Conquest, Identity, and Colonial Discourse in Medieval England: New Perspectives on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Patience
Date
2015-01-23
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Abstract
Recent scholarship has introduced the possibility of literary analysis of medieval texts from the perspective of contemporary postcolonial theory. Although a burgeoning field in medieval studies, postcolonial medieval studies has been met with significant opposition from those scholars who feel it does a disservice to contemporary postcolonial studies and the events that warranted that field's creation. Nevertheless, aspects of conquest and foreign estrangement, and the building of national identity through political rhetoric and literary output, while illuminated by a postcolonial perspective, were just as present in medieval England as they were in recent times--for example in the colonial occupation of Wales. Using prominent theorists such as Stuart Hall and Homi Bhabha, and their theories of diaspora and hybridity, mimicry, and ambivalence respectively, this investigation analyses Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Patience--two poems written in the late fourteenth century in the Welsh Marches--with postcolonial reading strategies.
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Literature--Medieval, Literature--English
Citation
Carter, J. (2015). Conquest, Identity, and Colonial Discourse in Medieval England: New Perspectives on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Patience (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/25421