Chaucer's Comic Providence

Chaucer’s Comic Providence presents readings of five of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales that dramatize sexual division and the lack of rapport between the sexes. These readings are founded on the psychoanalytic thinking of Jacques Lacan in his rereading of Freud and are motivated by Thormann’s conviction...

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Những tác giả chính: Thormann, Janet, Fradenburg Joy, Aranye
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Ngôn ngữ:Tiếng Anh
Được phát hành: Punctum Books 2023
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author Thormann, Janet
Fradenburg Joy, Aranye
author_browse Fradenburg Joy, Aranye
Thormann, Janet
author_facet Thormann, Janet
Fradenburg Joy, Aranye
author_sort Thormann, Janet
collection Directory of Open Access Books
description Chaucer’s Comic Providence presents readings of five of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales that dramatize sexual division and the lack of rapport between the sexes. These readings are founded on the psychoanalytic thinking of Jacques Lacan in his rereading of Freud and are motivated by Thormann’s conviction that Chaucer understood what psychoanalysis would come to study as an unconscious operating in the subject that is independent of conscious control and desire. For psychoanalysis, the subject is interminably engaged with unconscious sexual difference and with what Lacan saw as the absence of sexual rapport. Chaucer’s Comic Providence analyzes Chaucer’s plots of sexual adventures, mishaps, and surprise to show how the five tales dramatize the lack of symmetry and absence of accord between the sexes. Ultimately, Thormann’s interest here is in the ways these five narratives represent and deal with sexual division, in their means of handling what, in any case, cannot be avoided or mastered. Consequently, the resolutions of the narratives sponsor an ethics of desire: they affirm sexual pleasure and acknowledge misprision and limitation, but they do not compromise, close down, or finish with incompatibility, contraction, and limitation. Her reading, then, claims that Chaucer’s poetry already reveals the unconscious that Freud is credited with discovering. As well, Chaucer not only anticipates Lacan’s pronouncement that “the unconscious is structured like a language,” but also his emphasis on unconscious sexual difference and the absence of rapport between the sexes. With few exceptions, while there has been much consideration of gender in Chaucer’s stories, contemporary criticism of Chaucer has remained inimical or, at the least, largely indifferent, to psychoanalysis, yet because it considers both difference and continuity, change and perpetuation, and because it incorporates psychic processes, motives, functions, and dynamics operating outside of conscious awareness, psychoanalysis offers a wider range for analysis of Chaucer’s tales than does gender theory alone. Chaucer’s Comic Providence also addresses the unexpected, surprising, and providentially comic resolutions of Chaucer’s tales, the concomitant abeyance of sexual conflicts, and the links between emergence and abeyance, which issue in the hope of a beneficent future.
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spelling doab-20.500.12854ir-994702025-07-17T12:15:27Z Chaucer's Comic Providence Thormann, Janet Fradenburg Joy, Aranye Chaucer;psychoanalysis;Jacques Lacan;Canterbury Tales thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism::DSC Literary studies: poetry and poets thema EDItEUR::2 Language qualifiers::2A Indo-European languages::2AC Germanic and Scandinavian languages::2ACB English::2ACBC Middle English thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JM Psychology::JMA Psychological theory, systems, schools and viewpoints::JMAF Psychoanalytical and Freudian psychology thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism::DSC Literary studies: poetry and poets thema EDItEUR::2 Language qualifiers::2A Indo-European languages::2AC Germanic and Scandinavian languages::2ACB English::2ACBC Middle English thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JM Psychology::JMA Psychological theory, systems, schools and viewpoints::JMAF Psychoanalytical and Freudian psychology Chaucer’s Comic Providence presents readings of five of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales that dramatize sexual division and the lack of rapport between the sexes. These readings are founded on the psychoanalytic thinking of Jacques Lacan in his rereading of Freud and are motivated by Thormann’s conviction that Chaucer understood what psychoanalysis would come to study as an unconscious operating in the subject that is independent of conscious control and desire. For psychoanalysis, the subject is interminably engaged with unconscious sexual difference and with what Lacan saw as the absence of sexual rapport. Chaucer’s Comic Providence analyzes Chaucer’s plots of sexual adventures, mishaps, and surprise to show how the five tales dramatize the lack of symmetry and absence of accord between the sexes. Ultimately, Thormann’s interest here is in the ways these five narratives represent and deal with sexual division, in their means of handling what, in any case, cannot be avoided or mastered. Consequently, the resolutions of the narratives sponsor an ethics of desire: they affirm sexual pleasure and acknowledge misprision and limitation, but they do not compromise, close down, or finish with incompatibility, contraction, and limitation. Her reading, then, claims that Chaucer’s poetry already reveals the unconscious that Freud is credited with discovering. As well, Chaucer not only anticipates Lacan’s pronouncement that “the unconscious is structured like a language,” but also his emphasis on unconscious sexual difference and the absence of rapport between the sexes. With few exceptions, while there has been much consideration of gender in Chaucer’s stories, contemporary criticism of Chaucer has remained inimical or, at the least, largely indifferent, to psychoanalysis, yet because it considers both difference and continuity, change and perpetuation, and because it incorporates psychic processes, motives, functions, and dynamics operating outside of conscious awareness, psychoanalysis offers a wider range for analysis of Chaucer’s tales than does gender theory alone. Chaucer’s Comic Providence also addresses the unexpected, surprising, and providentially comic resolutions of Chaucer’s tales, the concomitant abeyance of sexual conflicts, and the links between emergence and abeyance, which issue in the hope of a beneficent future. 2023-04-18T11:21:20Z 2023-04-18T11:21:20Z 2023-04-17T13:43:54Z 2023 book https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/62464 9781685710200 https://directory.doabooks.org/handle/20.500.12854/99470 eng open access image/jpeg image/jpeg image/jpeg Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/62464/1/0362.1.00.pdf https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/62464/12/0362.1.00.pdf https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/62464/12/0362.1.00.pdf Punctum Books Brainstorm Books 10.53288/0362.1.00 10.53288/0362.1.00 9528137b-bd0f-4bee-8262-f1c8096922a3 9781685710200 ScholarLed Brainstorm Books 205 Brooklyn, NY open access
spellingShingle Chaucer;psychoanalysis;Jacques Lacan;Canterbury Tales
thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism::DSC Literary studies: poetry and poets
thema EDItEUR::2 Language qualifiers::2A Indo-European languages::2AC Germanic and Scandinavian languages::2ACB English::2ACBC Middle English
thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JM Psychology::JMA Psychological theory, systems, schools and viewpoints::JMAF Psychoanalytical and Freudian psychology
thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism::DSC Literary studies: poetry and poets
thema EDItEUR::2 Language qualifiers::2A Indo-European languages::2AC Germanic and Scandinavian languages::2ACB English::2ACBC Middle English
thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JM Psychology::JMA Psychological theory, systems, schools and viewpoints::JMAF Psychoanalytical and Freudian psychology
Thormann, Janet
Fradenburg Joy, Aranye
Chaucer's Comic Providence
title Chaucer's Comic Providence
title_full Chaucer's Comic Providence
title_fullStr Chaucer's Comic Providence
title_full_unstemmed Chaucer's Comic Providence
title_short Chaucer's Comic Providence
title_sort chaucer s comic providence
topic Chaucer;psychoanalysis;Jacques Lacan;Canterbury Tales
thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism::DSC Literary studies: poetry and poets
thema EDItEUR::2 Language qualifiers::2A Indo-European languages::2AC Germanic and Scandinavian languages::2ACB English::2ACBC Middle English
thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JM Psychology::JMA Psychological theory, systems, schools and viewpoints::JMAF Psychoanalytical and Freudian psychology
thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism::DSC Literary studies: poetry and poets
thema EDItEUR::2 Language qualifiers::2A Indo-European languages::2AC Germanic and Scandinavian languages::2ACB English::2ACBC Middle English
thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JM Psychology::JMA Psychological theory, systems, schools and viewpoints::JMAF Psychoanalytical and Freudian psychology
topic_facet Chaucer;psychoanalysis;Jacques Lacan;Canterbury Tales
thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism::DSC Literary studies: poetry and poets
thema EDItEUR::2 Language qualifiers::2A Indo-European languages::2AC Germanic and Scandinavian languages::2ACB English::2ACBC Middle English
thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JM Psychology::JMA Psychological theory, systems, schools and viewpoints::JMAF Psychoanalytical and Freudian psychology
thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism::DSC Literary studies: poetry and poets
thema EDItEUR::2 Language qualifiers::2A Indo-European languages::2AC Germanic and Scandinavian languages::2ACB English::2ACBC Middle English
thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JM Psychology::JMA Psychological theory, systems, schools and viewpoints::JMAF Psychoanalytical and Freudian psychology
url https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/62464
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