Unmanned countenances: Representations of masculine grief in Middle English literature

This dissertation investigates the expression of grief as it relates to masculine identity in Medieval English Literature. Developing a model of grief which draws primarily on the theories of Judith Butler and Jacques Derrida, I argue that grief over the loss of a comrade or wife, particularly in the aristocratic class, creates a crisis of masculine identity. In the absence of traditional markers of masculinity, I illustrate, medieval chivalric masculinity is destabilized. This crisis of identity provides an opening, a possibility, for aristocratic men to reaffirm their masculinity in ways that do and do not conform to cultural expectations. This reaffirmation is accomplished through language and actions, what I refer to as the discursive performativity of grief.;Comparing specific displays of masculine grief in the Alliterative Morte Arthure, Chaucer's Book of the Duchess, and Sir Orfeo against the culturally accepted norms of chivalric masculinity that are constructed and circulated through the didactic and narrative literature of the Middle Ages, I illustrate precisely how grief destabilizes masculine identity and how aristocratic men attempt to reaffirm their masculinity through discursive performativity. Rather than merely an expression of loss or a step toward religious consolation, I argue that moments of masculine grief involve complex negotiations of gender and identity that fundamentally alter constructions of medieval masculinity.