Social Bonds in Middle English Ghost and Vision Narratives

该项目将研究描绘14至15世纪英国生者与死者相遇的中世纪文本中社会关系（包括婚姻、父母身份和更广泛的社会关系）的表现形式，对死亡和炼狱在性别、家庭和社区概念中的作用产生新的见解。文学描述将与非文学文本证据（包括遗嘱和纪念铭文）一起讨论，以阐明在世俗社区越来越多地参与虔诚文化的时期，人们如何通过死亡后的社会结构（葬礼、代祷、继承、纪念）来感知和执行不同类型的社会关系。具体的研究将包括：叙述中对父母/子女关系的考虑（如《格列高利的家族》、《亚瑟的家族》、《三个死去的国王》和《布里斯托的孩子》），以及他们对这些关系的表现（以及随之而来的孝顺和父母责任、爱和继承等问题）如何受到性别和社会地位的影响；寡妇和婚姻在《盖伊的最后》等叙事中的模糊角色，以及它如何与当时的证据形成对比，即寡妇在炼狱中保护丈夫灵魂的作用越来越大；以及围绕死亡的炼狱和社会结构如何通过《阿玛迪斯爵士》和《向圣女展示炼狱》等文本中的性别自我认同产生社会纽带。在本科和研究生阶段，我一直在研究中世纪晚期英格兰的死者形象，这让我建立了一个关于这一主题的强大知识基础，从而可以继续这个项目；我最近的硕士论文关注的是，在类似的文本分类中，死者的话语在构建精神权威方面所起的作用。这个项目代表了我研究的一个重要的新方向，重点关注这些表征如何根据性别和社会角色而不同的特殊性。我在硕士期间接受了与我的项目相关的手稿理论和古学方面的培训，我的课程作业论文《Awntyrs》的MS Douce 324副本抄写员的抄写实践被考官认为适合发展出版。为了正确地进行涉及相关拉丁语材料（铭文，以及所讨论文本的来源和类似物）的论证，我需要接受拉丁语培训，作为我学习计划的一部分。

The project will examine representations of social relationships (including marriage, parenthood, and broader social bonds) in medieval texts depicting encounters between living and dead from 14th and 15th-century England, producing new insights regarding the role of death and purgatory in informingconcepts of gender, family, and community. Literary depictions will be discussed alongside non-literary textual evidence, including testaments and commemorative epigraphs, to illuminate how different types of social relationships were perceived and performed through the social structures (funeral, intercessory prayer, inheritance, commemoration) attendant on death, during a period in which the lay community was becoming increasingly involved in devotional culture.Specific strands of study will include: considerations of parental/filial relationships in narratives (such as The Trental of Gregory, The Awntyrs off Arthure, Three Dead Kings and The Child of Bristowe) and how their representations of these bonds (and attendant issues of filial and parental responsibility, love andinheritance) are inflected by gender and social status; the ambiguous role of widowhood and marriage in narratives such as The Gast of Gy, and how it contrasts with evidence from the period regarding the increasing role of widows in safeguarding their husbands' souls in Purgatory; and how purgatory and thesocial structures around death generate social bonds through gendered self-identification in texts such as Sir Amadace and A Revelation of Purgatory Shown to a Holy Woman.The representation of the dead in late medieval England has been an object of study for me at both undergraduate and postgraduate level, allowing me to develop a strong knowledge base regarding this subject from which to pursue this program; my recent master's thesis focused upon the role of the utterances of the dead in framing spiritual authority in a similar assortment of texts. This project represents an important new direction for my studies, focusing on the particularity of how these representations differ according to gender and social role. I have received training in manuscript theory and palaeography relevant to my project during my master's program, and my coursework essay on the scribal practice of the scribe of the MS Douce 324 copy of Awntyrs was judged by examiners to be suitable for development towards publication. In order to properly pursue arguments involving relevant Latin material (epigraphs, as well as sources and analogues of texts under discussion) I will need to receive training in Latin as part of my programme of study.