| This dissertation addresses a paradox in the fourteenth-century cultural status of conversion. Conversion is a prominent theme in Middle English literature of this period; yet historically, international Christendom had largely abandoned hope of expanding its numbers or territory through conversion. In fact, the fourteenth century is marked more by the fragmentation of international Christendom. Similarly, within England, the structures ordering community were being constantly redefined by collective traumas like the Black Plague and the Hundred Years War, alongside less bloody but equally disturbing shifts in economic models. This dissertation considers a range of literary conversions within this fourteenth-century historical context: chapters place canonical texts by Geoffrey Chaucer and Robert Mannyng of Brunne in conversation with less canonical works like The Sultan of Babylon, Bevis of Hampton, and The King of Tars; the sequence of chapters treats a range of conversion types, including conversions within Christianity as well as those between Christianity and Judaism or Islam. Ultimately, I contend that literary conversions represent more than a fantasy of Christian expansion. Rather, conversion becomes a tool for thinking about the manipulation of factors---from gender to race to sexuality---that define an individual's place within the medieval community. I frame conversion as a technology of the self, a term indebted to Michel Foucault's work with confession in The History of Sexuality. According to Foucault, clerical discourse posits confession as a self-transformation promising spiritual rewards in return for submitting to Church authority. In contrast, literary conversions are often executed by laypeople seeking worldly benefits that can only be achieved with the approval of lay peers. Thus, conversion in literature represents a rival technology of the self that builds networks of loyalties among laypeople. In treating conversion as a kind of "grassroots" strategy, this study intersects with work by postcolonial scholars like Gauri Viswanathan who have illuminated how conversion in modern imperial contexts allows individuals either to resist empire or to gain admittance to the privileges of the ruling class. |
