Title:
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The alienated protagonist : Some effects of generic interaction in Middle English literature.
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This thesis discusses the effect that the use of more than one genre in a
medieval narrative has upon the way we read the character of the main
protagonist.
Where most medieval writing aligns protagonist and narrative with a
single genre, the main texts in this thesis confuse the reader's sense of
such an alignment and the resulting generic interaction has the effect of
separating the protagonist from the narrative, an effect I have called
'alienation'. This terminology relates to the Augustinian metaphor for
the experience of the righteous in a fallen world. It is an image which
describes a conflict of semiologies: individuals who operate according
to one set of terms in a context which operates according to a different
set of terms. The thesis examines the idea that the gaps in the
narrative that are created by the alienation of the protagonist - the
reader's sense of the protagonist having a meaning which does not work
smoothly within his/her narrative context - allow for an interpretation
of the character of the protagonist which is more sympathetic to a post-
Romantic concept of individuality than is usual in medieval characterisation.
Chapter One defines 'genre' and 'alienation' in relation to their
application in the thesis, and discusses medieval ideas of individuality
and the framework of language available to medieval writers for describing
the individual. Two texts are used to illust~ate some of the points made
in this discussion: the Confessions of Saint Augustine, and William
Langland's ?iers Plowman.
The following five chapters each give a reading of one of the main
texts. Chapter Two shows how the romance characterisation of Sir Gawain,
in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, is undermined by penitential and
fabliau elements, Chapter Three, how Sir Lancelot in Malory's ~ale of
the Sankgreal, is juxtaposed with a hagiographical narrative and an
alternative hero, Sir Galahad. In Chapters Four and Five Criseyde, in
Chaucer's ~roilus an~_~iseyd~, and his Canon's Yeoman, in the Canon's
Yeoman's Tale, are both generically alienated as a mimesis of their----
thematic alienation as traitor and as alchemist. And Chapter Six
establishes a working definition of Complaint and shows how Hoccleve,
in his Complaint, uses and then transcends the genre's characteristic
representation of righteous alienation to demonstrate his recovery from
madness.
Finally, Chapter Seven looks beyond Middle English to Marlowe's
Doctor Faustus and the representation of character in the Renaissance.
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