Thursday, November 07, 2013

Laurie Shannon The Accommodated Animal - still more on periods and breaks.

by KARL STEEL

Hi gang. Upstart: A Journal of English Renaissance Studies has just published my gargantuan review of Laurie Shannon's The Accommodated Animal. It's an important book, well worth reading for its collection of texts and superb close readings, and? but? it makes a strong argument for a real break between Montaigne and Descartes.

No surprise, I have things to say about periods and periodicity over at Upstart, and am delighted to be able to do so, slyly, as a medievalist among the Renaissance scholars. Let my giant book review essay clumsily join conversations like this and this and this, and let's wonder about the delightful perversity of claiming Shakespeare, more or less deliberately, for the Middle Ages.

And while you're here, get into this post about the crowd-reviewed COMIC MEDIEVALISMS issue of postmedieval. Join in, you, to help foster a better model of peer review.

4 comments:

Eileen Joy said...

Karl: your review is magisterial and beautifully written. I love Laurie Shannon's work and Anna K. and I actually had her visit our seminar last spring at the Newberry [when we taught a seminar on the late writings of Foucault]. I have more to say about the review itself, but have to save that for when I get back to my regular desk on Sunday, BUT:

what a review! so well-written! such a model of generous reviewing as well, while still being able to sketch out your theoretical disagreements with the book in a way that OPENS, and does not close down, further conversation. Brava, Karl.

medievalkarl said...

Thank Ei-ei-ei-leen (you merit my special ululating thanks). It's so funny, yeah?, the way that 'writing a review' almost automatically falls into 'grading a paper' mode, which means 'always looking for places where it could be improved' or, worse, 'places where you can assert your expertise'. Someone we have the kill the sleeping overworked professor inside us.

medievalkarl said...

wait, maybe not everyone who visits here will know Situationist graffiti. From here, allusion to "A cop sleeps inside each one of us. We must kill him." Ou, en français, "Un flic dort en chacun de nous, il faut le tuer."

medievalkarl said...

"Sometime" we have to kill the sleeping overworked &c.

and someone we have to wake up the sleeping copy editor inside us too.