Form and Foreskin

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 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.

“The transition text” in Russian book tradition A book review: Shunkov A. V. Poetika perekhodnosti. Issledovaniya po literaturnoy kul’ture Rossii vtoroy poloviny 17 – nachala 18 v. [Poetics of the transition period. Studies in Russian literary culture of the second part of the 17th – the beginning of the 18th century]. Moscow, St. Pe-tersburg, 2020, 256 р.

The monograph under review analyzes the typological features of a wide range of works cre-ated in the transition period of Russian spiritual culture from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern Times. These works take mainly a peripheral place in the genre system and demon-strate the combination of medieval poetics and the emerging new aesthetics. Most of them combine the features of a document and a literary work. The concept of “the transition text” formulated on the material studied allows expanding the observations of previous scholars and opening up new perspectives for further research.

Archpriest Avvakum and the Modern Literary Process

The article demonstrates the similarity of some features of modern and medieval poetics, the latter being represented in the writings of Archpriest Avvakum. Vodolazkin analyzes methods of incorporating an “alien” text into an author's text and the scope of the concept of “reality” in relation to medieval and modern texts.

Medieval Latin Arts of Poetry and Prose

Modern scholarship on the medieval Latin arts of poetry and prose has focused on a number of treatises written in the 12th and 13th centuries: Matthew of Vendôme’s Ars versificatoria; Geoffrey of Vinsauf’s Poetria nova, Documentum, and Summa de coloribus; Gervase of Melkley’s Ars versificaria or poetica; John of Garland’s Parisiana Poetria; and Eberhard the German’s Laborintus. Other documents have received attention as well, notably commentaries and glosses. The art of composition in both verse and prose also evolved as new conceptions of the art emerged. In the 13th century, Latin translations and commentaries on Aristotle’s Poetics led to revisions of the Horatian art in the 14th century; treatises that reflect this development begin with the anonymous Long Documentum, renamed Tria sunt, and Mathias of Linköping’s Poetria, based on instruction Mathias received while studying at the University of Paris. The traditional conception of the art of poetry was derived from rhetorical treatises attributed to Cicero, notably the De inventione and the Rhetorica ad Herennium. The medieval treatises adapted a traditional order of parts in rhetoric: topical invention, disposition based on natural chronological order or artificial rearrangement of the chronological order, amplification and abbreviation using figures and tropes common in ornamentation, and eventually Aristotelian notions of imagination as a poetic faculty. Inclusion of these parts indicates the scope and level of instruction in the treatises. Accordingly, the study and practice of poetic composition in classrooms progressed from elementary composition and study to imitation of exemplary masterpieces. Such instruction fit well into the stages in medieval pedagogy from grammar, rhetoric, and logic on to arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music, and beyond to philosophy and theology. The scope of the art on these virtually graded levels of instruction led to study, interpretation, imitation, and, ultimately, emulation of perceived ancient and medieval masterpieces like Virgil’s Aeneid, Horace’s lyrics, Bernardus Silvestris’s Cosmographia, and Alan of Lille’s Anticlaudianus and De planctu Naturae, among others. Introductions to specific works (accessus ad auctores) include model works that exemplify the art’s evolution from Antiquity to the Late Middle Ages. Classbooks and other anthologies collected poems and passages for study and imitation on the student level. Finally, the Latin art found its way into some treatises written for vernacular languages. These diverse documents—commentaries, model works, accessus, classbooks and anthologies, authorial statements inserted into their own writings, vernacular treatises, and other documents—enhance our understanding of medieval poetics.

El descubrimiento de la fauna exótica en los relatos de viajes: de las descripciones medievales a las imitaciones en la novela histórica contemporánea

<p>El objetivo de este artículo es analizar los rasgos fundamentales de la descripción medieval de algunos<br />animales exóticos y compararla con la descripción de estos mismos animales en la novela histórica. Del<br />cotejo entre textos medievales y actuales se intentará extraer conclusiones en torno al aprovechamiento,<br />a modo de herramientas, que hacen los escritores contemporáneos al mimetizar casi literalmente esas<br />descripciones medievalizantes de animales exóticos. Su objetivo sería obligar al lector moderno a tomar<br />una posición de lectura, produciendo efectos de identificación (con la poética del relato medieval) y a la<br />vez distanciamiento (respecto a las formas narrativas actuales).</p><p><br />Palabras clave: animales exóticos, bestiario, descriptio, relatos medievales de viaje, novela histórica.</p><p><br />The aim of this article is to discuss the fundamental characteristics of the medieval description of several<br />exotic animals, and to compare it with descriptions of these animals in the contemporary historical<br />novel. From the comparison between medieval and contemporary works, conclusions about the tools<br />used by contemporary writers will be extracted. In particular, it will be shown how they benefit from<br />the imitation, almost literal, of the medieval-style descriptions of exotic animals. The intention of this<br />method, would be to constrain the modern reader to a reading perspective, by producing identification<br />effects (with the medieval poetics) as well as distancing (with respect to the current narrative forms).</p><p><br />Key Words: exotic animals, bestiary, descriptio, medieval travel narrative, historical novel</p>

Rhetoric and Performing Anger: Proserpina's Gift and Chaucer's Merchant's Tale

Although scholars have historically minimized the relationship between medieval grammatical and rhetorical traditions and Chaucer's poetics, Proserpina's angry speech in the Merchant's Tale represents the intersection of medieval classroom grammar exercises, Geoffrey of Vinsauf's theory of delivery, and poetics. Proserpina's angry speech reveals that her rhetoric is calculated to subvert the masculine power structures that surround her. Such a focus on Chaucer's depiction of women's persuasive tactics helps to highlight Chaucer's deep engagement with rhetoric beginning in the 1380's. Moreover, this investigation asks for increased attention to the overlap between classroom grammatical traditions, rhetorical theory, and medieval poetics.