Description
Book SynopsisPoetics of the Incarnation examines fourteenth-century writers whose poetry and narrative explore the intellectual implications of the hypostatic union. The Incarnation inspired a working-through of the philosophical and theological implications of language while Middle English was emerging as a legitimate medium for theological expression.
Trade Review"Cervone's book deserves to be widely read both for its own richly suggestive content and for placing before us, in highly original readings, the larger issues at stake as medieval studies increasingly turns its attention to formalist concerns." *
Journal of English and Germanic Philology *
"A very interesting and original book. . . . It impels one to turn again to the texts that it discusses. While I had read most, if not all, of these texts before, I have to confess that I thought many of them too 'manneristic' (to use Curtius's term) to teach or to discuss seriously with colleagues. I have learned better from this book and I am happy to stand corrected." *
Speculum *
"In this startlingly original, highly suggestive, and lovingly written book, Cristina Maria Cervone writes of incarnational poetics as from the heart of imaginative understanding. Close analyses of major and minor texts find their common appeal in their extraordinary imagining of the metaphorics of incarnation. A work of subtle and meticulous scholarship which is above all about the poetic imagination." * Derek Pearsall, Harvard University *
"This is a virtuoso study, a substantial, unusual, often brilliant contribution to Middle English stylistics and poetics." * Nicholas Watson, Harvard University *
"Cervone's book is a work of high order-polished, original, stamped by a formidable poetic and philosophical mind." * Barbara Newman, Northwestern University *
Table of ContentsIntroduction
Chapter 1. The "Enigma" of Signification in "Figurative" Language
Chapter 2. Elisions of Abstract and Concrete, Epitomized in a "True-love"
Chapter 3. Agency: When Christ as "Doer" Is Also the "Love Deed"
Chapter 4. Time in Narrative: The Teleology of History Meets the Timelessness of God "in plenitudo temporis"
Chapter 5. "He is in the mydde point": Poetic Deep Structure and the Frameworks of Incarnational Poetics
Conclusion
Notes
Works Cited
Index
Acknowledgments
