Embodiment in Middle English Lyric

Beste of bon and blod: Embodiment in Middle English Lyric Sarah Kathryn Moore A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Washington 2015 Reading Committee: Míċeál Vaughan, Chair Colette Moore Carolyn Allen Program Authorized to Offer Degree: English © Copyright 2015 Sarah Kathryn Moore ii University of Washington Abstract Beste of bon and blod: Embodiment in Middle English Lyric Sarah Kathryn Moore Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Professor Míċeál Vaughan English This dissertation argues that Middle English lyric is uniquely successful at connecting readers and hearers with our own bodies and with the bodies of medieval textual subjects. This effect occurs on the levels of content, form, and tone, although my emphasis is primarily on the formal components through which the connection is achieved, and my evidence is drawn largely from formal analysis of the songs. The methods through which the lyrics connect us with our bodies are sophisticated and include especially the carefully managed use of the linguistic category of deixis; nuanced, intentional portrayal and evocation of affect, or physically demonstrated emotion; and implicit and explicit reference (via form and content respectively) to the ways in which lyrics were literally embodied by medieval subjects through danced performance. I argue that Middle English lyrics construct and maintain the “I” of an uttering subject while also reinforcing an embodied sense of self in the text’s reader or hearer. The corpus of surviving lyrics uniquely demonstrates how language, subjectivity, the body, and poetic form are related, speaking to the profound utility of verse (both in the medieval period and today) in constructing a sense of self and in relating to and empathizing with others. iii Table of Contents Chapter 1: What is Lyric? What is Embodiment? 1-34 Chapter 2: Herkneth me: Deixis and the Lyric Subject 35-94 Chapter 3 Mulch sorw I walke with: Affect and Embodiment 95-145 Chapter 4 Come and daunce wit me: Carol and Woman’s Song 146-191 Chapter 5: Conclusion 192-202 Works Cited 203-213 iv Acknowledgements Deep gratitude to Professors Míċeál Vaughan and Colette Moore, who have been the most giving and generous advisers I could have imagined. Thanks also to Brendan Winter, whose support at every stage of the dissertation process has sustained me. This dissertation is dedicated to my parents, Cathy and Thom, who have inspired and encouraged my love of learning and continue to serve as consummate role models for creative, inquisitive living. v Chapter 1 What is Lyric? What is Embodiment? Introduction This dissertation is part of a larger movement within academe to reclaim the validity of the body as a site of knowledge. In literary studies, this practically means prioritizing the body and the senses in reading and interpreting textual artifacts. In employing theoretical approaches privileging embodiment, there are two categories of body to consider. The first is the bodies in the texts, particularly the speaking subject or “I” of the text. The second category involves examining the bodies interacting with the texts by reading or hearing them—bodies both contemporaneous with the production of the text (in this case, late medieval England) as well as modern bodies, including our own. In this dissertation I will employ both approaches, in Chapters 2 and 3 focusing largely on the bodies in the texts, and in Chapter 4 on both the bodies in the texts and the medieval bodies interacting with the texts. Far from being mutually exclusive, these two approaches are in fact mutually dependent, since to empathize1 with bodies in texts we rely on our own embodied experiences. In order to examine how we, as readers, relate on a kinaesthetic level with the “I” or subject of a text, I will here conduct an in-depth study of Middle English lyric, a field long overdue for renewed attention. After a flourishing of interest in the 1960s and 70s, Middle English lyric recedes markedly from scholarly conversation.2 Recently, however, lyric and form generally are enjoying a resurgence in popularity in scholarly and to some extent popular discourse. The publication, in 2014, of The Lyric Theory Reader (ed. Virginia Jackson 1 “Empathy” in this study is used in its linguistic sense, that is: to inhabit, as readers, the speaking “I” (or, more rarely, a “you”) of a text. 2 There are some notable exceptions, particularly Siegfried Wenzel’s work, during the 1980s, on Franciscan spirituality and Middle English lyric. 1 and Yopie Prins) represents the first major edited collection on lyric theory since Chaviva Hoŝek and Patricia Parker’s Lyric Poetry: Beyond New Criticism thirty years prior. New Formalist approaches, in particular, have reinvigorated lyric studies with innovative work from a number of emerging and established scholars working in diverse periods and cultural contexts. In the field of Middle English lyric specifically, New Formalist methods as well as developing approaches in textual studies3 and theories of affect, embodiment, and performance4 are changing the shape of the field. Renewed attention to lyric in general and Middle English lyric specifically is overdue, and happily this dissertation is only one of many recent approaches to lyric. Here, lyric will be examined through the compound lens of various theoretical methodologies that can be grouped under the rubric of “theories of subjectivity and embodiment.” The study of embodiment itself is reemerging in scholarly discourse (after something of a lull) with the advent of affect studies, history of emotions, posthumanism, and related discourses such as new materialism and thing theory. As will be demonstrated, this dissertation is situated in a rich matrix of recent work applying these varied theoretical approaches to medieval texts.5 My overarching claim is simple: Middle English lyric is uniquely successful at connecting readers and hearers with our own bodies and with the bodies of medieval subjects.6 This effect occurs on the levels of content, form, and tone, although my emphasis 3 Kathleen Palti and Cynthia Rogers have conducted particularly nuanced work on Middle English lyrics, including the Findern Lyrics, using manuscript-focused approaches. 4 See especially the work of Seeta Chaganti, who in recent years has turned her focus from the intersections of Old and Middle English poetry with material culture to the related study of late medieval representations of dance in poetry and visual art. 5 For example, the fortieth annual Sewanee Medieval Colloquium, in April 2014, was centered on “Medieval Emotions.” Notable scholars in various disciplines (history, literary and cultural studies, music, historical anthropology) have in recent years productively explored the intersections of the body with medievalisms: Caroline Walker Bynum, Miri Rubin, Barbara Rosenwein, Fiona Somerset, Bruce Holsinger, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Elizabeth Scala, Sara Ritchey, Daisy Delogu, and Seeta Chaganti, among many others. 6 This admittedly fraught term will be defined in greater detail shortly; for now, suffice it to say that “subject” refers to “the ‘I’ of the text.” 2 here will be primarily on the formal components through which the connection is achieved, and my evidence will be drawn largely from formal analysis of the songs. The methods through which Middle English lyric connects us with our bodies are sophisticated and include especially the carefully managed use of the linguistic category of deixis; nuanced, intentional portrayal and evocation of affect, or physically demonstrated emotion;7 and implicit and explicit reference (via form and content respectively) to the ways in which lyrics were literally embodied by medieval subjects through danced performance. It is almost certainly the case that this connection, through Middle English lyric, of the bodies that experience them and those inhabit them occurs via other avenues as well. Potentially illuminating approaches to the lyrics that remain largely under-explored include textual studies methodologies (such as closer examination of manuscript context and intertextuality), social and political history (for example, allusions within the content of lyrics to contemporary events), performance studies, and theoretical orientations other than those focused explicitly on the human body. Here, however, I confine my analysis largely to the (edited) texts of the poems themselves, eschewing for the sake of scope both in-depth studies of the manuscripts from which the lyrics are drawn as well as most historical evidence. There is ample room for scholarship making use of all of the aforementioned approaches, but it is far beyond the scope of a dissertation-length project to employ them all. Thus, this study remains focused on theoretical approaches privileging embodiment and how they can productively “open” lyrics in a way that allows readers and hearers, both medieval 7 This study employs the words “affect” and “emotion” interchangeably, unless otherwise noted. This is a departure from much scholarly practice, in which (as will be explored in more detail in Chapter 3) “affect” usually refers to embodied emotion and “emotion” is often used in a specialized sense referring to a culturally specific practice in a particular historical community. To sharply delineate the terms suggests that “mind” and “body” are separate systems; in this study, the terms are intentionally conflated. 3 and modern, to empathize with the “I” of the text and in doing so to connect us with our own bodies. Many poets and scholars today actively participate in a burgeoning (if not yet long) tradition of reading lyric poetry with a dual focus on the formal features of the verse as well as the bodily and sensuous. Recently, for example, Celia Carlson notes explicitly that she “… places formalism at the heart of sensuous knowledge” (“Lyric Image as Sensuous Thought” 158). Poet and theorist Susan Stewart’s 2002 monograph Poetry and the Fate of the Senses, although not the first work to account for the role of sensuous knowledge in lyric reading, is nonetheless foundational.

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