The feynyng aesthetic in fifteenth-century English literature.
Item
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Title
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The feynyng aesthetic in fifteenth-century English literature.
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Identifier
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AAI9924810
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identifier
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9924810
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Creator
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Goldie, Matthew Boyd.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Steven F. Kruger
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Date
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1999
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Literature, English | Literature, Medieval | History, Medieval | Theater
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Abstract
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"To feyne" means simply to invent or make, but it also means to counterfeit, adulterate, and evade. "Feynyng" encapsulates the rubic of analysis because early fifteenth-century writers are highly self-conscious and ambivalent about their compositions, giving rise to a distinct set of rhetorical, structural, and thematic characteristics in their texts: elaborate verbal and stylistic ornamentation, persuasive incoherence, repetition for a central rhetorical effect, and self-awareness about language. The feynyng aesthetic appears in the poetry, prose, and drama of the period because particular but contradictory historical factors require the authors continually to address their roles as writers.;Thomas Hoccleve and John Lydgate extensively amplify and lavishly ornament their respective Regement of Princes and Troy Book, Siege of Thebes, and Fall of Princes in order to bolster Lancastrian attempts to identify with a substantial corpus of admirable English literature. However, the poets undermine this linguistic nationalism by detailing the debilitating effects of England's contemporary economy and identity on their verse. Discursive inconsistency also characterizes the first two poems of Hoccleve's Series, the Complaint and Dialogue with a Friend. Hoccleve attempts to feyne' his psychosomatic well-being for his readers by appealing to contemporary ideas about madness, but his argument becomes contradictory and inconsistent because the setting, London, offers no coherent set of ideas by which to describe his experience. Margery Kempe also tries to argue for her psychosomatic health and her authority in The Book of Margery Kempe, an attempt made self-apparent by her repeated use of the same tripartite structure to narrate the series of discrete events that comprise the Book. Evidence that this rhetorical feynyng was valid and convincing for a wider culture is suggested by her priest-scribe, who employs her structure in his own presentation. Awkward feynyng in terms of language is a principal characteristic of the mystery and morality plays, Mankind in particular, which explore the intersection of Latin, English, and "Englysch Laten," the power inherent in language, and the tenuous nature of meaning. Evidence from the artes praedicandi suggests that audiences would have shared the playwrights' fascination with and complex inquiries into the difficulties of signification.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
