Forms of Shame: Gower, Chaucer, Hoccleve
Restricted (Penn State Only)
- Author:
- Chelis, Theodore
- Graduate Program:
- English
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- January 28, 2022
- Committee Members:
- Janet Wynne Lyon, Professor in Charge/Director of Graduate Studies
Scott Smith, Major Field Member
Robert Edwards, Chair & Dissertation Advisor
Patrick Cheney, Major Field Member
Caroline Eckhardt, Outside Unit & Field Member - Keywords:
- shame
history of emotions
subjectivity
middle english literature
gower
chaucer
hoccleve - Abstract:
- This dissertation argues that the vernacular literature of late medieval England contributes importantly to the theorizing of psychological subjectivity and that this theorizing is connected fundamentally with the history of shame. Forms of Shame thus establishes an interpretive context for Middle English literature drawn from medieval theories of emotion. It describes and analyzes the ways in which the topic of shame was addressed, conceived, and critiqued prominently in sophisticated literary works by three late-medieval English authors—John Gower, Geoffrey Chaucer, and Thomas Hoccleve. Shame, the preeminent emotion of self-assessment, and its literary representation are enduring concerns for all of these authors. Shame acts as a diachronic intertextual thread linking these authors and their intellectual influences. The dialogues that they produce offer rich and subtle analyses of shame, ever shifting in their functions and their responses to cultural paradigms and to each other. The study argues, further, that the authors operate within a discursive matrix of shame that includes idealized norms of at least three broadly delineated emotional communities: ecclesiastic, chivalric, courtly. A theoretical understanding of shame—a problematic and protean feeling, uneasily categorized—remains largely unresolved at the end of the fourteenth century. The authors respond by embedding a discourse of shame within narrative representation in order to interrogate, test, and better understand the possibilities of shame within human experience. Moments of shame and narrative conflict caused by differences in its formulation heighten the awareness of self for a character or reader, reshaping the subjectivity of both agents in the process.