Paul
Strohm.
Theory and the Premodern Text.
Minnesota U.P., 2000.
Medieval
Cultures 26.
296pp.
Publisher's
recommended price
Hardback ISBN 0-8166-3774-1, $42.95
Paperback
ISBN 0-8166-3775-X, $16.95
A major
reconsideration
of relations between new theories and old texts. The work of Paul
Strohm
allies the most distinguished traditions of medieval study with the
most
challenging and innovative of theoretical approaches. These features,
working
together to revise and expand our understanding of both medieval texts
and contemporary critical practice, are apparent in full and compelling
force in this collection of essays, most now in print for the first
time.
In a range of theoretical engagements with late medieval texts, dealing
with social practice, time, and narrative, this volume proposes a
"practical"
relation between the text and the theory that illuminates it.
Insisting
on the
imaginative multiplicity of the text, Strohm finds in theory an
augmentation
of interpretive possibilities-an augmentation that sometimes requires
respectful
disagreement with what a work says-or seems to want known-about itself.
He thus defines theory as "any standpoint from which we might challenge
a text's self-understanding." Coupled with this strategic disrespect is
a new and amplified form of respect-for the text as a meaning-making
system,
for its unruly power and its unpredictable effects in the world.
In
this spirit,
Strohm offers new and illustrative readings of Hoccleve's "Male Regle"
and Regiment of Princes,
Ricardian coronation documents, Chaucer's
"Cook's
Tale," Capgrave's chronicle, the Gesta
Henrici Quinti, records of the
king's
bench, Malory's "Knight of the Cart," and other later medieval texts.
Throughout,
Strohm traverses categories of "literary" and "non-literary" in the
service
of a more comprehensive understanding of texts and the resourcefulness
with which they accomplish their social work.
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