Stories of Chaos

'Davis argues his readings by deploying an impressive grasp of classical, medieval, and Renaissance mathematical and cosmological thought, and by scrupulous attention to the detail of the texts he studies.' Modern Language review, Vol. 95, No. 4 '...an interesting and challenging book.' Helen Cooper, Medium Aevum Vol. LXIX 'Davis's thesis is exciting; it illuminates the literary articulations of an important dimension of early modern thinking.' Shakespeare Survey '... a thought -provoking study of the tensions between rationality and disorder in the years prior to the consolidation of Enlightenment models of uniform process and practice.' Parergon 'There is much to recommend this (...), not least the exploration of how gender issues are employed within the narrative as a means of approaching other conceptual problems.' Year's Work in English Studies

Autorentext
Nick Davis

Klappentext

First published in 1999, this volume re-examines narrative design in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Faerie Queene, King Lear and Paradise Lost.

Inhalt

1. Introductory: Reason and Symbolic Bliss. 2. A Mathematical Plot: Plato's Likely Story Er, Stories. 3. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: an Unfolded Narrative. 4. 'A Foolish Mad World': The Faerie Queene as Critique of Reason. 5. 'These Late Eclipses': Reason's Primal Scene. 6. Milton Swallows Chaos. 7. Retrospect: but, Narrative is Not Cosmology.