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Reading Landscapes in Medieval British Romance

Richmond, Andrew Murray
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1428671857

Abstract Details

2015, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, English.
My dissertation establishes a new framework with which to interpret the textual landscapes and ecological details that permeate late-medieval British romances from the period of c.1300 – c. 1500, focusing on the ways in which such landscapes reflect the diverse experiences of medieval readers and writers. In particular, I identify and explain fourteenth- and fifteenth-century English and Scottish conceptions of the relationships between literary worlds and “real-world” locations. In my first section, I analyze the role of topography and the management of natural resources in constructing a sense of community in Sir Isumbras, William of Palerne, and Havelok the Dane, and explain how abandoned or ravaged agricultural landscapes in Sir Degrevant and the Tale of Gamelyn betray anxieties about the lack of human control over the English landscape in the wake of population decline caused by civil war, the Black Death, and the Little Ice Age. My next section examines seashores and waterscapes in Sir Amadace, Emaré, Sir Eglamour of Artois, the Awntyrs off Arthure, and the Constance romances of Chaucer and Gower. Specifically, I explain how a number of romances present the seaside as a simultaneously inviting and threatening space whose multifaceted nature as a geographical, political, and social boundary embodies the complex range of meanings embedded in the Middle English concept of “play” – a word that these texts often link with the seashore. Beaches, too, serve as stages upon which the romances act out their anxieties over the consequences of human economic endeavor, with scenes where shipwrecks are configured as opportunities for financial gain for scavengers and as mortal peril for sailors. In my third section, I move beyond the boundary space of the sea to consider the landscape descriptions of foreign lands in medieval British romance, focusing in particular on representations of Divine will manifested through landscape features and dramatic weather in the Holy Land of Titus and Vespasian and the Far East of Kyng Alisaunder. Finally, my concluding section returns to literary descriptions of medieval Britain, but this time to examine the idea of the “foreign at home.” I discuss here how romances of Scotland and the Anglo-Scottish border such as Sir Colling, Eger and Grime, and Thomas of Erceldoune cast the Border landscape as one defined by rugged topography, extreme weather, and an innate sense of independence, while also emphasizing its proximity to the Otherworlds of Fairy and Hell. I then trace how these topics get developed later, in the early modern ballads that are based on some of these romances, explaining how song-texts persist in communicating some of these same ideas regarding Scottish and northern English landscapes. Many of these issues remain pertinent to modern discourses across a variety of disciplines, and thus invite an interdisciplinary approach that combines literary criticism with environmental history and cultural geography. Through historical and cultural analyses of these textual landscapes, I explain how romances not only reflect concerns of their medieval audience, but also provide some enduring motifs that appear in the popular literature of later periods.
Lisa J. Kiser (Advisor)
Ethan Knapp (Committee Co-Chair)
Richard Firth Green (Committee Member)
Karen Winstead (Committee Member)
328 p.
British and Irish Literature; Environmental Studies; Literature; Medieval Literature; Middle Ages
Medieval Literature; British Literature; Medieval Romance; Middle English Romance; Scottish Romance; Literary Landscapes; Landscape History; Environmental History; Environmental Studies; Geoffrey Chaucer; John Gower; Topography; Natural Resources

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Richmond, A. M. (2015). Reading Landscapes in Medieval British Romance [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1428671857

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Richmond, Andrew. Reading Landscapes in Medieval British Romance. 2015. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1428671857.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Richmond, Andrew. "Reading Landscapes in Medieval British Romance." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1428671857

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1428671857
1,146
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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.