In these pages you will find abstracts for dissertations submitted by graduate students who have received Ph.Ds in Medieval Studies from Cornell since 1991. Please note that this listing includes some, but not all, abstracts of dissertations submitted by graduate student medievalists who received degrees from other Departments or Programs.

Since the classic writings of Frege, Russell, and Moore, philosophers have devoted considerable attention to questions concerning the nature and ontological status of propositions (understood as entities playing a number of theoretical roles, including especially objects of propositional attitudes). Interest in propositions does not originate, however, with the 20th century. On the contrary, it begins in antiquity and runs through the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Medieval interest in propositions flourishes in the 14th century owing in large part to the work of William Ockham (d. 1348) on mental language and judgment. In his early writings, Ockham claims that what functions as the objects of judgment are mental sentences. His attempt to treat mental entities as objects of propositional attitudes kindles widespread controversy in the 14th century, thus beginning a debate that continues well into the Renaissance.

This dissertation examines Ockham's views about propositions and the responses they provoked among some of his leading contemporaries and successors at Oxford: Robert Holcot (d. 1349), Adam Wodeham (d. 1358), and Walter Chatton (d. 1343). Regarding Ockham, the dissertation corrects a longstanding misinterpretation of his views about objects of propositional attitudes. Commentators (both medieval and modern) have failed to appreciate the way in which Ockham's views evolve over time, and in particular to see that these changes in his views are closely connected to developments in his thinking about intentionality. I argue that Ockham's changing views about how to account for the content of mental states motivates important and hitherto unnoticed developments in his account of objects of prepositional attitudes. Regarding Ockham's contemporaries and successors, I argue that because they, too, overlook both the changes in and motivation for Ockham's views, their accounts of objects of judgment develop in very different ways from his, despite being developed directly in response to them. Thus, for example, when Wodeham addresses the nature of objects of propositional attitudes, he is interested in accounting not for the content of judgments, as Ockham was, but in accounting for their truthmakers -- where he takes the entities playing this role to be facts or states of affair.

By challenging received accounts of the 14th century debate and Ockham's place in it, this dissertation shows the need to rethink the nature of late medieval discussions of propositions as a whole.

This dissertation explores how two highly innovative illustrated books of Chaucer's poetry encode visual cues that encourage the reader to become an active participant in understanding the text. The Ellesmere manuscript is a richly decorated medieval copy of the Canterbury Tales. The Kelmscott Chaucer is a product of Victorian medievalism, the beginning of modern interest in things medieval. The designers who created each book were professional readers who presented Chaucer's poetry persuasively to a non-professional audience with very different interpretive interests from their own. Their techniques for entertaining and provoking the reader are a model for how modern medievalists might introduce Chaucer's poetry to students and casual readers outside the academy.

I begin by describing how the professionalizaion of medieval literary studies has made Chaucer's texts seem inaccessible. Professional and non-professional readers have very different interests, and this gap has a negative effect on Chaucer's place in the academy and in popular culture. Thoughtful editions of Chaucer's poetry provide a model for how this gap might be bridged.

The next two chapters examine how the professionals who designed the Ellesmere manuscript presented the Canterbury Tales to an aristocratic audience interested in demonstrating its social and economic power through the acquisition of expensive manuscripts. The Ellesmere fulfills its audience's expectations and encourages readers to debate the radical ideas in the Tales that were of interest to the bookmakers.

The next chapter provides the background of the Pre-Raphaelite interpretive community that produced the Kelmscott edition of Chaucer's complete works. The makers of this book believed that the reception of poetry was highly personal, and the last two chapters show how they use Chaucer's poetry to understand their own lives. This book authorizes personal response as an authentic form of reception through the tenets of the Pre-Raphaelite movement and through the words of Chaucer's poetry.

These books show how medievalists can encourage readers to participate imaginatively in Chaucer's texts. Readers have historically responded to the aspects of Chaucer's poetry which authorize such participation. These books show how medievalists might enticingly interest a new set of readers in Chaucer's works.