Thursday, February 08, 2007

Also noted: Lee Patterson, Temporal Circumstances

Just noticed this was out: a collection of Patterson's essays, issued in the New Middle Ages series. The book includes “'Witnesses of Our Redemption': Jewish Martyrdom and Christian Sacrifice in the Prioress's Tale” (originally published in JMEMS), an essay that examines Christian and Jewish hybridities in wonderfully complicated ways. It is my favorite Patterson piece (and that is truly saying something). I'm also very fond of his riff on the Canon's Yeoman's Tale ("Perpetual Motion"); indeed, I wouldn't be able to teach that bit of Chaucer without it. Here's some information from the Palgrave website:

Temporal Circumstances provides powerful and detailed interpretations of the most important and challenging of the Canterbury Tales. Well-informed and clearly written, this book will interest both those familiar with Chaucer’s masterpiece and readers new to it.

Table of contents
Preface * Introduction: Historicism and Postmodernity * Putting the Wife in Her Place: The Place of Philology * Putting the Wife in Her Place: The Place of History * Freedom and Necessity: The Example of the Clerks Tale * Chaucer’s Pardoner on the Couch: Clio and Psyche in Medieval Literary Studies * “What Man Artow?”: Authorial Self-Definition in the Tale of Sir Thopas and the Tale of Melibee * “Witnesses of Our Redemption:” Jewish Martyrdom and Christian Sacrifice in the Prioress's Tale * Perpetual Motion: Alchemy and the Technology of the Self

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