Critical Communities and the Shape of the Medievalist's Desire: A Response to Judith Ferster and Louise Fradenburg

Author / Editor
Bloch, R. Howard.

Title
Critical Communities and the Shape of the Medievalist's Desire: A Response to Judith Ferster and Louise Fradenburg

Published
Exemplaria 2 (1990): 203-20.

Description
Ferster's and Fradenburg's essays problematize the critical act of reading medieval texts: Ferster's examination of "who speaks" in PrT extends to the critic's own voice; Fradenburg's articulation of medievalists' anxieties concerning the status of a lost past reveals the political effects of viewing scholarship as restorative.
The implications of both essays could be extended by constructing an external history of the discipline of medieval studies.

Chaucer Subjects
Background and General Criticism.
Prioress and Her Tale.