Tuesday, December 15, 2015

Making Trouble: Postmodern Theory With/In Chaucer Studies

In this essay, Faye Walker analyzes the boundaries between medieval studies and poststructuralism, two areas that her experience has deemed largely incompatible in pedagogy. The primary difficult lies in attempting to take “apart the nineteenth-century construction of "medieval studies" and trying to imagine both a pre-nineteenth century model and a postmodern "shape" (for lack of a more descriptive word of a loosely structured body of material) for medieval studies.” She calls out the false dichotomy of poststructuralism and medieval studies, and through an exhaustive amount of academic research posits that both forms of literary study can be helpful in understanding the other. I was a bit surprised with this article, mainly because I didn’t realize that there was such a distinction between these two areas of study. Although the article didn’t end up being helpful for my paper, it was an interesting read and gave me something to think about. Also, Jill Mann (the editor of our version of the Canterbury Tales) is briefly quoted as one of the many scholars Walker refers to in this article.
http://web.b.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail/detail?sid=4faf2dc9-62b3-467d-a695-913f1e2974b8%40sessionmgr114&vid=0&hid=118&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=f5h&AN=9610233851

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