Apocalyptic Mentalities in Late-Medieval England.
- Author/Editor
- Hackbarth, Steven A
- Title
- Apocalyptic Mentalities in Late-Medieval England.
- Published
- Hackbarth, Steven A. Apocalyptic Mentalities in Late-Medieval England. Ph.D. Dissertation. Marquette University, 2014. ii, 245 pp. Dissertation Abstracts International 76.04(E). Fully accessible via ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global and at https://epublications.marquette.edu/dissertations_mu/411/.
- Review
- Arguing that the "study of the apocalyptic in the English literature of the late fourteenth cannot boil down simply to the tracing of sources or to historicist (New and otherwise) readings of contemporary texts and artifacts," Hackbarth instead explores "the ways in which apocalyptic comes to be known" (6). He assesses several broad, perhaps incommensurate "centers of meaning--mortality, authority, confession, and textual permanence" (1)--and dedicates a chapter to each. Late-fourteenth-century English literary works--Gower's "Confessio Amantis," Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales," Langland's "Piers Plowman," "Pearl," and "Cleannesse"--are among the many works Hackbarth considers, but he addresses them impressionistically, providing insights but little sustained analysis or convincing evidence about the works themselves. Remarking on the evils of Division in Gower's Prologue to his "Confessio Amantis," 957-1062, for example, Hackbarth claims generally, that "terms laid out by Gower are as apocalyptic as it gets" (62), but he establishes no clear connections when he associates Gower's discussion with Papal Schism (60) and Lollardy (63). Gower introduces his concern for a stylistic "middle weie" (Prologue, 17), Hackbarth tells us "to make sure that readers stay interested enough to continue the chain of information into the future" (191), a strategy that Hackbarth associates, rather loosely, with apocalyptic authors. Hackbarth acknowledges that Gower's "middel weie" recalls both Horace and Augustine, but only after asserting, tendentiously, that "The very incorporation of multiple sources within a text promotes apocalypticism" (184). Moreover, "Meaning is fragile in an apocalyptic environment" (195), Hackbarth tells us, and "Apocalypticism demands that readers be vigilant and discerning," both offered as evidence of a "climate of apocalyptic concern with texts" (196) in late-medieval (and somewhat earlier) England. Further, "The apocalyptic sense prevalent in the period proves to be connected to literacy itself" (202), so that in Gower's Prologue "Writing . . . is something done out of a sense of duty, something that is done quite purposefully, yet something that requires experimentation, trying-out." This "contradiction," as Hackbarth labels it, is embodied in "Any Christian apocalypticism (particularly as it must be defined by a certainty in an end of daily life and aware that 'time shall be no more')" (213). Stringing together--and recurrently leaping among--literary experimentation, literacy, readerly engagement, multiple sources, lust and lore, vernacular writing, meaning itself, and a sense of an ending, Hackbarth seems to find the apocalyptic everywhere. Surprisingly, he does not mention Frank Kermode's landmark study of Christian apocalypticism and literature, "The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction" (1967). [MA]
- Date
- 2014
- Gower Subjects
- Confessio Amantis
Background and General Criticism