Queer ecology and medieval nature : a botanical study of Chaucer’s Merchant’s Tale
department or school: Arts, Faculty of
department or school: English, Department of
data provider: DSpace
degree campus: UBCV
creator: Cosh, Alexander Charles
issued: 2017-06-14T15:48:25Z
issued: 2017
related degree: Master of Arts - MA
degree grantor: University of British Columbia
description: This thesis is a botanical reading of Chaucer’s Merchant’s Tale. Focusing on the climactic scene in which May, the young bride of January, declares her “sore” desire for “smale peres green” before engaging in adulterous sex with her husband’s servant, Damian, I intersect object-oriented ontological theory with aspects of medieval botany to garner an understanding of Chaucer’s ecological thought. Through this approach, I find that Chaucer demonstrates sensitivity to what Timothy Morton and Mel Chen describe as “queer ecology”: an emerging branch of eco-theory which explores queer challenges to heteronormativity in non-human ecologies and objects. In this way, Chaucer presents an important challenge to the church definitions of “Nature”—particularly as it was defined in Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologicae—that emerged during the thirteenth century. Thus, this thesis contributes to ongoing studies of animacy and non-human ecologies in medieval literature and complicates Timothy Morton’s exclusion of non-moderns from contemporary ecological theory.
aggregated CHO: https://circle.library.ubc.ca/rest/handle/2429/61962
note: QUEER ECOLOGY AND MEDIEVAL NATURE: A BOTANICAL STUDY OF CHAUCER’S MERCHANT’S TALE by ALEXANDER CHARLES COSH B.A. The University of Exeter, 2013 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF THE ARTS in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (English) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) JUNE 2017 © Alexander Charles Cosh, 2017 iiAbstract This thesis is a botanical reading of Chaucer’s Merchant’s Tale. Focusing on the climactic scene in which May, the young bride of January, declares her “sore” desire for “smale peres green” before engaging in adulterous sex with her husband’s servant, Damian, I intersect object-oriented ontological theory with aspects of medieval botany to garner an understanding of Chaucer’s ecological thought. Through this approach, I find that Chaucer demonstrates sensitivity to what Timothy Morton and Mel Chen describe as “queer ecology”: an emerging branch of eco-theory which explores queer challenges to heteronormativity in non-human ecologies and objects. In this way, Chaucer presents an important challenge to the church definitions of “Nature”—particularly as it was defined in Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologicae—that emerged during the thirteenth century. Thus, this thesis contributes to ongoing studies of animacy and non-human ecologies in medieval literature and complicates Timothy Morton’s exclusion of non-moderns from contemporary ecological theory. iiiLay Summary This work distinguishes between “Nature” as it was defined in the medieval (thirteenth century) church versus how it was understood in vernacular contexts. In particular, it examines how medieval works on botany gesture at sexuality in vegetables at a time when vegetables were otherwise understood to be asexual. Because of the intimate, anatomical overlaps between humans and non-humans that medieval botanical works uncover, this thesis suggests that medieval botanists approached an understanding of what we might now…
has type: Thesis/Dissertation
date issued: 2017-09
is shown at: 10.14288/1.0348269
language: eng
degree discipline: English
provider: Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
publisher: University of British Columbia
rights: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
rights URI: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
scholar level: Graduate
type: Text
identifier URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/61962