Chaucer, Gower, and the affect of invention / Steele Nowlin.

Author
Nowlin, Steele, 1976- [Browse]
Format
Book
Language
English
Published/​Created
Columbus : The Ohio State University Press, [2016]
Description
xi, 234 pages ; 24 cm.

Availability

Available Online

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Firestone Library - Stacks PR311 .N69 2016 Browse related items Request

    Details

    Subject(s)
    Series
    Interventions: new studies in medieval culture [More in this series]
    Summary note
    In this book, Steele Nowlin examines the process of poetic invention as it is conceptualized and expressed in the poetry of Geoffrey Chaucer (1343–1400) and John Gower (ca. 1330–1408). Specifically, it examines how these two poets present invention as an affective force, a process characterized by emergence and potentiality, and one that has a corollary in affect—that is, a kind of force or sensation distinct from emotion, characterized as an “intensity” that precedes what is only later cognitively understood and expressed as feeling or emotion, and that is typically described in a critical vocabulary of movement, emergence, and becoming. Chaucer, Gower, and the Affect of Invention thus formulates a definition of affect that differs from most work in the recent “turn to affect” in medieval studies, focusing not on the representation of emotion or desire, or efforts to engage medieval alterity, but on the movement and emergence that precede emotional experience. It likewise argues for a broader understanding of invention in late medieval literature beyond analyses of rhetorical poetics and authorial politics by recuperating the dynamism and sense of potential that characterize inventional activity. Finally, its close readings of Chaucer’s and Gower’s poetry provide new insights into how these poets represent invention in order to engage the pervasive social and cultural discourses their poetry addresses.
    Bibliographic references
    Includes bibliographical references (pages 213-226) and index.
    Contents
    • "Gooth yet alway under": invention as movement in the House of fame
    • "Ryght swich as ye felten": aligning affect and invention in The legend of good women
    • A thing so strange: macrocosmic emergence in the Confessio amantis
    • "The cronique of this fable": transformative poetry and the chronicle form in the Confessio amantis
    • Empty songs, mighty men, and a startled chicken: satirizing the affect of invention in Fragment VII of the Canterbury tales
    • From ashes ancient come: affective intertextuality in Chaucer, Gower, and Shakespeare.
    ISBN
    • 9780814213100 ((cloth ; : alk. paper))
    • 0814213103 ((cloth ; : alk. paper))
    LCCN
    2016023925
    OCLC
    945029847
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