Cracked Foundations: St. Antony, Textual Production, And Genre

St. Antony is a saint who defies description. The foundational text about Antony--Athanasius' Life of Antony--is a text that introduces many of the paradigmatic elements of the hagiographic genre yet actually subverts many of the prescriptions it creates and promulgates. This drive toward normativity and non-normativity, a basic characteristic of Antony's textual materials through the centuries, is confirmed by the presence and structure of Vita Antonius, a mid-fifteenth century prose legend featuring Antony found in MS Royal 17.C.XVII. Through examination of these two texts, this thesis argues that St. Antony's long textual presence is born out of the ability to co-opt, rewrite, and revise his legend. Foregrounding the inquiry with a strategy complied from recent "queer" theory, I demonstrate that the texts illustrate at once highly specific cultural moves and transhistorical ideals of identity, pointing ultimately to the "queer" nature of Antony and his textual production.