Dissertation
Messengers and messaging in Middle English literature
University of Iowa
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Iowa
Spring 2025
DOI: 10.25820/etd.008014
Abstract
This dissertation interrogates messengers in Middle English literature as a crucial site for negotiating narrative authority, political legitimacy, and semiotic meaning. Traditionally viewed as passive conveyors of information, medieval messengers instead emerge in these texts as active rhetorical agents who shape, distort, and destabilize communication. Centering on how messengers function within medieval narrative ecosystems, this study demonstrates that they do not merely deliver messages but actively participate in the construction and manipulation of meaning.Drawing on theories of narrative as rhetoric (Phelan) and medieval and contemporary semiotics (Augustine, Isidore of Seville, Barthes, Eco), this project analyzes messenger scenes across a range of Middle English texts, including the alliterative Morte Arthure, Richard Coeur de Lyon, Athelston, and The Canterbury Tales. Through close reading and textual analysis, I argue that messengers act simultaneously as signifiers—through their physical appearance, objects like seals and letters, and performative speech—and as signified figures, whose credibility and authority are interpreted and contested by both characters and audiences. Their failures, distortions, and interventions expose the inherent instability of communication systems and reveal the political, ethical, and social stakes embedded in narrative transmission.
By centering messengers as figures who mediate, manipulate, and even shape the reception of information, I demonstrate how their presence exposes tensions within hierarchical systems and reflects the complexities of social and political change. Repositioning messengers as crucial narrative agents, this dissertation provides new insights into how medieval literature engages with the semiotics of authority, the rhetorical force of messaging, and the evolving yet contested boundaries of class, culture, and nation in late medieval England. It challenges traditional models that treat messengers as neutral intermediaries and contributes to broader conversations about the political and ethical dimensions of storytelling in medieval literary culture.
The first chapter examines how medieval English poets employed messengers—and particularly embodied messages—as instruments of imperial rhetoric and national identity formation. Through comparative analysis of the alliterative Morte Arthure and Richard Coeur de Lyon, I argue that messengers act as embodied symbols of authority, conquest, and religious conflict. Arthur’s use of severed heads and symbolic seals, alongside Richard’s cannibalistic performances, transforms messengers into powerful rhetorical tools. Drawing on Chism’s dual identities of Arthur, Heng’s crusading irony, and Drimmer’s bodily artifice, I demonstrate how these texts reveal medieval anxieties about English sovereignty and imperial ambition, positioning messengers as focal points for exploring communication, conquest, and control.
Chapter two explores how the messenger character in the Middle English romance Athelston challenges traditional notions of chivalric heroism by emerging as the poem's true hero. While scholars have often noted Athelston's lack of a conventional protagonist, this analysis argues that the messenger—sharing the king’s name—embodies professional expertise, pragmatic morality, and class fluidity. Situating messengers historically within Edward III’s reign, I demonstrate how the messenger’s competence and resourcefulness align him with the emerging middle class’s ideals. Through close reading, I show how Athelston reshapes contemporary notions of heroism, presenting an alternative, middle-class model grounded in professional merit rather than aristocratic lineage or martial valor.
The final chapter explores Chaucer’s complex portrayal of messengers as mediators who simultaneously enforce, distort, and challenge authority, thereby reflecting medieval anxieties about communication and governance. Drawing upon Chaucer’s own experience as a court bureaucrat and diplomat, the chapter argues that his literary messengers model institutional fragility, ethical uncertainty, and systemic corruption. In the first section, analyzing "The Man of Law’s Tale," I demonstrate how Chaucer significantly transforms Nicholas Trivet’s neutral messenger into an actively negligent figure whose incompetence amplifies Custance’s suffering. This shift reveals broader concerns about bureaucratic reliability and institutional vulnerability, positioning messenger failures as systemic dangers rather than mere individual faults. The second section addresses "The Clerk’s Tale," focusing on Walter’s cruel serjeant, a messenger who becomes an instrument of coercion and deception. By consolidating multiple source figures into this single character, Chaucer critiques the ethical dilemmas surrounding obedience and institutional hierarchy and interrogating the moral cost of blind allegiance to power. Finally, through an analysis of "The Friar’s Tale," I examine the Summoner as a corrupt ecclesiastical messenger. Here, Chaucer satirizes institutional hypocrisy, contrasting the Summoner’s moral failings with a devilish fiend who proves more ethical. Ultimately, Chaucer reveals mediation as inherently political and ethically fraught, critiquing medieval institutions' reliance on, and inability to control, their messengers.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Messengers and messaging in Middle English literature
- Creators
- P.J. Zaborowski
- Contributors
- Jonathan Wilcox (Advisor)Kathy Lavezzo (Committee Member)William Rhodes (Committee Member)Adam G. Hooks (Committee Member)Blaine Greteman (Committee Member)
- Resource Type
- Dissertation
- Degree Awarded
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Iowa
- Degree in
- English
- Date degree season
- Spring 2025
- DOI
- 10.25820/etd.008014
- Publisher
- University of Iowa
- Number of pages
- xv, 226 pages
- Copyright
- Copyright 2025 P.J. Zaborowski
- Language
- English
- Date submitted
- 04/27/2025
- Description illustrations
- color illustrations
- Description bibliographic
- Includes bibliographical references (page 218-225).
- Public Abstract (ETD)
Messengers were everywhere in medieval society—connecting villages, royal courts, and even the offices of popes. They carried critical information, enabled leaders to wield power, and kept communities functioning smoothly. But, in late medieval England, messengers weren't only essential practical workers—they captured the imagination of storytellers. Writers began portraying messengers not just as carriers of news, but as central figures who could influence, transform, or even undermine the messages they delivered. Both in and out of books, messengers became powerful symbols of how communication shapes society. Messengers in medieval literature are often imagined as simple delivery people carrying messages without changing their meaning, but medieval writers saw them differently.
In texts like Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the alliterative Morte Arthure, Richard Coeur de Lyon, and Athelston, messengers do far more than deliver information; they influence, alter, and even disrupt the messages entrusted to them. My research explores how medieval messengers were not passive figures but active participants whose communication—or miscommunication—changed history. Examining messengers, letters, and seals in medieval texts, reveals hidden tensions within medieval society, especially surrounding issues of power, trust, and social transformation. Ultimately, understanding medieval messengers challenges us to rethink the nature of storytelling itself. Stories, like messages, aren't neutral: they’re deeply connected to issues of authority, ethics, and politics, both then and now. By reconsidering these supposedly minor characters, we discover how medieval literature reflects timeless questions about who controls information—and what happens when communication goes wrong.
- Academic Unit
- English
- Record Identifier
- 9984831021902771
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