Form and Foreskin: Medieval Narratives of Circumcision by A.W. Strouse

Abstract

Reviewed by: Form and Foreskin: Medieval Narratives of Circumcision by A.W. Strouse William Robert a.w. strouse, Form and Foreskin: Medieval Narratives of Circumcision. New York: Fordham University Press, 2021. Pp. 165. isbn: 9780823294756. $25. Circumcision is a slippery operation. Form and Foreskin examines circumcision's different operations: as medical procedure, religious ritual, cultural metaphor, hermeneutic practice, and narratological trope. Foreskin is slippery, too. It, Form and Foreskin tells us, 'connotes the slippage between body and soul, text and meaning' (p. 2). These slippages, figured textually, are Form and Foreskin's subjects. It tracks these subjects through ancient Mediterranean and medieval English texts and contexts. Form and Foreskin examines, in successive chapters, letters by Paul of Tarsus, a passage in one of Augustine of Hippo's commentaries on Genesis, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and The Wife of Bath's Tale in Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Through its readings, Form and Foreskin considers—in stylistically varied prose—questions of (among other things) exegesis, physicality, identity, gender, desire, marriage, and time. [End Page 111] In the process, Form and Foreskin also identifies 'circumological narrative' as a genre of allegory. Circumlogical narratives revolve around cuts, nicks, and foreskins. It demonstrates how they 'amplify their textual bodies precisely in order to stage an unveiling of their inner, spiritual meanings' (p. 8). 'Nicking Sir Gawain' is the chapter in which Form and Foreskin's Arthurian elements appear. It's also Form and Foreskin's longest and most technical chapter. (I'd recommend rereading Gawain before reading it—and keeping Gawain within reach as you do.) Form and Foreskin reads Gawain as 'the circumlogical narrative par excellence' (p. 9) Following its circumological hermeneutic, Form and Foreskin shows that in Gawain, content mimics form. That means Gawain's human bodies reveal things about its textual body—all masculine bodies, on Form and Foreskin's reading. But they don't stay masculine. Sir Gawain's journey unfolds a feminization of Gawain's textual body, and 'the climax of the poem circumcises this body' (p. 53). Exposing that, Form and Foreskin reveals that across bodies, Gawain accepts the impossibilities of a complete identity and a straight, monolithic masculinity. Circumcision doesn't appear only at Gawain's climax. It also appears throughout Gawain, via a ritual-textual calendar. Sir Gawain decapitates the Green Knight on the Christian feast of Christ's circumcision. A year later, on the same feast, the Green Knight nicks Sir Gawain's neck. This pair of cuts plays out Christian senses of Christ's circumcision: as confirming the Incarnation and portending the Passion. For this textually masculine poem, these scenes of slightly sexualized masculine violence enact a theory of reading as circumcision. The cuts on Gawain's male characters' necks are, for Form and Foreskin, coded as hermeneutic acts, ones that 'metacritically comment upon how the poem invites multiple interpretations of its textual body' (p. 54). Following one of these interpretations, Form and Foreskin demonstrates that Gawain's narrative follows a Pauline movement from literal circumcision (of the flesh) to spiritual circumcision (of the heart). In Gawain, Christ's circumcision translates letter into spirit via a liturgical performance of multiple meanings. And Gawain's doubled cuts generate a narrative structure based on the letter-spirit dual. This movement is important for Gawain, whose fundamental questions are, in Form and Foreskin, hermeneutic ones: questions about ways of reading. It's important for a vernacular romance like Gawain, since this genre is usually preoccupied with male-female erotic seduction. It's also important for a circumlogical narrative like Gawain, which rethinks 'the preputial veil of allegory as feminine' and 'disciplines the body of romance' (p. 81). I've left out a lot, like Form and Foreskin's attention to alliteration and poetics, its biblically informed reading of Gawain with Cleanliness (another text by the Gawain- poet), and its nuanced narratological theory. But I hope I've included enough to illustrate how Form and Foreskin operates complexly, to turn circumcision into an innovative way of interpreting narratives and refiguring narratology. [End Page 112] William Robert Syracuse University Copyright © 2022 Arthuriana