| Description |
197 pages ; 24 cm |
| Contents |
Preface: "Barnsley Main Seam" -- 1. The Varieties of Ludus: Augustinian Privation and the Carnivalesque -- 2. "Vanysshed Was This Daunce, he Nyste Where": Alisoun's Absence in the Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale -- 3. "Ther He Watz Dispoyled, with Spechez of Myerthe": Carnival and the Undoing of Sir Gawain -- 4. The Unbeing of the Overreacher: Privative Evil, Protean Carnival, and the Marlovian Hero -- 5. "A Crafty Madness": Carnival and the Politics of Revenge -- 6. Enthroned in the Marketplace: The Carnivalesque / Antony and Cleopatra |
| Summary |
This book constructs a paradigm for the operation of subversive comedy - what Arthur Lindley, the author, calls the Augustinian carnivalesque - by examining some of the major texts of Ricardian and Elizabethan literature. By identifying some common characteristics of these works, Lindley argues that they must be seen in terms of a continuous, fundamentally Augustinian, Christian culture that is marked by a pervasive anti-heroic comedy that interrogates the official secular order and the role-based social identities that comprise it. Underlying this is a common attitude of Christian skepticism and a common use of carnivalesque demystification of power. In this pattern of continuity, concern with subjectivity, the mysteries of the self, and the tension between inward consciousness and outward role long antedates, say, Hamlet. Subjection, in other words, is not an Elizabethan (or Shakespearean) invention, but a constant concern of Augustinian literature going back to Confessions |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 182-193) and index |
| Subject |
Chaucer, Geoffrey, -1400 -- Characters -- Wife of Bath
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Marlowe, Christopher, 1564-1593 -- Characters -- Heroes
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Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616. Antony and Cleopatra.
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Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616. Hamlet.
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| SUBJECT |
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n79068347
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| Subject |
Carnival in literature.
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Dissenters in literature.
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English drama -- Early modern and Elizabethan, 1500-1600 -- History and criticism.
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English poetry -- Middle English, 1100-1500 -- History and criticism.
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Literature and society -- England -- History.
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Revenge in literature.
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Social norms in literature.
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Social problems in literature.
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Wife of Bath (Fictitious character)
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| LC no. |
96002971 |
| ISBN |
0874135885 (alk. paper) |
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