Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Winner: Most Clever Title in a Forthcoming Medieval Studies Book


CLAUSTROPHILIA: The Erotics of Enclosure in Medieval Literature by Cary Howie, to be published in the New Middle Ages series. Here's the description:
Through extended readings of English, French, and Italian writers of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Claustrophilia shows that medieval enclosures actually make room for desires and communities that a poetics of pure openness would exclude.

Give that author a golden tiny shriner.

1 comment:

Karl Steel said...

I like the title too. If someone googles Cary Howie and eventually ends up here, I'd like to know a little bit more about the book. Mainly, right now anyhow, I'm befuddled about the relationship between "enclosures" (which makes me think of cloisters, of course--like like this work--but also of prison writing) and "poetics."