The Discourse of Sighs in Medieval English Literature

Abstract

ABSTRACT The very ubiquity of references to sighing in medieval English literary culture has meant that the significance of sighs has remained hidden in plain sight. Yet the introduction of sighs into medieval reimaginings of biblical and other sources underlines how much sighing is part of late medieval affect. A dual quality to sighs makes their interpretation depend on context: sighs may express negative or positive responses. As nonverbal vocalizations, sighs constitute a mode of communication, while in devotional tradition the penitent’s sighs may offer a means of bringing into being a desired spiritual state. Chaucer’s poems show him aligning sighs with significant speech, most intensively in Troilus, where Chaucer suggests sighs’ communicative role and their different kinds, while exploring their interconnections with breathing and emotion, and how sighs can powerfully transcend speech with what is left unsaid.