Now es that tyme for ever gone”: exploring memory in select Middle English Arthurian romances c. 1300- c.1500
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Date
30/11/2021Author
Maxwell, Drew
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Abstract
This thesis explores the ways in which memory was understood, explored, and deployed in the
Middle English Arthurian romance corpus. Drawing on a broad range of texts, from the so-called
“popular” romances on the one hand, to the most writerly of compositions on the other, the thesis
examines memory in relation to some of the central thematic concerns and preoccupations of the
form: the intermingling of oral and written storytelling traditions, truth/honour in word bonds,
grief-madness, and death. This thesis argues that the diversity of ways in which memory was
used in these romances opens up new perspectives from which to understand the texts
themselves, and the society in which and for which they were composed.
Chapter one of this thesis explores memory’s use in relation to those oral and written
compositional traditions which these romances repeatedly and insistently invoke. Each of the
texts discussed in this chapter contains references to both oral and written traditions, reflecting
the diverse cultural and literary practices in late medieval England, where oral, memorial
storytelling interacted in a variety of ways with more writerly modes. Chapter two builds from
chapter one’s discussion of how oral, memorial traditions were still prevalent in – and relevant to
– late medieval culture, by exploring the role of “treuth” and oral word bonds in the genre. In the
aristocratic social world of these texts, fidelity to one’s oral promises and oaths is a key marker
and determiner of personal honour, and chapter two explores how the keeping and breaking of
one’s word is expressed and understood through the language of remembering and forgetting.
Memory, and faulty memory, are therefore understood to have an ethical dimension, which
frequently complicates these texts’ exploration of personal morality. Chapter three looks at
depictions of grief-madness, and the interconnectedness between grief-madness and memory.
This chapter argues that portrayals of grief-madness help to shape how readers and audiences
respond both to narratives and characters, as well as exploring the literary and narrative effects
which the portrayal of grief madness produces. The final chapter of this thesis explores the
relationship of memory to death in the Arthurian romance corpus. Focusing on those romances
that represent the death of Arthur and the fall of his court, chapter four argues that remembering
the dead in these texts brings into play a variety of religious, ethical, social, and indeed
emotional considerations, which in turn shape readers’ responses. This chapter also argues that
the realistic representation of funereal and other religious practices, and the religious and ethical
imperative to remember the dead which these ceremonies fostered, creates a variety of
heightened literary effects, which brings to audiences the immediacy of death, and in so doing,
elicits from those audiences strong, affective responses.