Striking cultural developments took place in the twelfth century which led to what historians have termed 'the emergence of the individual.' The Medieval Fold demonstrates how cultural developments typically associated with this twelfth-century renaissance autobiography, lyric, courtly love, romance can be traced to the Church's cultivation of individualism. However, subjects did not submit to pastoral power passively, they constructed fantasies and behaviors, redeploying or 'folding' it to create new forms of life and culture. Incorporating the work of Nietzsche, Foucault, Lacan, and Deleuze, Suzanne Verderber presents a model of the subject in which the opposition between interior self and external world is dislodged.

Autorentext
Suzanne M. Verderber is an associate professor in the Department of Humanities and Media Studies at Pratt Institute.

Inhalt
Introduction 1. The Gregorian Reform, Pastoral Power, and Subjection 2. The Courtly Fold: The Subjectivation of Pastoral Power and the Invention of Modern Eroticism 3. Chrétien de Troyes' Diagram of Power: Perceval Conclusion