Desiring discourse
Subtitle: the literature of love, Ovid through Chaucer
By: edited by James J. Paxson and Cynthia A. Gravlee.
Contributors: Paxson, James J.; Gravlee, Cynthia.
Publisher: Susquehanna University Press
Published: 1998
Place of publication: Selinsgrove [Pa.]
Language: eng
Number of pages: 239
Subjects: Love in literature; Courtly love in literature; Literature, Medieval -- History and criticism; Literature, Comparative -- Themes, motives
Description: These essays examine the central role played by Ovid in medieval amatory literature. In so doing, they address the theoretical problems of the entrenched "aesthetics of reception" long tied to the Ovidian Middle Ages, while they also seek at times to overturn many of the prior critical perceptions associated with Ovidian suasive discourse - in particular the unproblematized assertion of male will and the erasure of female voice.

Responding to the great fund of critical work done on amatory literature in the Middle Ages - a literature thus far organized into an array of categories such as the rhetorical institution of persuasion and seduction, the Ovidian heritage, aetas ovidiana, the language of amatory trial, the genealogy of the romance, and the convention of courtly love - this volume seeks to provide a comprehensive look at the rhetorical and social conditions of desire.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and indexes.