Beyond Boundaries and Categories: The Living Dead in Medieval Literature

Coulson, Jessica Ann (2024) Beyond Boundaries and Categories: The Living Dead in Medieval Literature. Doctoral thesis, University of East Anglia.

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Abstract

The living dead are unstable; they appear throughout medieval literature under mutable and mutually reinforcing representations. This thesis is a literary study that analyses representations of the living dead in narratives from medieval England. It argues that the instability of the living dead makes a holistic view the only way to study them.

To this end, this thesis dissolves some of the most familiar dichotomies and typologies in medieval studies. It destabilizes boundaries, such as ‘life/death’ and ‘corporeal/incorporeal’, and categories, such as ‘revenants’, ‘saints’, and ‘ghosts’. These frameworks are problematised as linguistic and ontological obstacles, which hinder our understanding of the living dead. Moving beyond boundaries and categories, this thesis tracks new connections and incorporates narratives ostracised by existing interpretative frameworks. It seeks to provide a more nuanced understanding of the instability that characterised and empowered the living dead in medieval literature.

The findings from this thesis contribute to our broader understanding of medieval storytelling. This thesis examines a culturally diverse stock of literary building blocks that became synonymous with the living dead in medieval England. A common repertoire of narrative patterns and motifs shaped, and were themselves shaped by, narratives of the living dead. Narrative imitation and variation, credulity and creativity, emerge as central themes in this project.

This thesis is organised thematically to track discernible patterns across these literary elements. Chapters one and two analyse representations of the living dead as shapes and forms of human bodies. Zoomorphic imagery related to the living dead are explored in chapters three and four, while chapters five and six investigate the use of elements and senses in these stories, respectively. Overall, this thesis celebrates the instability of the living dead, identifying this characteristic as crucial to their lasting imaginative potential.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing
Depositing User:	Chris White
Date Deposited:	24 Mar 2025 13:47
Last Modified:	24 Mar 2025 13:47
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/98874
DOI:

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