THE UNIVERSITY OF HULL ROMANCING THE ORDEAL: REPRESENTATIONS OF PAIN AND SUFFERING IN MIDDLE ENGLISH METRICAL ROMANCES being a Thesis submitted for the Degree of Doctorate of Philosophy in the University of Hull by Pınar Taşdelen, BA (Hacettepe) MA (Hacettepe) June 2012 Table of Contents Abstract………………………………………………………………………………....1 Acknowledgements……………………………………………………...……………...2 Introduction …………………………………………………….………………...........3 Chapter One: Angelic Demons and Demonic Angels: Representations of Villains in Middle English Metrical Romances …………………………………………………58 Chapter Two: Submit Weakly or Resist Boldly I: Representations of Female Victims in Middle English Metrical Romances…………………………………....113 Chapter Three: Submit Weakly or Resist Boldly II: Representations of Male Victims in Middle English Metrical Romances……………………………………138 Chapter Four: Suffering on the Way: Representations of Journey, Exile, Quest and Pilgrimage in Middle English Metrical Romances…………………………...188 Chapter Five: Sanctifying and Enchanting the Ordeal: Representations of Divine Agents, Prophetic Dreams and Supernatural Factors in Middle English Metrical Romances……………………………………………………………………………..220 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………261 Appendix: Suffering Theme Index of Middle English Metrical Romances...........270 Bibliography………………………………………………………………………….317 Summary of thesis submitted for PhD degree by Pınar Taşdelen on Romancing the Ordeal: Representations of Pain and Suffering in Middle English Metrical Romances This thesis concentrates on the representations of pain and suffering in forty-five Middle English metrical romances. This excludes certain Arthurian and non-anonymous material. It comprises an introduction, five chapters, and an index of themes related to suffering, categorizing the suffering theme in metrical romances. The introduction deals with the definitions, authorship, audience, classification, manuscript contexts and indexes of metrical romances, so as to contextualize the current work. The first chapter categorizes the villains and focuses on the reasons for villainy and the nature of domestic and stranger villains, who are inherently evil, have reasons to be villainous, or who act as a catalyst to initiate villainy, distinguishing them from good villains who victimize unintentionally. It also examines how villainies are punished. The second and the third chapters concentrate on female and male victims respectively, and explore the nature and reactions of victims, how victims respond to their ordeals (either in a submissive or resistant fashion) and the representations of self-victimizers. The functions of domestic and stranger relievers of suffering are also considered. The fourth chapter discusses how Middle English metrical romances make use of journeys in the form of enforced exile, self-exile, quest and pilgrimage. The fifth chapter examines how divine interferences and supernatural agents function in the representations of pain and suffering, while paying attention to the significance of dreams in relation to suffering, and the representations of ordeals in the fairy world. The index categorizes the conventional romance characters and circumstances with particular relation to the representations of suffering. It is also intended to serve as a research tool for scholars studying ordeals in Middle English romances, or romances in general. 1 Abstract This thesis concentrates on the representations of pain and suffering in forty-five Middle English metrical romances. This excludes certain Arthurian and non-anonymous material. It comprises an introduction, five chapters, and an index of themes related to suffering, categorizing the suffering theme in metrical romances. The introduction deals with the definitions, authorship, audience, classification, manuscript contexts and indexes of metrical romances, so as to contextualize the current work. The first chapter categorizes the villains and focuses on the reasons for villainy and the nature of domestic and stranger villains, who are inherently evil, have reasons to be villainous, or who act as a catalyst to initiate villainy, distinguishing them from good villains who victimize unintentionally. It also examines how villainies are punished. The second and the third chapters concentrate on female and male victims respectively, and explore the nature and reactions of victims, how victims respond to their ordeals (either in a submissive or resistant fashion) and the representations of self-victimizers. The functions of domestic and stranger relievers of suffering are also considered. The fourth chapter discusses how Middle English metrical romances make use of journeys in the form of enforced exile, self-exile, quest and pilgrimage. The fifth chapter examines how divine interferences and supernatural agents function in the representations of pain and suffering, while paying attention to the significance of dreams in relation to suffering, and the representations of ordeals in the fairy world. The index categorizes the conventional romance characters and circumstances with particular relation to the representations of suffering. It is also intended to serve as a research tool for scholars studying ordeals in Middle English romances, or romances in general. 2 Acknowledgements I am thankful to the Council of Higher Education in Turkey and Hacettepe University for the grant I was awarded, which made the writing of this thesis possible. I would like to thank my supervisor Dr. Lesley A. Coote, without whom this project would never have been completed, for her very generous assistance, valuable comments, and encouragement. I am very grateful to the external examiner Dr. Raluca L. Radulescu, and the internal examiners Dr. Martin Arnold and Dr. Veronica O’Mara for their helpful comments. My gratitude must be extended to all my instructors at Hacettepe University, and special recognition should be given to Prof. Dr. Burçin Erol. It was because of her inspired teaching that I became a medievalist. I continue to learn from her, and she continues to inspire me. I am very grateful to my aunt Saadet Arslan and my uncle Osman Arslan for their confidence in me. I owe special thanks to my landlady Mrs. Joy Gledhill for her hospitality and support. I am also thankful to my friends Ebru Cinalp, Asuman Aydın, Sibel Sezen Altay and Zhuozhen Duan for their invaluable friendship and endless support. Without my family I could neither have begun nor completed this thesis. They have always had absolute faith in me, and they never set any limits upon what I might accomplish. My deepest gratitude goes to my parents and my grandfather for their encouragement and for standing by me through years of my giving more attention to reading and writing than I gave to them. 3 Introduction This introduction presents the ongoing critical interest in the definition, production, audience and taxonomy of romances. It consists of four sections in order to introduce the definitions, authorship and audience, classification, manuscript contexts and indexes of romances, and it concludes with another section explaining the choice of corpus and methodology in this study. Definitions The definition of medieval romance as a genre is a long-running discussion in Middle English studies. Much scholarship on the definition of medieval romance is directed at identifying and interpreting the conventional subject matter and forms of romances. Critics are not in agreement about the defining features of medieval romance; therefore, the generic definition is highly contentious. As Lillian Herlands Hornstein points out, ‘[a]lthough the romances have never been considered difficult to understand, no one has been able to tell us exactly what they are’.1 Pamela Gradon is doubtful whether romance can be regarded as a genre at all since ‘the texts that we call romances are merely a somewhat arbitrary selection from medieval narrative’.2 It is even uncertain whether medieval authors had a sense of genre, since they changed romance conventions to adapt them to new audiences and social situations.3 Joanne A. Rice highlights the vagueness of the term and defines it as ‘simply a work written in a Romance language, nothing more’.4 In other words, ‘romance is the shape-shifter par excellence among medieval genres, a protean form that refuses to settle into neat boundaries’.5 Yin Liu believes there are three reasons which make it difficult to define romance. First of all, it is unclear whether the word romance refers to the language of the poem’s source or to its genre. Secondly, a Middle English text identifying itself as romance may not be accepted as a romance by a modern scholar, or a text classified as romance by a modern scholar may not call itself a romance. Thirdly, there are 1 Lillian Herlands Hornstein, ‘Middle English Romances’, in Recent Middle English Scholarship and Criticism: Survey and Desiderata, ed. by J. Burke Severs (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1971), pp. 55-95 (p. 64). 2 Pamela Gradon, Form and Style in Early English Fiction (London: Methuen, 1971), p. 269. The same idea is discussed in Joanne A. Charbonneau, ‘Romances, Middle English’, in Medieval England: An Encyclopaedia, ed. by Paul E. Szarmach, M. Teresa Tavormina and Joel T. Rosenthal (New York: Garland, 1998), pp. 646-9. 3 Paul Strohm, ‘Middle English Narrative Genres’, Genre, 13 (1980), 379-88 (p. 387). 4 Joanne A. Rice, Middle English Romance: An Annotated Bibliography, 1955-1985 (New York: Garland, 1987), p. xvii. 5 Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner, ‘The Shape of Romance