for her scholarship, editorship and publishing ventures, I firmly believe the time will come when she is reckoned amongst the foremost crit- ical theorists of the twenty-first century. Additionally, I’d like to thank my parents and sib- lings for their undying support, as well as my friends, too many to list here. I would be re- miss, however, not to mention Shannon Meyer, Megan Palmer-Browne, Jonathan Forbes, Rachel Levinson-Emley, Shay Hopkins and Joseph Figlio-Rosswurm for being such excel- lent colleagues. Finally, I thank my best friend Natasha O’Neill to whom all of my efforts are dedicated. PERMISSIONS Chapter 1, “Langland’s Wrath: Righteous Anger Management in The Vision of Piers Plow- man,” is reprinted with permission from Exemplaria 25.2 (2013). iii PAUL MEGNA 117 N. MILPAS ST., UNIT A SANTA BARBARA, CA 93103 (518)-598-8718 [email protected] EDUCATION • Ph.D., English Literature, U of California, Santa Barbara, 2015 • Concentrations: Medieval Literature, General Theory, Literature and the Mind • Certificate of Emphasis in Medieval Studies Dissertation: Emotional Ethics in Middle English Literature Committee: L.O. Aranye Fradenburg, Heather Blurton and John M. Ganim • M.A., English Literature, U of Rochester, 2007 Thesis: “Christopher Columbus, Cannibalism and Ethno-Eschatology” Advisors: Thomas Hahn and Russell Peck • B.A., English Literature, SUNY Buffalo, 2005 PUBLICATIONS • “Better Living through Dread: Medieval Ascetics, Modern Philosophers and the Long History of Existential Anxiety,” PMLA 130.4 (2015) (Forthcoming) • “Dread, Love, and the Bodies of Piers Plowman A.10, B.9, and C.10,” The Yearbook of Langland Studies 29 (2015) (Forthcoming) • “Fitt VII: Blysse / (Envy),” Glossator 10 (special issue on Pearl) (2015), 132–53 • “Sacrificial Thriving,” in Still Thriving: On the Importance of Aranye Fradenburg, ed. Eileen Joy, Punctum Books (2013), 33–40 • “Langland’s Wrath: Righteous Anger Management in The Vision of Piers Plowman,” Exemplaria 25.2 (2013), 130–51 • “Teaching Feeling: Emotion, Pedagogy, Meditation,” The Once and Future Class- room (2015) (under review) • “Chaucerian Worlding,” postmedieval 9.1 (2018) (under review) • “Courtly Love Hate is Undead: Sadomasochistic Privilege from Geoffrey Chaucer’s Troilus to Elliot Rodger,” in Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Literature but Were Afraid to Ask Žižek,” ed. by Russell Sbriglia (under review for Duke UP’s Sic Series) SELECTED CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS • “Piers Plowman and the Poetics of Shame,” “Poetics,” Sixth International Piers Plowman Conference, 2015, U of Washington, Seattle • “Teaching Feeling: Asceticism, Critique and Affective Piety,” “Feeling Medieval: Teaching Feeling in the Middle Ages,” International Congress on Medieval Studies, 2015, U of Western Michigan • “Chaucer: Poet of the Assemblage,” “Chaucer at the Beach,” BABEL, 2014, UCSB • “Parrhesia, Prudence and Fantasy in Chaucer’s Tale of Melibee,” “What a World!,” International Congress on Medieval Studies, 2014 iv • “Fear, Memory, Auto-Affection: Medieval England’s Cult(ure) of Dread,” Says Who?: Contested Spaces, Voices and Texts, 2013, UCSB • “Inicium sapiencia timor Domini: Doing Well and Dreading God in The Vision of Piers Plowman,” “Feeling like Langland I,” ICMS, 2013 • “Sacrificial Thriving in the Work of L.O. Aranye Fradenburg,” “Thriving,” ICMS, 2013 • “Geoffrey Chaucer’s ‘Lak of Stedfastnesse’ and the Twilight of Ricardian England,” “Constructing English Kingship,” Medieval Association of the Pacific, 2013, U of San Diego • “‘Mad as hell’: The Premodern Roots of Teaparty Anger,” “Affect I,” Medieval Academy of America, 2012, Saint Louis U • “Narcotic Wonder and Traumatic Shame in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” “Emotion and Identity in the Pearl Poems,” ICMS, 2011 • “States of Fear: The Political Theologies of John Wycliffe, Thomas Hobbes and Carl Schmitt,” “Interiorities and Early Cultures,” 2011, UC Irvine • “Re-cognizing Dread: The Transmodern Affect Theories of Julian of Norwich and Brian Massumi,” “Gazing at the Medieval Through a Postmodern Lens,” ICMS, 2010 • “From Tears to Text: Performing the Politics of Presence in The Book of Margery Kempe,” “The Humanities Project,” 2007, U of Rochester ACADEMIC HONORS AND AWARDS • Academic Senate Travel Grant, 2014 • English Department Travel Grant, 2014 • Dean’s Fellowship, 2012-2013 • Graduate Humanities Research Fellowship, 2013 • Graduate Dean’s Advancement Fellowship, Summer 2012 • Graduate Student Association Travel Grant, 2012 • Richard Helgerson Graduate Achievement Award, 2011-12 • Arnhold Undergraduate Research Program, Graduate Fellow, 2011-2012 • Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, Graduate Collaborative Project Award, 2011 TEACHING EXPERIENCE PRIMARY INSTRUCTOR • Introduction to Shakespeare: Shakespearean Outsiders, 2014 • Introduction to Composition: Genre, Rhetoric and Community, 2013-2015 • Introduction to Shakespeare: Shakespearean Antiheroics, 2013 • Gender, Class and Identity in English Literature (700-1650), 2012 • Cannibalism and the Consumption of Literature, 2011 TEACHING ASSISTANT • British Literature: 700-1650, Prof. Heather Blurton, 2015 v • Introduction to Literary Study, Prof. Candace Waid, 2011 • Introduction to Literary Study, Prof. Carol Braun Pasternack, 2011 • British Literature: 700-1650, Prof. Heather Blurton, 2010 • Introduction to Shakespeare, Prof. James Kearney, 2010 • American Literature: 1789-1900, Prof. Mark Maslan, 2010 • Introduction to Literary Study, Prof. Carol Braun Pasternack, 2009 • Later Shakespeare, Prof. James Kearney, 2009 • Introduction to Shakespeare, Prof. Mark Rose, 2009 • British Literature: 700-1650, Prof. L.O. Aranye Fradenburg, 2008 DIGITAL EXPERIENCE AND PROJECTS • Digital Paleography Projects: “Sermon 11,” in MS Bodley 95, fols. 23r–24r and “Say- ings of the Fathers,” in MS Cambridge Ll.4.14, fols. 164r–167r • English Broadside Ballad Archive, Research Assistant, 2008-2010 • T.E.A.M.S. Middle English Text Series, Research Assistant, 2007-2008 • Web Design Experience with Adobe Dreamweaver COPY EDITING EXPERIENCE • Kathleen Biddick, Make and Let Die: Untimely Sovereignties, punctum books (2015) • Kathleen Kennedy, Medieval Hackers, punctum books (2014) • Inhuman Nature, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Oliphaunt Books (2014) • M.H. Bowker, Escargotesque, or What is Experience?, punctum books (2014) • postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies 5.3, “The Middle Ages and the Holocaust,” eds. Nina Caputo and Hannah Johnson (2014) • Burn After Reading, vol. 2, The Future We Want, punctum books (2014) TECHNICAL TRAINING • Languages: Latin, Old English, Middle English, Middle Scots and Spanish • Medieval Latin, UCSB, 2013 • Paleography, UCSB, 2012 SERVICE • Literature and the Mind, Research Assistant, 2012-2013 • UCSB Medieval Studies, Graduate Conference Planning Committee, 2010-2012 • UCSB GSA, Department of English representative, 2010-2012 • Affect Theory Reading Group, Co-founder, 2011-2012 • Medieval Literatures,