Practicing literary theory in the middle ages : ethics and the mixed form in Chaucer, Gower, Usk, and Hoccleve /
Eleanor Johnson.
- Chicago ; London : University of Chicago Press, (c)2013.
- 1 online resource
Includes bibliographies and index.
Formalism and ethics: the practice of literary theory -- Formal experiments with ethical writing: prosimetrum and protrepsis -- Sensible prose and a sense of meter: Chaucer's aesthetic sentence in the Boece and Troilus and Criseyde -- The consolation of tragedy: protrepsis in the Troilus -- Prosimetrum and the Canterbury philosophy of literature -- Political protrepsis: Usk and Gower -- Hoccleve and the convention of mixed-form protrepsis -- Conclusion: a mixed-form tradition of literary theory and practice.
Literary scholars often avoid the category of the aesthetic in discussions of ethics, believing that purely aesthetic judgments can vitiate analyses of a literary work's sociopolitical heft and meaning. In this work, Eleanor Johnson reveals that aesthetics - the formal aspects of literary language that make it sense-perceptible - are indeed inextricable from ethics in the writing of medieval literature.
9780226015989 9781299560963
Boethius, -524. Usk, Thomas, -1388.
English literature--History and criticism.--Middle English, 1100-1500 Ethics, Medieval, in literature. Literature, Medieval--History and criticism.