Reading Chaucer After Auschwitz Sovereign Power and Bare Life [Hardcover]

Drawing on the work of Holocaust writer Primo Levi and political philosopher Giorgio Agamben McClellan introduces a critical turn in our reading of Chaucer. He argues that the unprecedented event of the Holocaust, which witnessed the total degradation and extermination of human beings, irrevocably changes how we read literature from the past. McClellan gives a thoroughgoing reading of the Man of Laws Tale, widely regarded as one of Chaucers most difficult tales, interpreting it as a meditation on the horrors of sovereign power. He shows how Chaucer, through the figuration of Custance, dramatically depicts the destructive effects of power on the human subject. McClellans intervention, which he calls reading-history-as-ethical-meditation, places reception history in the context of a reception ethics and holds the promise of changing the way we read traditional texts.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1?Political Chaucer

Chapter 2 The?Man of Laws Tale: Sovereign Abandonment of the Subject

Chapter 3 First Movement:??Marriage and Exile??

Chapter 4 Second Movement: Destitution of the Subject

Chapter 5 Third Movement: Return and Restitution

Chapter 6 Interpretation: Critique of Sovereign and the Exemplarity of the Suffering Subject

Works Cited

Index

Notes

William McClellan is Associate Professor of English at Baruch College, City University of New York, USA. He has written articles on medieval literature, the Holocaust, Giorgio Agamben, and political theory.

Drawing on the work of Holocaust writer Primo Levi and political philosopher Giorgio Agamben McClellan introduces a critical turn in our reading of Chaucer. He argues that the unprecedented event of the Holocaust, which witnessed the total degradation lÓ8