From the dust jacket:
From the time of Homer, agere et pati–to do and to suffer–has been a stock theme, or topos, in Western literature. This formula comprehended the dual perception of experience as either initiated and acted or as received and sustained. A familiar phrase in the Middle Ages in logic, rhetoric, religion, philosophy, it entered medieval and Renaissance poetry allusively, with the concepts of action and endurance posing rival heroic ideals.
Mrs. Crampton studies this shared tradition in medieval and Renaissance literature. She examines suffering in its relation to action as a protagonistic ideal and as a formal element, using Chaucer's Knight's Tale and parts of Spenser's Faerie Queene to demonstrate how the topos could become a shaping force in the making of poems. Her approach helps to locate the crucial tensions of narrative in the Knight's Tale; and in The Faerie Queene it sheds light on the development of relations among characters and on the use of imagery. The study also illuminates a critical ethical difference in emphasis between the medieval poet and the Renaissance poet.
Though nearly as common a theme in Western literature as the great chain of being, the agere et pati topos has received little critical discussion. Mrs. Crampton's lively and sensitive application of the theme to two great English poets will stimulate readers to look at its relevance to other major literary figures.
Georgia Ronan Crampton is assistant professor of English at Portland State University in Oregon.
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