TY  - BOOK
AU  - Strouse,A.W.
TI  - Form and Foreskin: Medieval Narratives of Circumcision 
SN  - 9780823294749
U1  - 809/.02 23
PY  - 2021///]
CY  - New York, NY
PB  - Fordham University Press
KW  - Circumcision in literature
KW  - Literature, Medieval
KW  - History and criticism
KW  - Literary Studies
KW  - Medieval Studies
KW  - Queer Theory
KW  - LITERARY CRITICISM / Medieval
KW  - bisacsh
KW  - Chaucer
KW  - Circumcision
KW  - Saint Augustine
KW  - Saint Paul
KW  - Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
KW  - foreskin
KW  - medieval
KW  - poetry
KW  - queer theory
KW  - theology
N1  - Frontmatter --; Contents --; Introduction --; 1. The Gospel According to the Foreskin --; 2. Saint Augustine and the Boy with the Long Foreskin --; 3. Nicking Sir Gawain --; 4. The Foreskin of Marriage --; Coda --; Acknowledgments --; Notes --; Index; restricted access
N2  - Why did Saint Augustine ask God to “circumcise [his] lips”? Why does Sir Gawain cut off the Green Knight’s head on the Feast of the Circumcision? Is Chaucer’s Wife of Bath actually—as an early glossator figures her—a foreskin? And why did Ezra Pound claim that he had incubated The Waste Land inside of his uncut member? In this little book, A. W. Strouse excavates a poetics of the foreskin, uncovering how Patristic theologies of circumcision came to structure medieval European literary aesthetics. Following the writings of Saint Paul, “circumcision” and “uncircumcision” become key terms for theorizing language—especially the dichotomies between the mere text and its extended exegesis, between brevity and longwindedness, between wisdom and folly. Form and Foreskin looks to three works: a peculiar story by Saint Augustine about a boy with the long foreskin; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; and Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Tale. By examining literary scenes of cutting and stretching, Strouse exposes how Patristic treatments of circumcision queerly govern medieval poetics
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1515/9780823294770?locatt=mode:legacy
UR  - https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9780823294770
UR  - https://www.degruyter.com/document/cover/isbn/9780823294770/original
ER  -