Piers Plowman and the Poetics of Enigma - by Curtis A Gruenler (Hardcover)

About the Book

Curtis Gruenler proposes that the concept of the enigmatic can help us better understand much of the medieval era's most enduring literature.

Book Synopsis

In this book, Curtis Gruenler proposes that the concept of the enigmatic, latent in a wide range of medieval thinking about literature, can help us better understand in medieval terms much of the era's most enduring literature, from the riddles of the Anglo-Saxon bishop Aldhelm to the great vernacular works of Dante, Chaucer, Julian of Norwich, and, above all, Langland's Piers Plowman. Riddles, rhetoric, and theology--the three fields of meaning of aenigma in medieval Latin--map a way of thinking about reading and writing obscure literature that was widely shared across the Middle Ages. The poetics of enigma links inquiry about language by theologians with theologically ambitious literature. Each sense of enigma brings out an aspect of this poetics. The playfulness of riddling, both oral and literate, was joined to a Christian vision of literature by Aldhelm and the Old English riddles of the Exeter Book. Defined in rhetoric as an obscure allegory, enigma was condemned by classical authorities but resurrected under the influence of Augustine as an aid to contemplation. Its theological significance follows from a favorite biblical verse among medieval theologians, "We see now through a mirror in an enigma, then face to face" (1 Cor. 13:12). Along with other examples of the poetics of enigma, Piers Plowman can be seen as a culmination of centuries of reflection on the importance of obscure language for knowing and participating in endless mysteries of divinity and humanity and a bridge to the importance of the enigmatic in modern literature. This book will be especially useful for scholars and undergraduate students interested in medieval European literature, literary theory, and contemplative theology.

Review Quotes

"Gruenler deftly manages a vast array of sources and offers an elegant close reading [that] evokes exactly the wonder and delight that Gruenler describes as traits of medieval enigmas." --Journal of Medieval Religious Culture

"Dr. Gruenler uses the concept of the enigmatic to present a richer understanding of medieval literature." --Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation

"This is an outstandingly cogent and informative study, lucidly analyzing medieval ideas of language, religion, and poetry through enigma while offering a solid literary and intellectual history of its topics." --Choice

"Gruenler's learned and wide-reaching study is poised to transform future readings not only of Piers Plowman, but of many other works of medieval literature. The framework he advances for identifying the poetics of enigma at work in Piers Plowman admirably addresses the way that the poem both defies and invites interpretation." --Times Literary Supplement

"The poetics of enigma, Curtis Gruenler writes, is a poetics 'of gentle persuasion to greater participation in mysteries at once transcendent and immanent'--something this world needs more than ever. Gruenler illuminates everything from the Sphinx to the modernist mode of T. S. Eliot, but his major achievement is the revelation that Piers Plowman stands as a sort of summa aenigmatica, the exemplary text in a major tradition that remains unappreciated and understudied. One critic has written that 'startling and pleasurable recognitions that repeatedly elude argumentative formulation' are the characteristic effects of Langland's poem; Gruenler points out that the best medieval name for this mode is enigma, and I would add that 'Piers Plowman' and the Poetics of Enigma, like its subject, is enigmatic in the best sense of the word." --Lawrence Warner, King's College London

"This lucid and sophisticated study of the idea of the enigma in medieval English literature is a welcome contribution to scholarship. Working deftly across medieval rhetoric, poetics, and theology, Gruenler accounts in strikingly new ways for the peculiar texture of Middle English poetry, and especially for the beautiful mystery that is William Langland's Piers Plowman." --Emily Steiner, University of Pennsylvania

"Piers Plowman and the Poetics of Enigma crafts a lucid, learned discussion of its origins and rhetorical power to foster a kind of reading and a way of seeing reality that contrasts with the didactic maintained by institutional authority. . . .[It's strength] is the scope of its learnedness, surveying the influences of medieval theologians and grammarians ranging form Augustine to Donatus upon dream vision poetry." --The Review of English Studies

"A magisterial account of a heretofore unnamed poetics attuned to interpretive openness that is characteristic of much literature of the Middle Ages, particularly the work of William Langland. . . . It also makes a significant contribution to intellectual history by demonstrating the legacy of the Middle Ages to contemporary theology and to the development of what we have come to value as the literary." --Modern Philology

"Immensely learned, ranging widely over classical and medieval literature and medieval theology and philosophy to bring superb new insight to Piers Plowman in particular, but also to a host of other texts. Above all, it brings out brilliantly, and not in any pietistic way, the deep Christianity of the poem, too often ignored nowadays by secularizing scholars."--Traugott Lawler, Yale University

"In this ambitious book, Curtis Gruenler not only offers nuanced, compelling readings of Piers Plowman but also constructs a powerful framework-- the poetics of enigma and its relationship to theologies of participation-- for interpreting late medieval religious literature as a whole... Gruenler's Poetics of Enigma offers masterful readings that bring disparate episodes of the poem together in productive and unexpected ways." --Journal of English and Germanic Philology

"In this learned and comprehensive volume, Curtis Gruenler studies how writers from Augustine to William Langland explore 'the value of difficult reading in education and spiritual formation.'. . . Gruenler has admirably embodied in his own writing the ideal of intellectual enquiry and community that he describes." --The Medieval Review

"Piers Plowman and the Poetics of Enigma is a generous and wide-ranging book, which places some of the best-known writings of the Middle Ages in a new relationship to one another, and, in doing so, opens several new possibilities for the interpretation of Langland's poem." --Speculum

"The book is beautifully organized, and the author lays out his argument clearly in every chapter. . . . [T]he brilliance of the book, however lies in the way in which the various aspects of enigma are interwoven throughout the entire study...This is a smart book with a very nuanced and sophisticated treatment of mimetic theory." --The Bulletin of the Colloquium on Violence and Religion

About the Author

Curtis A. Gruenler is professor of English at Hope College.