| This project seeks to investigate the relationship between personal identity and environment as articulated in the literature of Britain from the Old English period through Spenser, including works not only in English but also in Middle Welsh and Middle Scots. Thus, the project is involved in the larger scholarly field of ecocriticism. This dissertation proceeds from the observation that the salient geographical feature of British literature is insularity. This geographical insularity is frequently mapped onto a psychological sense of isolation. Because the scenes with which this dissertation is concerned are those that pay closest attention to the environment, it is not surprising that their medieval creators should want to mostly clear the field of people in order to consider the place. The pattern that emerges from this is that the texts identify their often solitary characters with the insular geography they occupy. A deep association between person and place emerges. Britain, as an island, may be construed as a particular microcosm that includes four topoi (literally both "place" and "topic"), each of which will receive treatment in its respective chapter. These topoi are, in order, wilderness, forest, rural land, and constructed space. Thus, this dissertation starts with the outermost topos of the island, the uncultivated, unclaimed land of the wilderness, and works its way inward, as far as the interior, constructed environment of Thomas Hoccleve's London apartment. The precise ways in which selfhood and environment interact vary in the literature included in the dissertation, but there remains a fundamental interplay between identity and environment throughout. |
