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Reading Suffering Between the Lines : = Trauma and Witnessing in Old and Middle English Literature.

Record Type:	Language materials, manuscript : Monograph/item
Title/Author:	Reading Suffering Between the Lines :/
Reminder of title:	Trauma and Witnessing in Old and Middle English Literature.
Author:	Garcia, Anca Olguta Giorgiana.
Description:	1 online resource (318 pages)
Notes:	Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 85-01, Section: B.
Contained By:	Dissertations Abstracts International85-01B.
Subject:	Medieval literature. -
Online resource:	click for full text (PQDT)
ISBN:	9798379894702

Reading Suffering Between the Lines : = Trauma and Witnessing in Old and Middle English Literature.
Garcia, Anca Olguta Giorgiana.

Reading Suffering Between the Lines :Trauma and Witnessing in Old and Middle English Literature. - 1 online resource (318 pages)

Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 85-01, Section: B.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of South Florida, 2023.

Includes bibliographical references

Both literary trauma theorists and medieval literature scholars generally avoid analyzing Old and Middle English literature through the lens of trauma studies. There are multiple reasons for this reluctance, and perhaps the most elementary one is the misconception that medieval society was numb to pain because they experienced it more often than people today do. Another reason is the fact that trauma in general is seen as a product of the Industrial Revolution and of the interactions between humans and machines. Its terminology and diagnostic methods have only developed in the last two centuries, so applying modern concepts on medieval texts has been perceived as anachronistic. However, my study dismantles such assumptions. As it demonstrates, trauma theories can be illuminating in the analysis of medieval psychology as it is reflected in Old and Middle English works of literature. My interpretations of the Old English poems Beowulf and Dream of the Rood and of the Middle English texts Pearl and Legend of Good Women by Geoffrey Chaucer argue that this literature contains clear examples of battle trauma and trauma witnessing, and that it also describes traumatic losses of loved ones. In these texts, all of which depict unusual emotional pain or shock, I assert the existence of compulsive tendencies in the aftermath of battles which resemble contemporary descriptions of PTSD, of traumatic dream-visions which cause dissociation and fantasies of compensation, of a dialectical relation between trauma and the sublime, and of witness accounts of traumatic experiences caused by death, bodily harm, or even accounts of suffering from previous literary texts. My analyses confirm that there is a cohesive body of literary works which describe suffering in similar ways, which establish ways to comfort victims, and which engage with trauma through witnessing. Since trauma is a human experience which precedes its definition, my study thus helps establish the field of Old and Middle English trauma studies.

Electronic reproduction.
Ann Arbor, Mich. :
ProQuest,
2024

Mode of access: World Wide Web

ISBN: 9798379894702Subjects--Topical Terms:

1148457
Medieval literature.
Subjects--Index Terms:

BeowulfIndex Terms--Genre/Form:

554714
Electronic books.

Reading Suffering Between the Lines : = Trauma and Witnessing in Old and Middle English Literature.
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