You are invited to the guest lecture offered by Jonathan Stavsky (Tel Aviv University), on the following topic: ‘Of alle tho that feigne chiere’: Gower, Chaucer, and the Anti-Theatrical Tradition
Abstract
Anti-fictional and anti-theatrical attitudes are ingrained in the idioms of many languages, including their scholarly registers. Indeed, the study of literature broadly conceived is unique for making pejorative use of the technical terms of its own discipline. Seeking to understand this phenomenon, I examine the ways in which the fourteenth-century authors John Gower and Geoffrey Chaucer incorporate anti-fictional and, especially, anti-theatrical discourse in their poetry. In particular, I focus on their reception of two important sources for these discourses: the Bible and Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, together with their intersecting commentary traditions. Whereas Gower expresses such attitudes without sufficiently reflecting on their repercussions for his own fictions, Chaucer draws on them to explore the performative aspect of poetry. In this formative period of literary history—and the history of literariness—two major writers respond creatively to anti-fictional and anti-theatrical views rather than simply rejecting or undermining them. Such views are therefore endemic to the very category of literature.
Brief Biography
Jonathan Stavsky teaches at the University of Tel Aviv, Israel. He edited and translated the Middle English romance Le Bone Florence of Rome in 2017, with the University of Wales Press. He is the author of several peer-reviewed articles in Studies in the Age Chaucer, Anglia, Philological Quarterly, Viator and The Chaucer Review, among others. His interests range from reception history of biblical texts over the longue durée, with a particular focus on auctoritates and poetics. He has also written on medieval narratives of falsely accused women, from the biblical story of Susanna and the Elders in the Additions to the Book of Daniel to romance heroines and historical fictions. His article, 'Margery Kempe and Biblical Susanna' brings to light the role played by this biblical character as part of the process of Margery's self-fashioning. Jonathan Stavsky's approach is multidisciplinary and multilingual. His analyses of sources, analogues and cultural contexts are well served by his impressive command of medieval and modern languages, as well as his knowledge of biblical material, Eastern and Western cultures, which support his arguments in his article on the N-Town play, 'The Trial of Mary and Joseph', as well as his piece on 'Translating the Near East in the Man of Law's Tale and Its Analogues'.
Some of these pieces are part of his larger project which deals with the significance of mythos/fabula in shaping the modern concept of literature.