Form and Foreskin

Why did Saint Augustine ask God to circumcise [his] lips? Why does Sir Gawain cut off the Green Knights head on the Feast of the Circumcision? Is Chaucers Wife of Bath actuallyas an early glossator figures hera foreskin? And why did Ezra Pound claim that he had incubated The Waste Land inside of his uncut member? In this little book, A. W. Strouse excavates a poetics of the foreskin, uncovering how Patristic theologies of circumcision came to structure medieval European literary aesthetics. Following the writings of Saint Paul, circumcision and uncircumcision become key terms for theorizing languageespecially the dichotomies between the mere text and its extended exegesis, between brevity and longwindedness, between wisdom and folly. Form and Foreskin looks to three works: a peculiar story by Saint Augustine about a boy with the long foreskin; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; and Chaucers Wife of Baths Tale. By examining literary scenes of cutting and stretching, Strouse exposes how Patristic treatments of circumcision queerly govern medieval poetics.