Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Medieval Studies Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 16 of 16

Full-Text Articles in Medieval Studies

Queer Not: Medieval Romance's Toll On Queerness, Kyle Gaydo May 2023

Queer Not: Medieval Romance's Toll On Queerness, Kyle Gaydo

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

How does a contemporary audience handle medieval queerness? What, exactly, constitutes medieval queerness, and how does the medieval literary genre of romance impact it? This thesis attempts to grapple with these questions, and many more, utilizing the 13th-century Old French romance Le Roman de Silence by Heldris de Cornuälle. Medieval romances are particularly fruitful for this analysis because, on one hand, the genre consistently re/turns to cisheteronormativity, and, on the other, because scholarship generally has not applied queer theory to the study of romance. Silence follows Silence, a young Englishwoman who is raised as a boy to protect her family’s …


Outlaws And Traitors: Justifying Rebellion In The Old French Epic Of Revolt, Klayton Tietjen Aug 2022

Outlaws And Traitors: Justifying Rebellion In The Old French Epic Of Revolt, Klayton Tietjen

Doctoral Dissertations

The plot of many chansons de geste hinges on acts that would have been considered treasonable by medieval legal custom. Yet despite conspicuously treasonous behavior, rebel characters remain the heroes of the tales. Coming to an understanding of the esoteric way that medieval poets and their audiences would have perceived the difference between rebel characters and traitor characters is the pursuit of this study. Through an investigation of the narrative logic and poetic details of epic poems like Girart de Vienne and other chansons de geste, the divergence between treachery and rebellion can be shown to reside in narrative …


Warrior Women And The Shaping Of Narrative In Medieval French Literature, Sara Rychtarik Feb 2022

Warrior Women And The Shaping Of Narrative In Medieval French Literature, Sara Rychtarik

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Warrior Women and the Shaping of Narrative in Medieval French Literature focuses on the representation of women warriors in medieval French literature, but it is also concerned with contemporaneous historical accounts and texts. Additionally, it examines representations of the woman as warrior in a different medium, which is still narrative-based, showing the impact of illuminated manuscripts on visual culture. The study looks at a specific character in medieval French literature – the woman warrior – in order to see how her existence in a text contributes to its narrative shape and to the production of the text itself. Through close …


Representations Of Female Agency In Medieval French Literature, Mathilde Pointiere Apr 2021

Representations Of Female Agency In Medieval French Literature, Mathilde Pointiere

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the different ways authors portray female agency in medieval French literature. In focusing on three medieval writers, Chrétien de Troyes, Heldris de Cornouailles and Christine de Pizan, I contend that female agency arises as a result of trauma or crisis. I define my terms as follows: agency is the capacity and intention of performing actions on one’s own behalf. For a fictional character to have agency, therefore, she must be portrayed as having a sense of control and of being the owner of the action she executes. Additionally, I argue that as women characters assume their agency, …


Wild Wales: How Cultural Discrimination Transformed Merlin From Brittonic Legends To French Arthurian Romances, Viveca Calista Lawrie Jan 2021

Wild Wales: How Cultural Discrimination Transformed Merlin From Brittonic Legends To French Arthurian Romances, Viveca Calista Lawrie

Senior Projects Spring 2021

The legend of King Arthur and his knights of the round table is one of the best-known stories in the Western world. Generally people tend to associate Arthurian legend with fifteenth-century English writing or French romances, but in reality, Arthurian legend has its origins in Brittonic oral tradition. Merlin, specifically, represents the concepts of Brittonic paganism and wildness more than any other Arthurian character. The changes made in the character and the narrative of Merlin, from Brittonic legend to Latin writing and then to French romances, reflect a political and cultural shift in Britain and France. An examination of Merlin …


Pratiquer Ou Incarner La Vertu? L'Agentivité Des Femmes Chez Marie De France Et Christine De Pizan, Kathe Blydenburgh May 2020

Pratiquer Ou Incarner La Vertu? L'Agentivité Des Femmes Chez Marie De France Et Christine De Pizan, Kathe Blydenburgh

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis studies the treatment of women in Medieval literature as active agents in their roles of upholding the virtues of the societies in which they live. This study focuses on works written by the female authors Marie de France and Christine de Pizan.


Chaucer's Critique Of Romance: Anelida And Arcite, Troilus And Criseyde, And The "Knight's Tale", Vivian (Yuwei) Han Jan 2020

Chaucer's Critique Of Romance: Anelida And Arcite, Troilus And Criseyde, And The "Knight's Tale", Vivian (Yuwei) Han

Senior Projects Spring 2020

As the Father of English Literature and a significant figure who brought the tradition of romance into the Middle English vernacular, Chaucer developed a remarkable refinement and precision of use of his language in fully taking the tradition of romance from the French courtly literature into his own way of demonstration as well as adapting and transforming the innovative form of historical romance, or romanticized epic, from the Italians into his originality. This project analyses Chaucer's Anelida and Arcita, Troilus and Criseyde, and the "Knight's Tale" as his critique of romance and its ideals. is concerned with how Chaucer’s language …


Splitting Hairs: The Creation And Dissolution Of Boundaries In Thirteenth-Century French Literature, Cassidy Devon Thompson May 2018

Splitting Hairs: The Creation And Dissolution Of Boundaries In Thirteenth-Century French Literature, Cassidy Devon Thompson

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Medieval authors often blur the boundaries between humans and animals in their works. In “Splitting Hairs: The Creation and Dissolution of Boundaries in Thirteenth-Century French Literature,” I study how medieval authors dehumanize people by inscribing bestial traits onto the human body via hair and hairiness in order to interrogate acts of self-definition, religious practices, social identity, and gender roles. The work examines a wide variety of literary and nonliterary texts of the thirteenth century including encyclopedias, medical treatises, hagiographies, romances, satirical poetry, and fabliaux. I explore how and why authors use the visibility, malleability, and shared human and animal quality …


Clemence Of Barking And Valdes Of Lyon: Two Contemporaneous Examples Of Innovation In The Twelfth Century, Lisa Murray Sep 2017

Clemence Of Barking And Valdes Of Lyon: Two Contemporaneous Examples Of Innovation In The Twelfth Century, Lisa Murray

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Twelfth Century in Western Europe was a remarkable time in history. Scholars have noted that Roman law was being revived, Aristotelian theory was being studied, Romanesque and Gothic art was being produced, scholasticism was being cultivated, and economic growth was being fostered by the rise of towns. These are just some of the developments that help give this era the well-known term “twelfth-century renaissance.” Despite the flourishing of creativity that this label suggests, there are few surviving, specific examples of innovation from this time that have been passed down to us. In AD 1175 the Benedictine nun Clemence of …


"Some Things Grew No Less With Time:" Tracing Atu 510b From The Thirteenth To The Twentieth Century, Rachel L. Maynard May 2017

"Some Things Grew No Less With Time:" Tracing Atu 510b From The Thirteenth To The Twentieth Century, Rachel L. Maynard

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis provides a comparative analysis of seven different variants of the fairy tale commonly known as “Donkeyskin,” classified in the Aarne-Thompson-Uther folktale motif index as ATU 510B. By comparing so many different iterations of one fairy tale, it is easier to recognize the inherent attitudes concerning women and their place in society contained in this tale. Additionally, reading multiple variants from different centuries lends a perspective on the way that these attitudes changed over the centuries. Each of the thirteenth century texts considered end with their heroines trapped in loveless marriages, much like the seventeenth-century fairy tale, “Donkeyskin,” their …


Seeking Holiness: The Contribution Of Nine Vernacular Narrative Texts From The Twelfth To The Fourteenth Centuries, Stephanie Grace Petinos Sep 2016

Seeking Holiness: The Contribution Of Nine Vernacular Narrative Texts From The Twelfth To The Fourteenth Centuries, Stephanie Grace Petinos

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Spirituality has been increasingly studied to determine the laity’s role within Church history in the Middle Ages. However, secular literature is often overlooked as a source of understanding lay spirituality, even though it is a crucial aspect of cultural and social history. I fill this gap by analyzing nine important vernacular texts to uncover several distinctive definitions of holiness, all of which blend the religious and the secular. Close reading of these texts reveals various paths to holiness, which undermine the Church’s attempts at sole control over spirituality. This study demonstrates that secular authors were concerned with exploring spiritual matters; …


Parables Of Love: Reading The Romances Of Chrétien De Troyes Through Bernard Of Clairvaux, Carrie D. Pagels May 2016

Parables Of Love: Reading The Romances Of Chrétien De Troyes Through Bernard Of Clairvaux, Carrie D. Pagels

Doctoral Dissertations

In three romances Yvain, Lancelot, and Perceval, Chrétien de Troyes utilizes the intimate relationships of his courtly knights and their lady loves to explore and present the Christian ideology of Bernard of Clairvaux as expressed by his four degrees of love in the treatise, On Loving God. Previous scholarly works have only examined the Christian ideology and symbolism in Chrétien's romances as isolated occurrences specific to a single text. In contrast, I argue Chrétien's romances form a progression mirroring the Bernardian steps (or degrees) man must make in order to draw closer to and deepen his relationship …


Proto-Féminisme Dans L'Epistre Othéa De Christine De Pizan: Appropriation Et Réinterprétation De Deux Figures Mythologiques, Minerve Et Médée., Nathalie D. Lacarriere Nov 2014

Proto-Féminisme Dans L'Epistre Othéa De Christine De Pizan: Appropriation Et Réinterprétation De Deux Figures Mythologiques, Minerve Et Médée., Nathalie D. Lacarriere

Masters Theses

This thesis focuses on Christine de Pizan’s mythological allegoric work entitled Epistre Othéa, written around 1400. True to the beliefs she portrays in many of her later seminal works, such as The Book of the City of Ladies, or The Treasure of the City of Ladies, Christine displays in this piece a strong didactic vision. The crucial pairing of text and image in the two manuscripts that I chose to focus on prove the power she exerted as a woman and as an artist but also mark her intention to strengthen her moral and political message through …


Questing The Beast: From Malory To Milton, Malorie A. Sponseller Jan 2014

Questing The Beast: From Malory To Milton, Malorie A. Sponseller

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Questing Beast is a Medieval creature that has received little scholarly attention. Because of her labile nature, she is difficult to identify and therefore challenging to study. When previously analyzed, she has been considered only in her Medieval context. By comparing the Questing Beast from Perlesvaus, the Post-Vulgate Cycle, and the Prose Tristan, four identifying characteristics can be found: she is symbolic, she is multi-formed, she is a mother that gives birth, and she produces a barking noise most often made by her unborn young. Of these four signs, the last is the most prevalent and identifiable. …


Une Comparaison Du Monde De La Foret Dans Le Roman De Tristan Et Iseut Et Le Domaine Perdu Dans Le Grand Meaulnes, Kay L. Griggs Dec 1968

Une Comparaison Du Monde De La Foret Dans Le Roman De Tristan Et Iseut Et Le Domaine Perdu Dans Le Grand Meaulnes, Kay L. Griggs

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.


Seventeenth Century Golden Era Of French Drama, Vera P. Duplessis May 1933

Seventeenth Century Golden Era Of French Drama, Vera P. Duplessis

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation

Drama is a word belonging to the Greek language which means actions. It is applied to that form of literature which has action in it and is suited for performance.