| My concern in this study is the act, motif and metaphor of promising as an aspect of dramatic characterization, plot and theme across a range of selected medieval and Renaissance texts and genres: epic (Beowulf); medieval romance (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight); cycle drama (Noah's Flood from The Chester Cycle); morality drama (Everyman); selected Protestant and Catholic Tudor interludes; and history play (Shakespeare's Lancastrian tetralogy). My second concerns are (1) to elaborate promising as a reader-response problematic on different levels of critical description and (2) to outline the conventional basis of a history of (literary) promising.;The Introduction clears some relevant theoretical ground. Chapter One sets out a psychological rhetoric of promising, illustrated in a reading of Morley Callaghan's short story, "Let Me Promise You." Chapters Two and Three follow some themes of promising in an exemplary epic and medieval romance. Chapters Four through Seven trace the variable function of promising through a selective history of English drama, from the medieval cycle drama to the Elizabethan history play. The conclusion distinguishes between the idea of a history of the concept of promising versus a history of alternative social contexts (or discourses) of promising. (Abstract shortened with permission of author.).;I distinguish between several different "versions" of promising (covenant, contract, oath, pledge and vow) relevant to particular texts and social contexts. These contexts include the theological, quasi-juridical, political, erotic, and economic. Themes explored most deeply include the key role of promising in courtly and feudal exchange, in erotic bonding, in the notion of Divine Covenant, in the medieval Doctrine of Repentance, in Catholic versus Protestant factionalism and in certain religious and secular myths of history. In addition, I explore the conventional basis and critical utility of a distinction between so-called ordinary versus literary promising. I address such questions as Against what linguistic, pragmatic and literary horizons of expectation does a particular audience recognize and/or ascribe a promise to a text in the first place? How does the idea of promising emerge as a determining factor of text structure and implicit audience response? Along the way I critically characterize promising as variously a "speech-act," "structure of feeling," "text strategy" and "symbolic action" in order to account for various levels of the act's "visibility" and function. |
