Medieval Autographies

The "I" of the Text
Erscheinungsjahr 2012
ISBN: 978-0-268-01782-8
Verlag: University of Notre Dame Press

Buch, Englisch, 288 Seiten, Paperback, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 581 g

In <em>Medieval Autographies</em>, A. C. Spearing develops a new engagement of narrative theory with medieval English first-person writing, focusing on the roles and functions of the “I” as a shifting textual phenomenon, not to be defined either as autobiographical or as the label of a fictional speaker or narrator. Spearing identifies and explores a previously unrecognised category of medieval English poetry, calling it “autography.” He describes this form as emerging in the mid-fourteenth century and consisting of extended nonlyrical writings in the first person, embracing prologues, authorial interventions in and commentaries on third-person narratives, and descendants of the dit, a genre of French medieval poetry. He argues that autography arose as a means of liberation from the requirement to tell stories with preordained conclusions and as a way of achieving a closer relation to lived experience, with all its unpredictability and inconsistencies. Autographies, he claims, are marked by a cluster of characteristics including a correspondence to the texture of life as it is experienced, a montage-like unpredictability of structure, and a concern with writing and textuality.<br><br> Beginning with what may be the earliest extended first-person narrative in Middle English, <em>Winner and Waster</em>, the book examines instances of the dit as discussed by French scholars, analyses Chaucer’s <em>Wife of Bath’s Prologue</em> as a textual performance, and devotes separate chapters to detailed readings of Hoccleve’s <em>Regement of Princes</em> prologue, his <em>Complaint and Dialogue</em>, and the witty first-person elements in Osbern Bokenham’s legends of saints. An afterword suggests possible further applications of the concept of autography, including discussion of the intermittent autographic commentaries on the narrative in <em>Troilus and Criseyde</em> and Capgrave’s <em>Life of Saint Katherine</em>.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Über Autor(innen)

<strong>A. C. Spearing</strong> is the William R. Kenan Professor of English at the University of Virginia.