The Flight from Desire Augustine and Ovid to Chaucer [Hardcover]

This book reformulates the master narrative of erotic discourse in medieval literature. Individual chapters offer fresh readings of the nature and claims of erotic attachments in Abelard and Heloise, Marie de France, Jean de Meun, Dante, Boccaccio, and Chaucer - writers profoundly influenced by Augustine and Ovid.Preface Introduction Desire and Plenitude in Saint Augustine's Confessions 'Nullum Crimen Erit': Ovidian Craft and the Illusion of Mastery Abelard and Heloise: Conversion and Irreducible Desire Marie de France and Le Livre Ovide Le Roman de la Rose: 'All the Art of Love Enclosed' 'Simulacra Nostra': The Problem of Desire in Dante's Vita Nuova The Desolate Palace and the Solitary City: Chaucer, Boccaccio, and Dante Afterward Notes Bibliography Index

The very elusiveness of desire-whose objects are always already substitutes and which therefore operates by a logic of deferral and supplementarity-, its continual reaching beyond presence, past need, and even past gratification into a realm in which the desiring subject is both agent and victim, makes it as difficult to write about as it is necessary to do so. Thus, The Flight from Desire in its very design addresses a set of important questions regarding poetic representation and writing as such. Edwards does this by a set of close readings of canonical texts arranged almost chronologically (he wisely discusses Augustine first, then Ovid) from Ovid to Chaucer by way of the correspondence of Abelard and Heloise, the Lais of Marie de France, Le Roman de Rose, the Vita Nuova, and Boccaccio's Filostrato. His control of a very large body of primary and secondary work is impressive, and his readings are always intelligent, often surprising, and sometimes exhilerating.. - Robert Stein, Professor of Language and Literature, Purchase College; Adjunct Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University

ROBERT R. EDWARDS is Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature alã™