Living death in medieval French and English literature

Resource Information

The work Living death in medieval French and English literature represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in University of Missouri Libraries. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Living death in medieval French and English literature

Statement of responsibility

Jane Gilbert

Creator

• Gilbert, Jane, 1964-

Subject

• Criticism, interpretation, etc
• Dead in literature
• Death -- Moral and ethical aspects
• Death -- Political aspects
• Death in literature
• Engels
• English literature -- Middle English, 1100-1500 -- History and criticism
• Ethics in literature
• Existentialism in literature
• Frans
• French literature -- To 1500 -- History and criticism
• Het Bovennatuurlijke
• LITERARY CRITICISM / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh
• Bellettrie

Genre

• Criticism, interpretation, etc

Language

eng

Summary

• "Medieval literature contains many figures caught at the interface between life and death - the dead return to place demands on the living, while the living foresee, organize or desire their own deaths. Jane Gilbert's original study examines the ways in which certain medieval literary texts, both English and French, use these 'living dead' to think about existential, ethical and political issues. In doing so, she shows powerful connections between works otherwise seen as quite disparate, including Chaucer's Book of the Duchess and Legend of Good Women, the Chanson de Roland and the poems of Francois Villon. Written for researchers and advanced students of medieval French and English literature, this book provides original, provocative interpretations of canonical medieval texts in the light of influential modern theories, especially Lacanian psychoanalysis, presented in an accessible and lively way"--
• "This book is about the ways in which certain medieval literary texts use death, dying and the dead to think about problems relating to life - problems political, social, ethical, philosophical or existential. More specifically, it is about the dynamic interface between life and death and about figures caught at that interface, hence 'living death'. There are ghosts and revenants who, although dead, actively speak and will, disturbing the properly living. And there are those who while alive exist under a deathly shadow that forecloses their engagement with life and isolates them from their fellows. Vampires, ghosts and zombies are currently fashionable in popular culture; in literary criticism, tropes of the interstitial, the intermediary or the 'third' are in vogue. What I have attempted to do in this book is to use some of the latter - in particular, Lacan's notion of l'entre-deux-morts - to think through some medieval examples of phenomena related to the former: dead who return to place demands on the living; living who foresee, organize or desire their own deaths"--

Member of

• Cambridge studies in medieval literature, 84

Assigning source

• Provided by publisher
• Provided by publisher

Cataloging source

DLC

Dewey number

820.9/3548

Index

index present

LC call number

PR275.D43

LC item number

G56 2011

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography

Series statement

Cambridge studies in medieval literature

Series volume

84