Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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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
Form and Foreskin: Medieval Narratives of Circumcision

Form and Foreskin: Medieval Narratives of Circumcision

Strouse, A. W.

Hardcover

Literary CriticismGeneral ChristianityGLBTQIA Studies

ISBN10: 0823294749
ISBN13: 9780823294749
Publisher: Fordham Univ Pr
Published: Apr 13 2021
Pages: 144
Weight: 0.89
Height: 0.56 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Why did Saint Augustine ask God to circumcise [his] lips? Why does Sir Gawain cut off the Green Knight's head on the Feast of the Circumcision? Is Chaucer's Wife of Bath actually--as an early glossator figures her--a foreskin? And why did Ezra Pound claim that he had incubated The Waste Land inside of his uncut member? In this little book, A. W. Strouse excavates a poetics of the foreskin, uncovering how Patristic theologies of circumcision came to structure medieval European literary aesthetics. Following the writings of Saint Paul, circumcision and uncircumcision become key terms for theorizing language--especially the dichotomies between the mere text and its extended exegesis, between brevity and longwindedness, between wisdom and folly. Form and Foreskin looks to three works: a peculiar story by Saint Augustine about a boy with the long foreskin; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; and Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Tale. By examining literary scenes of cutting and stretching, Strouse exposes how Patristic treatments of circumcision queerly govern medieval poetics.

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