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
Reading Chaucer After Auschwitz: Sovereign Power and Bare Life

Reading Chaucer After Auschwitz: Sovereign Power and Bare Life

McClellan, William

Hardcover

Series: New Middle Ages

Literary Criticism

ISBN10: 1137565446
ISBN13: 9781137565440
Publisher: Springer Nature
Published: Nov 5 2016
Pages: 123
Weight: 0.64
Height: 0.58 Width: 6.28 Depth: 8.47
Language: English
Drawing on the work of Holocaust writer Primo Levi and political philosopher Giorgio Agamben McClellan introduces a critical turn in our reading of Chaucer. He argues that the unprecedented event of the Holocaust, which witnessed the total degradation and extermination of human beings, irrevocably changes how we read literature from the past. McClellan gives a thoroughgoing reading of the Man of Law's Tale, widely regarded as one of Chaucer's most difficult tales, interpreting it as a meditation on the horrors of sovereign power. He shows how Chaucer, through the figuration of Custance, dramatically depicts the destructive effects of power on the human subject. McClellan's intervention, which he calls reading-history-as-ethical-meditation, places reception history in the context of a reception ethics and holds the promise of changing the way we read traditional texts.

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