Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction: Staves and Stanzas -- Chapter 1. Crooked as a Staff: Narrative, History, and the Disabled Body in Parlement of Thre Ages -- Chapter 2. A Reckoning with Age: Prosthetic Violence and the...
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Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction: Staves and Stanzas -- Chapter 1. Crooked as a Staff: Narrative, History, and the Disabled Body in Parlement of Thre Ages -- Chapter 2. A Reckoning with Age: Prosthetic Violence and the Reeve -- Chapter 3. The Past is Prologue: Following the Trace of Master Hoccleve -- Chapter 4. Playing Prosthesis and Revising the Past: Gower’s Supplemental Role -- Epilogue: Impotence and Textual Healing -- Works Cited -- Index The old speaker in Middle English literature often claims to be impaired because of age. This admission is often followed by narratives that directly contradict it, as speakers, such as the Reeve in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales or Amans in Gower's Confessio Amantis, proceed to perform even as they claim debility. More than the modesty topos, this contradiction exists, the book argues, as prosthesis: old age brings with it debility, but discussing age-related impairments augments the old, impaired body, while simultaneously undercutting and emphasizing bodily impairments. This language of prosthesis becomes a metaphor for the works these speakers use to fashion narrative, which exist as incomplete yet powerful sources
