How Soon Is Now?: Medieval Texts, Amateur Readers, and the Queerness of TimeHow Soon Is Now? performs a powerful critique of modernist temporal regimes through its revelatory exploration of queer ways of being in time as well as of the potential queerness of time itself. Carolyn Dinshaw focuses on medieval tales of asynchrony and on engagements with these medieval temporal worlds by amateur readers centuries later. In doing so, she illuminates forms of desirous, embodied being that are out of sync with ordinarily linear measurements of everyday life, that involve multiple temporalities, that precipitate out of time altogether. Dinshaw claims the possibility of a fuller, denser, more crowded now that theorists tell us is extant but that often eludes our temporal grasp. Whether discussing Victorian men of letters who parodied the Book of John Mandeville, a fictionalized fourteenth-century travel narrative, or Hope Emily Allen, modern coeditor of the early-fifteenth-century Book of Margery Kempe, Dinshaw argues that these and other medievalists outside the academy inhabit different temporalities than modern professionals operating according to the clock. How Soon Is Now? clears space for amateurs, hobbyists, and dabblers who approach medieval worlds from positions of affect and attachment, from desires to build other kinds of worlds. Unruly, untimely, they urge us toward a disorderly and asynchronous collective. |
Contents
How Soon Is Now? | 1 |
Asynchrony Stories Monks Kings Sleepers and Other Time Travelers | 41 |
Temporally Oriented The Book of John Mandeville British India Philology and the Postcolonial Medievalist | 73 |
In the Now Margery Kempe Hope Emily Allen and Me | 105 |
Out of Sync in the Catskills Rip van Winkle Geoffrey Crayon James I and Other Ghosts | 129 |
The Lay of the Land Amateur Medievalism and Queer Love in A Canterbury Tale | 153 |
Notes | 171 |
Bibliography | 223 |
| 245 | |
Other editions - View all
How Soon Is Now?: Medieval Texts, Amateur Readers, and the Queerness of Time Carolyn Dinshaw No preview available - 2012 |
How Soon Is Now?: Medieval Texts, Amateur Readers, and the Queerness of Time Carolyn Dinshaw No preview available - 2012 |
Common terms and phrases
amateur medievalist ambivalence analysis argues Aristotle Aristotle's asynchrony Augustine Augustine's bird Boece Boethius Book of John Book of Margery British Bryn Mawr College Canterbury Tale century Chakrabarty chapter Chaucer Christ Christian Colpeper complex Consolation culture desire discussion earthly edition eternity everyday exemplum experience fact feel film Fountain of Youth Furnivall Geoffrey Crayon Golden Legend HEA Papers heterogeneous Hope Allen Hope Emily Allen human India Irving Irving's John Mandeville John's King Herla Kingis Quair land Latour letter literary living Longfellow M. R. James Mandeville's Margery Kempe Margery's Mawr College Library medieval texts Middle Ages Middle English modern modernist monk Morrissey multiple narrative nonmodern nostalgia notes Paradise past philology poem Powell Powell and Pressburger present Pressburger professional queer readers reading Rip van Winkle sche sense sermon Seven Sleepers Simplicius Sir John Sketch Book spirit story temporal tion writes Yule