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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Between Two Stools: Scatology and Its Representations in English Literature, Chaucer to Swift

Between Two Stools: Scatology and Its Representations in English Literature, Chaucer to Swift

Smith, Peter J.

Hardcover

Literary CriticismFiction Anthologies

ISBN10: 0719087945
ISBN13: 9780719087943
Publisher: Manchester Univ Pr
Published: Aug 1 2012
Pages: 304
Weight: 1.10
Height: 1.10 Width: 5.40 Depth: 8.70
Language: English

Between two stools investigates the representation of scatology - humorous, carnivalesque, satirical, damning and otherwise - in English literature from the middle ages to the eighteenth century.

Smith contends that the 'two stools' stand for two broadly distinctive attitudes towards scatology. The first is a carnivalesque, merry, even hearty disposition, typified by the writings of Chaucer and Shakespeare. The second is self-disgust, an attitude characterised by withering misanthropy and hypochondria. Smith demonstrates how the combination of high and low cultures manifests the capacity to run canonical and carnivalesque together so that sanctioned and civilised artefacts and scatological humour frequently co-exist in the works under discussion, evidence of an earlier culture's aptitude (now lost) to occupy a position between two stools.

Of interest to cultural and literary historians, this ground-breaking study testifies to the arrival of scatology as an academic subject, at the same time recognising that it remains if not outside, then at least at the margins of conventional scholarship.

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