Thesiss

Bridges to the Past: Orientation, Materiality, and Participatory Reading in Late Medieval England explores the value that Sara Ahmed’s phenomenological theorization of “orientation” holds for thinking about the kinds of participatory, embodied, spatial, and temporal performances…

This dissertation theorizes a new understanding of “imitation,” the central objective and operation early modern writers prescribed for fiction, better known in the period as “poesy.” Reading poems, plays, and fictional prose from canonical authors, John Donne, William Shakespea…

In the 14th and 15th centuries, English went from a vernacular language to one used in literary and religious contexts. As a vernacular, English was the language of the lower and middle classes, and Latin was the language of religion and academia. The Lollards were early Christi…

This thesis studies the relationship between the treatment of Jewish characters by Christian authors in Middle English Crucifixion literature and the treatment of Jews in medieval Europe by members of surrounding Christian majority cultures. The common medieval Christian belief …

This study is a re-examination of Middle English animal fables as teaching vehicles. For each fable, four governing pedagogical questions are raised and certain suggestions proposed. First, what lesson(s) does the fable teach? Does it encourage a virtue or warn against a vice? S…

The "Saracen" is an archetypal figure recurrent in medieval romance who often functions as a vehicle for political ends. Christian authors commonly depicted Saracens either as willing converts to Christianity, emulative doubles, or morally degenerate monsters. The medieval roman…

This study examines William Caxton's translation techniques in text samples from three prose romances he rendered from French into English: The Recuyell of the Histories of Troye (1474), Godefroy of Boulogne (1481) and Blanchardyn and Eglantine (1489). Chapter 1. Translations su…

This dissertation investigates how the Greeks of the Trojan War and Alexander the Great are presented in Old French and Middle English literature. These ancient Greeks are depicted ambiguously: they share some of the characteristics of Jews and Saracens as they are portrayed in …

This project examines the Middle English Charlemagne Romances, a scattered group of nine metrical romances from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in the sociocultural context of late medieval England's growing perception of nationhood. I argue that these romances employ the…

The Middle English prose Brut, a history of England from its mythical foundation by the husband-murdering Syrian princess Albina and her 32 sisters all the way through 1333 (and beyond, in later continuations), was the dominant vernacular history of late medieval England. First …