Description
Book SynopsisLiterary scholars often avoid category of aesthetic in discussions of ethics, believing that aesthetic judgments can vitiate analyses of a literary work's sociopolitical heft. This title reveals that aesthetics formal aspects of literary language that make it senseperceptible are indeed inextricable from ethics in writing of medieval literature.
Trade Review"Eleanor Johnson is a kind of literary-critical mechanic, revealing with brilliance and skill how particular formal and rhetorical elements work discretely and together to shape the readerly process - not for its own sake, but for the larger premodern project of personal ethical transformation. The research is first-rate and the arguments are original. The book will have an immediate and lasting effect on the study of medieval literature." (Bruce Holsinger, University of Virginia)"
