Synopses & Reviews
Guynn offers an innovative new approach to the ethical, cultural, and ideological analysis of medieval allegory. Working between poststructuralism and historical materialism, he considers both the playfulness of allegory (its openness to multiple interpretations and perspectives) and its disciplinary force (the use of rhetoric to naturalize hegemonies and suppress difference and dissent). Ultimately, he argues that both tendencies can be linked to the consolidation of power within ruling class institutions and the persecution of demonized others, notably women and sexual minorities. The book examines a number of centrally canonical works, including the verse romance Eneas, Alan of Lille's De planctu Naturae, The Romance of the Rose, and the Querelle de la Rose.
Review
"Allegory and Sexual Ethics offers a sophisticated and highly theorized analysis of the relationship between poetry, power, and persecution in the later Middle Ages. Allegory and Sexual Ethics offers a sophisticated and highly theorized analysis of the relationship between poetry, power, and persecution in the later Middle Ages....one of the most impressive aspects of his book is his insistence on the importance of ethics and politics, and his conviction that only in understanding the 'oppressive, violent legacy of premodern ethics and sexual ethics' can we begin to imagine a 'radically inclusive' future"--The Medieval Review
"Guynn matches his close attention to textual details with an exhaustive review of recent and key critical approaches to his selected texts."--Medieval Feminist Forum“Through a series of keenly intelligent readings Guynn deftly tracks the complex interrelations of allegory and ethics in the High Middle Ages. Relentlessly ideological--at once transcendental and ambiguous--allegory, he argues, works to privilege some readers and exclude others. Guynn's clear and nimble prose invites all readers to consider afresh the machinations of this pervasive medieval discursive mode.”--Carolyn Dinshaw, New York University; Author of Getting Medieval: Sexualities and Communities, Pre- and Postmodern
“Allegory and Sexual Ethics in the High Middle Ages will give literary critics and historians of sexuality alike pause for thought. Whereas the formal and playful dimensions of allegory--and particularly sexual allegory--have received a good deal of attention recently, Noah Guynn shows that allegorical texts frequently also have a serious, indeed ethical dimension that makes them at one and the same time harshly coercive, yet troublingly indeterminate. Re-reading familiar texts such as the De planctu Naturae, the Eneas, and the Rose with him is a revelatory experience, and his crisp close readings are always illuminating.”--Simon Gaunt, King's College London; Author of Love and Death in Medieval French and Occitan Courtly Literature: Martyrs to Love
“Allegory and Sexual Ethics in the High Middle Ages offers an original and compelling argument about the imbrication of rhetorical figuration, sexual desire, and political control in twelfth- and thirteenth-century France. In a series of detailed readings, Guynn shows that medieval texts not only recognize the instability of the relationship between language and meaning, but they use that instability to construct notions of deviance and to censor and punish deviant bodies. This is an original argument; it is also a humane one, in that it is attentive to the ways in which discursive forms of coercion focus on lived bodies. Beautifully written and elegantly argued, Allegory and Sexual Ethics offers an important new understanding not just of a genre, but of the ethical and political workings of that genre.”--Peggy McCracken, University of Michigan; Author of The Curse of Eve, the Wound of the Hero: Blood, Gender, and Medieval Literature
"Guynn's pervasive indictment of the 'persecuting society' of the Middle Ages will appeal to those politically committed to such projects and concerned with how 'the corporate manifold' acts against its demonized minority victims with 'lethal force' and brutally repressive ideologies.'"--Speculum
About the Author
Noah D. Guynn is Associate Professor of French at the University of California, Davis. He is currently preparing a book on the role of ethics in medieval and early modern farce.
Table of Contents
Rhetoric, Evil, and Privation: From Augustine to the "Persecuting Society" * Sodomy, Courtly Love, and the Birth of Romance:
Le roman d'Eneas * Allegory and Perversion in Alan of Lille's
De planctu Naturae * Authorship and Sexual/Allegorical Violence in Jean de Meun's
Roman de la rose