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‘Misticall Unions’: Clandestine Communications From Tristan To Twelfth Night, George W. Eggers
‘Misticall Unions’: Clandestine Communications From Tristan To Twelfth Night, George W. Eggers
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation argues that important modes of self-definition in the Renaissance draw on the linguistic uncertainty in medieval literary constructions of lovers. Just as in Renaissance texts, medieval lovers such as Tristan and Isolde fashion themselves as a “misticall union”: a conglomerate self that shares one mind and erases all distinctions between sender and receiver as well as grammatical subject and object. This unity expresses itself in the lovers’ inexplicable ability to interpret correctly the most arbitrary of messages from one another while misleading those around them. Considering Shakespearean lovers in this context suggests how deeply this model of self-definition …
Unsettling: Transgression And Travel In The Literature Of The Medieval North Atlantic, Jeremy P. Deangelo
Unsettling: Transgression And Travel In The Literature Of The Medieval North Atlantic, Jeremy P. Deangelo
Doctoral Dissertations
This project examines the significance of travel, both as practice and metaphor, in Anglo-Saxon literature, placed in the context of the neighboring traditions of the Irish and the Icelanders. It identifies in early Irish, Anglo-Saxon, and Norse literature a metaphor wherein one’s literal movement (“conduct”) in the story represents their behavior (“conduct”) in life. Using the poem The Whale as its test case, it describes the Christian concept of discretio spirituum (“the Discernment of Spirits”) as a tool for distinguishing good conduct from bad. With these terms established, the project examines actual travelers in Anglo-Saxon literature for lessons in conduct. …