Reading Chaucer After Auschwitz

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-ix

   PDF

2. Political Chaucer

   • William McClellan

   Pages 1-28

3. The Man of Law’s Tale: Sovereign Abandonment of the Subject

   • William McClellan

   Pages 29-40

4. First Movement: Marriage and Exile

   • William McClellan

   Pages 41-59

5. Second Movement: Destitution of the Subject

   • William McClellan

   Pages 61-80

6. Third Movement: Return and Restitution

   • William McClellan

   Pages 81-102

7. Interpretation: Critique of Sovereign and the Exemplarity of the Suffering Subject

   • William McClellan

   Pages 103-113

8. Back Matter

   Pages 115-123

   PDF

Drawing on the work of Holocaust writer Primo Levi and political philosopher Giorgio Agamben McClellan introduces a critical turn in our reading of Chaucer. He argues that the unprecedented event of the Holocaust, which witnessed the total degradation and extermination of human beings, irrevocably changes how we read literature from the past. McClellan gives a thoroughgoing reading of the Man of Law’s Tale, widely regarded as one of Chaucer’s most difficult tales, interpreting it as a meditation on the horrors of sovereign power. He shows how Chaucer, through the figuration of Custance, dramatically depicts the destructive effects of power on the human subject. McClellan’s intervention, which he calls “reading-history-as-ethical-meditation,” places reception history in the context of a reception ethics and holds the promise of changing the way we read traditional texts.

• Chaucer studies
• Medieval Literature
• Holocaust Studies
• Giorgio Agamben
• Political Theory
• British and Irish Literature

• Baruch College, City University of New York, New York, USA

  William McClellan

William McClellan is Associate Professor of English at Baruch College, City University of New York, USA. He has written articles on medieval literature, the Holocaust, Giorgio Agamben, and political theory.

Policies and ethics