Social bonds in Middle English ghost and vision narratives

Galvin, James (2025). Social bonds in Middle English ghost and vision narratives. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

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Abstract

This thesis examines the role of social bonds and social commemoration in Middle English narratives about encounters with the spirits of the dead. It focuses on stories of ghostly apparitions and purgatorial visions in which the dead request commemorative aid, in the form of prayers and masses, to speed their passage through purgatory. The thesis uses commemorative practices – funerals, postmortem prayers and soul masses, almsgiving, and funerary art – to contextualise these narratives and examine how they connect with the practical concerns of late medieval English people regarding postmortem purgation and social commemoration. Middle English ghost narratives provide a model for validating lay social relationships of parenthood, marriage, and friendship by emphasizing their spiritual power in commemorative contexts. These purgatorial ghost narratives circulated across a variety of social classes and were continually being reworked to emphasize the specific concerns of social groups, including the aristocracy, gentry, merchantry, and the sworn religious, regarding commemorative agency, interpersonal sins, and the role of money in the commemorative economy. Taken together, they form a substantial narrative corpus reflecting the wide variety of ways that medieval English people thought about death, purgatory, commemoration, and the social networks in which they were enmeshed.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

Supervisor(s):