Robson, Euan McCartney; (2024) A Cathedral Encountered: Stories and Storytelling in Medieval Durham. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

This thesis looks at how a medieval cathedral functioned, taking Durham Cathedral (begun 1093) as a case study. This is to say that it switches the focus away from a priori questions such as who planned, paid for, designed and built the cathedral (as well as when, for whom, with what materials, and even to what ends), and concentrates instead on how it was received. The ideas it evaluates, moreover, move beyond established conventions of compartmentalising style, tracing structural development, and decoding iconography. The “encounters” studied here sit at the intersection between body and building. They concentrate on the meanings they generated together, as dynamic and mutually enhancing agents. In an attempt to consider, on a par, both object and subject, both cause and effect, evidence for the analyses that follow is sought out in medieval “stories” and “storytelling”. How the cathedral thrilled, attracted, persuaded, frightened or even annoyed, these (and more) functions are all corroborated in contemporary sources. Just as critical, however, is the historically-contingent medieval viewer, for whom, in their particularity, such impressions neither sprang consistently, nor without mediation. Building throughout on the innate political and cultural alterity of the medieval world, a plurality of viewing communities is therefore emphasised along regional, social, professional and gendered lines. Over and above the conclusions it provides, these embodied perspectives are key: not just insofar as they might differ from, but ultimately compliment and augment, existing scholarship.Durham Cathedral was an especially “storied” building, which is to stress its recurrence (then as now) in literature. In reality, however, the Norman foundation (begun in 1093) is less the subject here than a whole series of Durham Cathedrals, many long since torn down, some broken, the majority forgotten altogether. The result is a curiously fluid and fragmentary edifice that, belying its steadfast appearance today, was in the telling and re-telling for nearly four hundred medieval years.

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