Abstract

This dissertation examines the ethical questions that arise from the study of late medieval culture in the twentieth-century academy. By incorporating recent work in philosophy from Jean-Francois Lyotard, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jean-Luc Nancy with the study of Middle English literature, I investigate the ethical questions raised through the encounter between literature and history in Chaucer's Legend of Good Women, between critics and medieval poverty in William Langland's fourteenth-century poem, Piers Plowman, and between critics and anti-Semitism in Geoffrey Chaucer's Prioress's Tale. Central to this work is the idea that history is not a stable category, but rather something that can return in uncanny ways to challenge readers ethically. In response to such a challenge--which I argue may provoke a feeling of obligation--readers of medieval literature should explore more fully the impact of the contexts in which their reading takes place. By bringing a heightened attention to the complex contexts of reading medieval literature, my dissertation demonstrates that reading medieval texts can provide a place in which obligation may happen, and in response to which we as readers are called to do justice. This justice, however, should not come in the form of a quid pro quo, or a payment of a debt. Instead, justice is something that must continually be pursued because one can never know if one's initial response was just