I am an Associate Professor of English and Linguistics at Texas A&M University - Central Texas. My interests include Middle English literature, medievalisms, and linguistics.
This paper explores connections between J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1953 Essays and Studies publication The ... more This paper explores connections between J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1953 Essays and Studies publication The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son and representations of ofermod and aristocratic “chivalry” in The Lord of the Rings. Focusing on the motivations and leadership-related decisions of Denethor and Faramir in The Lord of the Rings, this paper argues that Faramir's behavior and motivations, despite Denethor’s implications to the contrary, cannot be described in terms of ofermod regardless of the risk that his choice to reject the Ring appears to pose to Gondor. By contrast, Denethor and his son Boromir represent the pride-motivated decision-making and rash heroics that Tolkien ties to ofermod and aristocratic “chivalry” in Homecoming. This becomes particularly apparent through close linguistic analysis of Denethor’s speeches to Faramir and Gandalf in The Return of the King. Ultimately, this paper argues that Denethor’s behavior leading up to and during the siege of Minas Tirith draws out a prominent danger of ofermod in Tolkien’s literature: the ability of the privileged leader to abandon hope on behalf of subordinates. By contrast, Tolkien’s protagonists represent the opposite impulse: they embrace hope on behalf of others, setting the stage for Tolkien’s eucatastrophic interventions.
This article analyzes the structural, aesthetic, and thematic parallels between C.S. Lewis’s The ... more This article analyzes the structural, aesthetic, and thematic parallels between C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce and the Middle English dream vision Pearl. Through exploration of the tension between worldly and heavenly conceptions of justice, value, and possession in The Great Divorce and Pearl, this study demonstrates Lewis’s skill at utilizing and updating medieval source material in order to respond to twentieth-century problems.
We show in this paper that the soteriological aims of medieval theatre relied on the precise arti... more We show in this paper that the soteriological aims of medieval theatre relied on the precise articulation of emotions, affect and feelings associated with religious devotion. We propose that this dramaturgy of emotion undergirds the formal structure of medieval plays as effectively as realism, imitation, and representation did for later dramas influenced by Aristotle’s Poetics. In a close reading of Hildegard von Bingen’s twelfth-century music-drama, Ordo Virtutum, we align a medieval play’s movement of emotions with a schematic organization of religious feeling provided by St. Augustine. This reading offers a perspective on reading medieval devotional drama that expands Aristotelian considerations of dramatic structure to consider how medieval audiences steeped in a particular theology of salvation were socialized to respond emotionally to imagery, sound, narrative, and characterization.
This article reads the narrator of Robert Henryson’s Testament of Cresseid as a central character... more This article reads the narrator of Robert Henryson’s Testament of Cresseid as a central character alongside the titular heroine of the piece. It locates similarities between Cresseid and her narrator in their unlawful sexuality, physical deterioration, and consequential exclusion from the religion of love. However, while Cresseid is shown to undergo a genuine personal transformation by the end of Testament, the narrator’s erroneous reading of the story’s lesson suggests that he has missed the true moral point, which advocates for the abandonment of worldly pleasures in favor of eternal qualities. Parallels between the spiritually rehabilitative qualities of leprosy and old age indicate that his moral progress may be ongoing, although at the end of the poem he still resembles Cresseid at the stage of complaint rather than repentance.
This paper explores connections between J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1953 Essays and Studies publication The ... more This paper explores connections between J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1953 Essays and Studies publication The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son and representations of ofermod and aristocratic “chivalry” in The Lord of the Rings. Focusing on the motivations and leadership-related decisions of Denethor and Faramir in The Lord of the Rings, this paper argues that Faramir's behavior and motivations, despite Denethor’s implications to the contrary, cannot be described in terms of ofermod regardless of the risk that his choice to reject the Ring appears to pose to Gondor. By contrast, Denethor and his son Boromir represent the pride-motivated decision-making and rash heroics that Tolkien ties to ofermod and aristocratic “chivalry” in Homecoming. This becomes particularly apparent through close linguistic analysis of Denethor’s speeches to Faramir and Gandalf in The Return of the King. Ultimately, this paper argues that Denethor’s behavior leading up to and during the siege of Minas Tirith draws out a prominent danger of ofermod in Tolkien’s literature: the ability of the privileged leader to abandon hope on behalf of subordinates. By contrast, Tolkien’s protagonists represent the opposite impulse: they embrace hope on behalf of others, setting the stage for Tolkien’s eucatastrophic interventions.
This article analyzes the structural, aesthetic, and thematic parallels between C.S. Lewis’s The ... more This article analyzes the structural, aesthetic, and thematic parallels between C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce and the Middle English dream vision Pearl. Through exploration of the tension between worldly and heavenly conceptions of justice, value, and possession in The Great Divorce and Pearl, this study demonstrates Lewis’s skill at utilizing and updating medieval source material in order to respond to twentieth-century problems.
We show in this paper that the soteriological aims of medieval theatre relied on the precise arti... more We show in this paper that the soteriological aims of medieval theatre relied on the precise articulation of emotions, affect and feelings associated with religious devotion. We propose that this dramaturgy of emotion undergirds the formal structure of medieval plays as effectively as realism, imitation, and representation did for later dramas influenced by Aristotle’s Poetics. In a close reading of Hildegard von Bingen’s twelfth-century music-drama, Ordo Virtutum, we align a medieval play’s movement of emotions with a schematic organization of religious feeling provided by St. Augustine. This reading offers a perspective on reading medieval devotional drama that expands Aristotelian considerations of dramatic structure to consider how medieval audiences steeped in a particular theology of salvation were socialized to respond emotionally to imagery, sound, narrative, and characterization.
This article reads the narrator of Robert Henryson’s Testament of Cresseid as a central character... more This article reads the narrator of Robert Henryson’s Testament of Cresseid as a central character alongside the titular heroine of the piece. It locates similarities between Cresseid and her narrator in their unlawful sexuality, physical deterioration, and consequential exclusion from the religion of love. However, while Cresseid is shown to undergo a genuine personal transformation by the end of Testament, the narrator’s erroneous reading of the story’s lesson suggests that he has missed the true moral point, which advocates for the abandonment of worldly pleasures in favor of eternal qualities. Parallels between the spiritually rehabilitative qualities of leprosy and old age indicate that his moral progress may be ongoing, although at the end of the poem he still resembles Cresseid at the stage of complaint rather than repentance.
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