Medieval Nonsense: Signifying Nothing in Fourteenth-Century England (Fordham Series in Medieval Studies)

Medieval Nonsense is a groundbreaking book that challenges the conventional understanding of medieval language and literature.

By retrieving a premodern hermeneutics of obscurity, the author uncovers the hidden possibilities of non-signification in medieval texts.

Through close readings of works by Priscian, Boethius, Augustine, Walter Burley, Geoffrey Chaucer, and anonymous authors, the book reveals how these writers recognized and transformed accounts of language from antiquity into new ideas, forms, and practices of non-significance. The result is a fascinating exploration of the ways in which medieval writers engineered their texts to arrest interpretation and focus on the extinguishing of sense that occurs in the encounter with language itself.

Medieval Nonsense makes a compelling case for the centrality of nonsignification in medieval linguistic thought, providing materials for an archeology of the category of the literary.

Whether you're a scholar of medieval literature or simply someone interested in exploring new ideas and perspectives, this book is sure to captivate and inspire.