Odd Bodies and Visible Ends in Medieval Literature

Author / Editor
Shimomura, Sachi.

Title
Odd Bodies and Visible Ends in Medieval Literature

Published
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.

Physical Description
ix, 198 pp.

Series
The New Middle Ages

Description
Set against the eschatology of the Last Judgment, medieval narratives prompt their audiences to employ complex - often deferred - criteria for interpretation or evaluation. Shimomura considers how audience judgment is engaged and complicated in "Christ III," several homilies and romances, WBPT, and "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," focusing on how eschatological tradition underlies and challenges the desire for closure and evaluation in medieval stories. Chapter 3 (pp. 85-125) assesses how the "discontinuous selves" represented in WBP anticipate the dynamics of transformation in WBT.

Chaucer Subjects
Wife of Bath and Her Tale.