Hony soyt qui mal pence: The violent and the prophetic in “Pearl”, “Cleanness”, “Patience”, and “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”
Abstract
This dissertation studies the four poems of MS Cotton Nero A.x (art. 3) and argues that they ought to be read as an entire corpus that acts as a meditation on violence and ethics: where violence comes from, where it leads us, how we may avoid it, and how one is to apprehend the commandment of one's responsibility for the other individual that marks the poems' understanding and rejection of violence. Employing medieval modes of biblical reading—in my study, prophetic, apocalyptic, and penitential modes of biblical reading—enables the critic to undertake the task of reading the poems collectively and, in particular, as commentary on each other. Mine will be an extended reading of a single theme within the four poems—the poems as an extension of a scriptural understanding of violence—that no critic to this point has undertaken. Moreover, I will demonstrate that these medieval modes of biblical reading (the prophetic, apocalyptic, and penitential) are applicable not only to Cleanness, Patience, and Pearl (two biblical paraphrases and an unmistakable religious/theological poem), but also are relevant to the manuscript's chivalric romance (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight). To undertake my analysis, I use the works of literary critic, cultural anthropologist, and religious studies scholar René Girard and the works of philosopher and Talmudic scholar Emmanuel Levinas.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Astell, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Literature|Middle Ages|British and Irish literature
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