Date of Award

Fall 1-1-2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Medieval Studies

First Advisor

Brantley, Jessica

Abstract

The effigial tomb is one of the defining features of Gothic sacred art. Tombs topped with grand effigies populated the churches, cathedrals, and chapels of late medieval England and many survive to this day. This dissertation explores the encounter with these tombs as represented in the literature of the period, in particular hagiography, romance, and narrative poetry. Although it literally demarcates the boundary between dead and living, the tomb is a powerful site of boundary-breaking in these texts at which the distinctions between life and death, flesh, and natural and artistic bodies are tested and often complicated. I consider various forms of liveliness, including warmth, touch, movement, emotion, speech, and creative generation, as avenues for understanding how late medieval texts represent how effigial and monumental tombs as interacting with the living. The thesis draws on the following main texts: the accounts of the Life of St. Etheldreda from the Venerable Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica, the Liber Eliensis, and Wilton Abbey; the anonymous romances the Romans of Partenay, Floris and Blancheflour, The Squire of Low Degree, and Sir Orfeo; John Metham’s Amoryus and Cleopes; and Geoffrey Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde. Alongside these texts, I consider various examples of historical medieval English effigial and monumental tombs, such as the tomb of John of Gaunt and Blanche of Lancaster at Old St. Paul’s and Alice Chaucer’s tomb at Ewelme Church, Oxfordshire. ‘Warm Life, Cold Stones’ demonstrates the close and co-constructive relationship between such medieval artworks and the literature of the period.

Download

Share

COinS