Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2015, English

This dissertation argues that literature in Old English and early Middle English characterizes legacy-giving as a serious obligation of fatherhood and key paternal role. I contend that the father's legacy in this cultural context can be understood to include property, heirlooms, wisdom, and kin ties. This project contributes to the emerging study of fatherhood, which has begun to examine fatherhood as a previously under-explored phenomenon that is both a cultural institution and a part of many men's lived experiences. I examine Anglo-Saxon law-codes, Old English wisdom poetry, Beowulf, and the Middle English texts The Proverbs of Alfred and Layamon's Brut in order to argue for the cultural importance of this fatherly role. I argue that many of the same cultural markers of Anglo-Saxon paternal legacy continue to be relevant after the Norman Conquest, but that the Norman practice of strict patrilineal primogeniture alters certain aspects of fatherhood. While Old English literature prizes a relationship between father and son that includes an ongoing giving of self on the part of the father, early Middle English literature prefers an ideal father who serves as a prototype for the son, dying just as the son reaches adulthood.

Committee: Christopher Jones PhD (Advisor); Leslie Lockett PhD (Committee Member); Karen Winstead PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Literature; Medieval Literature; Middle Ages

Bachelor of Arts (BA), Ohio University, 2015, English

This paper examines the use of young adult literature of and about the Middle East in the secondary English Language Arts classroom as a means to dispel stereotypes about the region and welcome multicultural themes and topics into literary discussion. The work is made up of five chapters, each of which address a different piece of literature of five sub-genres: fiction, memoir, poetry, short story, and graphic novel. The books of study are broken down and analyzed in each chapter, exploring potential strategies for studying the books, such as symbol analysis, Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS), and psychoanalytical theory, as well as offering potential teaching strategies for educators to use in the 7-12 classroom. The work is rounded out with 6 appendices made up of ready-to-use lesson plans, project ideas, and models paired with each of the five novels, provided for language arts teachers to utilize in their own classrooms when teaching about the Middle East and its literature.

Committee: Linda J. Rice Ph.D. (Advisor); Carey Snyder Ph.D. (Advisor) Subjects: Education; Language Arts; Literature; Middle Eastern Literature; Middle Eastern Studies; Secondary Education; Teaching

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2015, 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, Emare, 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 (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Lisa J. Kiser (Advisor); Ethan Knapp (Committee Co-Chair); Richard Firth Green (Committee Member); Karen Winstead (Committee Member) Subjects: British and Irish Literature; Environmental Studies; Literature; Medieval Literature; Middle Ages

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2003, English

My dissertation investigates the cultural significance of vernacular debate poems from the thirteenth through fifteenth centuries. Debate poems were hugely popular in late medieval England; dozens survive, often in multiple copies, and authors such as Chaucer, Lydgate, and Dunbar contributed to the genre. The disputants in these poems—birds, corpses, worms, and occasionally humans—argue about seemingly frivolous topics to no clear end, for the debates are never resolved. Debate poems are not empty rhetorical games, however, but fascinating literary and historical documents: they address, and often voice strong opinions on, issues of vital interest not only to medieval audiences but also to modern critics. After an introductory chapter that briefly traces the evolution and criticism of the debate genre, my dissertation focuses on three recurring themes in debate poetry: law, gender and eschatology. Chapter two focuses on the legal ramifications of three debate poems, The Owl and the Nightingale, Chaucer's Parliament of Fowls, and The Assembly of Ladies, contending that the irresolution of these debate poems mimics the slow pace of the law courts, and that the poems comment on the delays endemic in the English legal system. Chapter three shows that debates between the body and soul, far from being the straightforward vehicles for conveying moral lessons they are generally assumed to be, are, in fact, explorations of human identity that grapple with fears and uncertainties about the afterlife. My fourth chapter argues that characters engaged in debates purporting to be about the vices and virtues of women generally agree on the nature of women but disagree about how their sexual behavior affects men's reputations. I contend that these debates represent ideas about masculinity and social control. Ultimately, my dissertation both reassesses the debate genre and shows the diversity of opinions that could circulate around these three issues, enriching our understanding of (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Karen Winstead (Advisor) Subjects: Literature, Medieval

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2008, English

My dissertation draws attention to a surprising and largely ignored element in several late medieval texts such as John Lydgate's Siege of Thebes, Chaucer's Knight's Tale, the Alliterative Morte, and The Wars of Alexander, and argues that several important writers of this era were concerned about warfare's impact upon, and complex relationship with, the natural world. Although modern criticisms of warfare's effects upon the lives of individual plants and animals or on ecosystemic health are surely sponsored by contemporary animal rights and environmentalist discourses, some medieval poets nevertheless reveal a sustained interest in the subjectivities of animals and in nonhuman capacities to take pleasure in one's own existence in a way that makes modern discussions of nonhuman “sentience,” “interests,” and “rights” appear not so foreign from the concerns of some of these medieval writers. Throughout this project, I examine how writers respond both to ecological relationships that are a product of specifically late medieval military tactics and proto-industries (such as those related to the increasing role of archery power), as well as ones that are hallmarks of premodern and modern warfare in general (such as the use of horses for cavalry charges or the penchant for putting an enemy's agricultural regions to the torch). In foregrounding the emphasis in several Middle English texts on the connections between medieval warfare and nature, my project not only builds upon a growing body of scholarly work on medieval views of nature, but also contributes to the burgeoning field of environmental studies and offers fresh approaches to familiar works of literature such as Malory's Morte Darthur and Chaucer's Knight's Tale.

Committee: Lisa Kiser PhD (Committee Chair); Richard Firth Green PhD (Committee Member); Ethan Knapp PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: English literature