Flight from Desire

ROBERT R. EDWARDS is Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the Pennsylvania State University, USA. A Life Member of Clare Hall, Cambridge, he is the former editor-in-chief of Comparative Literature Studies, and served as Professor and Chairof English at the University of Buffalo. His previous books include Chaucer and Boccaccio: Antiquity and Modernity, The Dream of Chaucer: Representation and Reflection in Chaucer's Early Narratives, and The Montecassino Passion and the Poetics of Medieval Drama. He has edited John Lydgate's Siege of Thebes and selections from Lydgate's Troy Book and collections of essays dealing with love and marriage in the Middle Ages and the contexts of Middle English literature.

• Preface Introduction Desire and Plenitude in Saint Augustine's Confessions 'Nullum Crimen Erit': Ovidian Craft and the Illusion of Mastery Abelard and Heloise: Conversion and Irreducible Desire Marie de France and Le Livre Ovide Le Roman de la Rose: 'All the Art of Love Enclosed' 'Simulacra Nostra': The Problem of Desire in Dante's Vita Nuova The Desolate Palace and the Solitary City: Chaucer, Boccaccio, and Dante Afterward Notes Bibliography Index

"The very elusiveness of desire-whose objects are always already substitutes and which therefore operates by a logic of deferral and supplementarity-, its continual reaching beyond presence, past need, and even past gratification into a realm in which the desiring subject is both agent and victim, makes it as difficult to write about as it is necessary to do so. Thus, The Flight from Desire in its very design addresses a set of important questions regarding poetic representation and writing as such. Edwards does this by a set of close readings of canonical texts arranged almost chronologically (he wisely discusses Augustine first, then Ovid) from Ovid to Chaucer by way of the correspondence of Abelard and Heloise, the Lais of Marie de France, Le Roman de Rose, the Vita Nuova, and Boccaccio's Filostrato. His control of a very large body of primary and secondary work is impressive, and his readings are always intelligent, often surprising, and sometimes exhilerating.." - Robert Stein, Professor of Language and Literature, Purchase College; Adjunct Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University