The Late Medieval Origins of the Modern Novel

ISBN-13: 9781137541338 / Angielski / Twarda / 2015 / 278 str.

Rachel A. Kent

Opis

The Late Medieval Origins of the Modern Novel dramatically refreshes the age-old debate regarding the novel's origins and purpose. Acknowledging the excellence of Doody, Moore, and Pavel's recent work, scholarship has yet to account for literature's final ability, after millennia of engagement with royalty, heroes, epic journeys, morality tales, and political satire, to embrace the sexual, pained byways of the ordinary man and woman in the early modern period. Contrasting theories of the novel as a Protestant inheritance, this book ties the startling ontology and aesthetics of late medieval spirituality to the form's scandalous, experimental early modern emergence. Recalling these origins, Kent reestablishes the novel theoretically as a landscape of vulnerable 'presence encounter', and not primarily as a 'meaning event'. From James to Kundera to Robbe-Grillet, Kent engages literary theorists hinting at this primary 'presence' purpose. She closes by exploring literary 'Pietas' within Hardy, Maupassant, and Bataille.

Recenzje

"Kent shows a profound sensitivity to the emotional and ethical capacity of art and literature to communicate complex and multi-faceted meanings. Her weaving together of medieval devotional art and modern literature is scintillating in its allusive and suggestive associations, offering a moving and eloquent insight into the difference between the suffering body as the compassionate focus of piety/pity, and the suffering body as the pornographic focus of violence and possession." - Tina Beattie, Professor of Catholic Studies, University of Roehampton, UK

"Working within a discipline that now searches for multiple lines of filiation, Kent develops a wide-ranging argument in service of a provocative thesis: the novel emerges as a 'site of endurance' for a liturgically-based ontology 'embodied,' quite literally, in late-medieval devotional practices. 'Modernity's' supposed rupture with its 'medieval' past is once again challenged by a writer willing to engage with what has been overlooked, marginalized, concealed - this time in service of a renewed spirituality." - James M. Kee, Professor of English, College of the Holy Cross, USA

"A new, spicy voice in the counter-tradition that runs from Margaret Anne Doody to Thomas Pavel, Kent's work upends scholarly assumptions of the novel's modern origins and secularizing trajectory. Her insistence on the priority of the erotic, impassioned person and visceral personal encounter without which there is no signification or meaning and her lyrical flourishes from theology to cultural theory to the middle ages and back again make this a delicious, electric, and satisfying read." - Lori Branch, Associate Professor of English, The University of Iowa, USA

O autorze

Rachel Andrea Kent is an Independent Scholar in New Zealand.