Consolation in Medieval Narrative Augustinian Authority and Open Form [Hardcover]

Medieval writers such as Chaucer, Abelard, and Langland often overlaid personal story and sacred history to produce a distinct narrative form. The first of its kind, this study traces this widely used narrative tradition to Augustine's two great histories: Confessions and City of God .Introduction 1. For the Time Being: Interpretive Consolation in Augustinian Time 2. 'Quanto minorem consideras': Abelard's Proportional Consolation 3. Three Figures of the Church: Piers Plowman and the Quest for Consolation 4. Augustine and Arthur: The Stanzaic Morte and the Comforts of Elegy 5. Chaucer's Knight's Tale: Consolations at War 6. The Tower and the Turks: More's Meditative Consolation Conclusion

Schrock demonstrates how Augustine's understanding of time and approach to Scriptural interpretation opened up a profoundly creative space for human self-reflection in the Middle Ages. Combining criticism, philosophy, theology, and history in a dazzling piece of scholarship, Schrock's book functions as a moving piece of consolatory literature in its own right. A very important book by an outstanding scholar. -Ephraim Radner, Professor of Historical Theology, Wycliffe College at the University of Toronto, Canada and author of Hope among the Fragments: The Broken Church and its Engagements of Scripture

Consolation in Medieval Narrative offers illuminating readings of some canonical medieval texts, usefully re-animating what had seemed like settled discussions about the 'Augustinianism' of late medieval literature. Schrock recovers an Augustinian version of consolation that is simultaneously formal and ethical, often counter-intuitive, and hermeneutically rich. This book has a great deal to say about medieval aesthetics and ethics, narrative form, and the legacy of Augustine's writings. Jessica Rosenfeld, Associate Professor of English, Washington University in St. Louis, USA and author of Ethics and Enjoyment in Late Medieval Poetry: Love after Aristotle&lÃ^