Form and Foreskin
Medieval Narratives of Circumcision

A. W. Strouse (Author)

9780823294749

Hardback, published 13 April 2021

144 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.8 cm, 0.426 kg

Why did Saint Augustine ask God to "circumcise [his] lips"? Why does Sir Gawain cut off the Green Knight's head on the Feast of the Circumcision? Is Chaucer's Wife of Bath actually—as an early glossator figures her—a foreskin? And why did Ezra Pound claim that he had incubated The Waste Land inside of his uncut member? In this little book, A. W. Strouse excavates a poetics of the foreskin, uncovering how Patristic theologies of circumcision came to structure medieval European literary aesthetics. Following the writings of Saint Paul, "circumcision" and "uncircumcision" become key terms for theorizing language—especially the dichotomies between the mere text and its extended exegesis, between brevity and longwindedness, between wisdom and folly. Form and Foreskin looks to three works: a peculiar story by Saint Augustine about a boy with the long foreskin; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; and Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Tale. By examining literary scenes of cutting and stretching, Strouse exposes how Patristic treatments of circumcision queerly govern medieval poetics.

Introduction 1
1. The Gospel According to the Foreskin 11
2. Saint Augustine and the Boy with the Long Foreskin 32
3. Nicking Sir Gawain 50
4. The Foreskin of Marriage 82
Coda 103
Acknowledgments 109
Notes 111
Index 151