Acknowledgments; Introduction: The Intimate Stranger; 1. The Ruins of Identity; 2. Monstrous Origin: Body, Nation, Family; 3. The Body in Pieces: Identity and the Monstrous in Romance; 4. The Giant of Self-Figuration: Diminishing Masculinity in Chaucer's "Tale of Sir Thopas"; 5. The Body Hybrid: Giants, Dog-Men, and Becoming Inhuman; 6. Exorbitance; Afterword: Transhistoricity; Notes; Bibliography; Index
Summary
A monster lurks at the heart of medieval identity, and this book seeks him out. Reading a set of medieval texts in which giants and dismemberment figure prominently, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen brings a critical psychoanalytic perspective to bear on the question of identity formationparticularly masculine identityin narrative representation. This is a compelling inquiry into the phenomenon of giants and giant-slaying in various texts from the Anglo-Saxon period to late Middle English, including Beowulf, several works by Chaucer, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
