{"title":"A W Strouse","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"form-and-foreskin-book-a-w-strouse-9780823294749","title":"Form and Foreskin","description":"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.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49738909516049,"sku":"NGR9780823294749","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0823294749.jpg?v=1750746367"},{"product_id":"form-and-foreskin-book-a-w-strouse-9780823294756","title":"Form and Foreskin","description":"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.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50369894711569,"sku":"CIN0823294757G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52740345954577,"sku":"NIN9780823294756","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0823294757.jpg?v=1751012051"},{"product_id":"my-gay-middle-ages-book-a-w-strouse-9780615830001","title":"My Gay Middle Ages","description":"In the world of My Gay Middle Ages, Chaucer and Boethius are the secret-sharers of A.W. Strouse's gay lifestyle. Where many scholars of the Middle Ages would get in from behind on cultural history, Strouse instead does a reach around. He eschews academic queer theory as yet another tedious, normative framework, and writes in the long, fruity tradition of irresponsible, homo-medievalism (a lineage that includes luminaries like Oscar Wilde, who was sustained by his amateur readings of Dante and Abelard during the darks days of his incarceration for crimes of gross indecency). Strouse experiences medieval literature and philosophy as a part of his everyday life, and in these prose poems he makes the case for regarding the Middle Ages as a kind of technology of self-preservation, a posture through which to spiritualize the petty indignities of modern urban life. With a Warholian flair for insouciant name-dropping and a Steinian appetite for syntactic perversion, Strouse monumentalizes the medieval within the contemporary and the contemporary within the medieval.Today, almost nobody reads Boethius, which if you ask me is a crying shame. Because Boethius is so gay. First of all, the heroine of the Consolation is this great big fierce diva, whose name is Lady Philosophy. She's a Lady, and she doesn't stand for anybody's crap. At the beginning of the book, Boethius is crying, all alone in prison, depressed that he's lonely and loveless and is going to be killed. Lady Philosophy descends from the heavens,   la Glinda the Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz. The first thing Boethius notices about her is that she's wearing an amazing dress with Greek letters embroidered on it-they stand for practical and theoretical philosophy. Her dress has been torn to shreds by the hands of uncouth philosophers. They didn't know how to treat a lady. (from My Boethius)TABLE OF CONTENTS \/\/ The Most Famous Medievalist in the World - My Boethius - Memory Houses - The President of the Medieval Academy Made Me Cry - My Medieval Romance - The Formation of a Persecuting Society - The Medieval Heart is Like a Penis - Jilted Again - My Orpheus - Medieval Literacy - My Cloud of Unknowing - The Post-Medieval Unconscious - Coda: The Dedication","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50465254015249,"sku":"GOR013780601","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51004919218449,"sku":"NIN9780615830001","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53424404463889,"sku":"CIN0615830005VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0615830005.jpg?v=1751294784"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-gb\/collections\/author-books-by-a-w-strouse.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}