Skip to Main Content
 

Global Search Box

 
 
 

ETD Abstract Container

Abstract Header

The Imprisonment of Knowledge and Creation of Heresy through Monastic Libraries and the Papal Authorities as Manifested in the Writings of Umberto Eco and John Lydgate.

Bereznay, Albert Alexander, II
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1365528839

Abstract Details

2013, Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, English/Literature.
My thesis, Canonicity and Medieval Heresy: Ideological Rifts and their Potentialities, addresses the way that medieval monasteries produced and protected canonical knowledge. The medieval church deployed monastic libraries to shape and conform the spread of knowledge selectively as shown within the pages of Umberto Eco’s the Name of the Rose. Monastic hermeticism and esoterism also enabled the production of many religious writings that became canonical medieval texts. The religious writings of John Lydgate, whose literary texts focused mainly on the lives of saints and historical figures, illustrate one example of the way that Christian canonicity was perpetuated and disseminated. In this thesis I establish how the canon is created and in turn how it creates its own heresies. Next, I reflect on the way that John Lydgate’s monastic writings about saints were written with a cultural bias used to sway the readers into a particular mindset about different historical and saintly figures. Finally, Eco’s The Name of the Rose will be used as a meta-fictional and meta-historical example of the Church’s imprisonment of knowledge during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Eco’s text not only illustrates and explicates medieval monastic library history, but also shows the way that a hermetic approach to canonical knowledge produces the category of heresy. The firm assertions of the dogmatic hegemonic canon of the church find their “other” in heresy. If the two remain opposed, conflict ensues; however, if they find an intellectual union through the dialectical procedure, then synthesis creates a new way of viewing what becomes the “law of literature” embodied by the early formations of the literary canon. If the state of conflict remains within the scene of dialogue, then we do not arrive at a dialectical engagement. Rather, one assertion becomes foundational and the other is reactionary; both see themselves as ways of achieving truth.
Erin Labbie, Dr. (Advisor)
Kristine Bair, Dr. (Committee Member)
81 p.
Literature
medieval; heresy; orthodoxy; canon; Bible; rhetoric; literature; English; heterodoxy; legitimate language; Bourdieu; Umberto Eco; The Name of the Rose; John Lydgate

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Bereznay, II, A. A. (2013). The Imprisonment of Knowledge and Creation of Heresy through Monastic Libraries and the Papal Authorities as Manifested in the Writings of Umberto Eco and John Lydgate. [Master's thesis, Bowling Green State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1365528839

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Bereznay, II, Albert. The Imprisonment of Knowledge and Creation of Heresy through Monastic Libraries and the Papal Authorities as Manifested in the Writings of Umberto Eco and John Lydgate. 2013. Bowling Green State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1365528839.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Bereznay, II, Albert. "The Imprisonment of Knowledge and Creation of Heresy through Monastic Libraries and the Papal Authorities as Manifested in the Writings of Umberto Eco and John Lydgate." Master's thesis, Bowling Green State University, 2013. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1365528839

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

bgsu1365528839
714
© 2013, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Bowling Green State University and OhioLINK.