Stories of Chaos

Stories of Chaos Reason and Its Displacement in Early Modern English Narrative - Routledge Revivals

Hardback (05 Jun 2019)

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Publisher's Synopsis

First published in 1999, this volume re-examines narrative design in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Faerie Queene, King Lear and Paradise Lost. Written in a period newly set on finding practical application for available systems of reasoning, these texts confront in their different ways reason's absolute limitation in the face of a Real which it cannot adequately represent to itself or recruit to its own purposes. An influential model for the staging of such a confrontation was the mythic, cosmological narrative of Plato's Timaeus. In their rewriting of Plato's narrative the English texts deploy but also destabilize the ancient conceptual polarization of the 'rational' and the 'irrational' or 'chaotic', rethought in the terms offered by their period's innovatory practices of reasoning. The study establishes the critical importance of telling a story of chaos by comparing the narrative method of its chosen texts with that adopted by Freud and Lacan as a means of reflection on the psychoanalytic encounter with an ultimately chaotic Real.

This book has unusual interdisciplinary scope, and offers historically grounded, theoretically informed new readings of four major early modern English literary texts.

About the Publisher

Routledge

Routledge

Routledge is the world's leading academic publisher in the Humanities and Social Sciences. We publish thousands of books and journals each year, serving scholars, instructors, and professional communities worldwide. Our current publishing programme encompasses groundbreaking textbooks and premier, peer-reviewed research in the Social Sciences, Humanities, and Built Environment. We have partnered with many of the most influential societies and academic bodies to publish their journals and book series. Readers can access tens of thousands of print and e-books from our extensive catalogue of titles. Routledge is a member of Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business.

Book information

ISBN: 9781138348691
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Imprint: Routledge
Pub date:
DEWEY: 820.912
DEWEY edition: 23
Language: English
Number of pages: 195
Weight: 539g
Height: 234mm
Width: 156mm