Moral Challenge and Narrative Structure: Fairy Chaos in Middle English Romance

Arielle C McKee, Purdue University

Abstract

Medieval fairies are chaotic and perplexing narrative agents—neither humans nor monsters—and their actions are defined only by a characteristic unpredictability. My dissertation investigates this fairy chaos, focusing on those moments in a premodern romance when a fairy or group of fairies intrudes on a human community and, to be blunt, makes a mess. I argue that fairy disruption of human ways of thinking and being—everything from human corporeality to the definition of chivalry—is often productive or generative. Each chapter examines how narrative fairies upset medieval English culture’s operations and rules (including, frequently, the rules of the narrative itself) in order to question those conventions in the extra-narrative world of the tale’s audience. Fairy romances, I contend, puzzle and engage their audiences, encouraging readers and hearers to think about and even challenge the processes of their own society. In this way, my research explores the interaction between a text and its audience—between fiction and reality—illuminating the ways in which premodern narratives of chaos and disruption encourage readers and headers to engage in a sustained, ethical consideration of the world. In the end, fairies’ potential to shake up even the most entrenched notions, to imagine new ways of being and doing, and to raise audience awareness of social constructs and conventions makes them, in a word, revolutionary. Premodern fairies were imbricated in and with their culture in productive and complex ways, and my thesis explores some of this richness, indicating not only the sophistication, thought, and artistry characterizing many otherworld romances, but also the complex, social and ethical thinking being done in and by medieval narratives more generally. In so doing, my work contributes to current conversations within the field of medieval studies that are pushing back against both “dark ages” rhetoric and the deliberate misunderstanding and misappropriation of the medieval and early modern past in support of retrograde positions regarding the treatment of historically underrepresented populations.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Hughes, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Medieval literature|Ethics|Sexuality|Theology|Cultural anthropology|Divinity|Literature|Medieval history|Religion|Sociology

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