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Blood, bones, and gold: rewriting relics in Medieval French verse saints’ lives 1150-1300
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Sinnett-Smith, Jane (2019) Blood, bones, and gold: rewriting relics in Medieval French verse saints’ lives 1150-1300. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.
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Official URL: http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b3491754~S15
Abstract
This thesis examines relics in a selection of hagiography composed c. 1150-1300 in Anglo-Norman and continental French verse. As the first full-length study devoted to relics in French hagiography, it demonstrates this corpus’s importance for the study of medieval relic encounters. Drawing on a selection of modern critical approaches to materiality, particularly Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network-Theory, the thesis examines both relics and hagiography in terms of heterogeneous networks that weave connections between entities of all kinds, in which all entities, not only human subjects, have the capacity for agency. It argues that relics are a useful means of exploring nonhuman agency in the Middle Ages, as they forge connections and trouble distinctions between texts, people, things, and the divine. It also argues that focusing on relics offers new understandings of how hagiography is built on networks that range beyond texts and human subjects to encompass bodies, things, spaces, and temporalities.
The thesis considers texts alongside visual and material elements such as manuscripts, architecture, and reliquaries. Each chapter is a case study of a particular saint’s networks that explores different aspects of relic and hagiographic networks. Chapter One argues that Eloi of Noyon’s collection of relics communicates his sainthood through forging broad networks connecting him with sacred bodies, places, and things. Chapter Two argues that Audrey of Ely and Edward the Confessor’s incorrupt relics make visible networks forged through less tangible connections such as vision, desire, and knowledge. Chapter Three argues that Thomas Becket’s blood relics (and their representations in text, image, and artefacts) forge extended networks of sacred spaces and renegotiate bodily boundaries. Chapter Four argues that despite the Virgin Mary’s absence of corporeal relics, her contact relics and other substitutes repeatedly make her present on earth through a network of bodies, artefacts, and texts.
| Item Type: | Thesis (PhD) | ||||
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| Subjects: | B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BV Practical Theology B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BX Christian Denominations P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) P Language and Literature > PQ Romance literatures |
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| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Christian hagiography -- History -- To 1500, Christian hagiography in literature, French literature -- To 1500, Literature, Medieval -- To 1500, Relics -- France | ||||
| Official Date: | August 2019 | ||||
| Dates: |
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| Institution: | University of Warwick | ||||
| Theses Department: | School of Modern Languages and Cultures | ||||
| Thesis Type: | PhD | ||||
| Publication Status: | Unpublished | ||||
| Supervisor(s)/Advisor: | Campbell, Emma, 1977- | ||||
| Sponsors: | Wolfson Foundation | ||||
| Format of File: | |||||
| Extent: | 359 leaves : illustrations | ||||
| Language: | eng |
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