Fiction
and Incarnation: Rhetoric, Theology, and Literature in the Middle Ages - Translated
by David Laatsch
December 2002 Paperback:
256 pages In-Print Editions: Hardcover |
Book
Description
Focusing on the Incarnation-the only dogma original to Christianity, in which
God becomes man and history-this book offers a wide-ranging and theoretically
sophisticated investigation of the relationship between Christian discourse
and literature from Roman antiquity to the fourteenth century through a look
at texts by Cicero, Quintilian, Martianus Capella, Tertullian, Saint Augustine,
Alain of Lille, Guillaume de Machaut, and others.
Alexandre Leupin asks if it is possible to go beyond the dialectics of the
Incarnated God and the Devil without harking back to the beautiful but partially
obsolete truths of paganism and sophistry. Employing a method inspired by
psychoanalysis, Leupin repudiates the sophistry and relativism of postmodern
theory while calling into question old commonplaces that have been invalidated
by modernity. He does so by attending to the larger and deeper structures
hidden within the discourses of theology, rhetoric, literature, and psychoanalysis.
The result is an innovative perspective on the Middle Ages, an original and
promising view of the problems of Western literature in relation to theology
and rhetoric.
Reviews
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Contact Alexandre | © Alexandre Leupin
2003
