Frank Erik Pointner Libros

From the early Middle Ages to the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, one of the most vital categories used to construct a human being's identity was his or her profession, as a whole array of family names deriving from traditional trades still attests today. This study traces the various ways in which texts from the 14th to the 18th centuries constructed the identity of one of the most notorious craftsmen, the miller, by focusing on street and folk ballads, folk songs, children's games, judicial documents and various prose writings. A thorough analysis of these texts in their cultural contexts suggests that the image of the miller as an aggressive, lecherous thief, so familiar from Chaucer's 'The Reeve's Tale', has remained relatively constant throughout the centuries, differing, however, in the degree of the aspersions cast on the man of flour. The study is supplemented by an annotated edition including all the texts discussed, many of which have not been edited since they were first printed hundreds of years ago.

Until the middle of the 20th century non-platonic readings of Shakespeare's boy-sonnets were openly denounced as mere fantasies of homosexual would-be scholars who wanted to claim Shakespeare as one of their own. Even after these readings had gained a wider audience, the poetic strategies intimating the transition from platonic to non-platonic interpretations remained largely unexplored. This study substantiates the validity of both of these interpretations which were claimed to be mutually exclusive and explores and explains their relationship to one another. While phonological, semantic, metaphorical or logical disharmonies in individual boy-sonnets or groups of sonnets are identified as switch-blades directing the reader from platonic to sexual readings, the lady-sonnets are shown to hold the key to a full understanding of the poet's relationship to the young man. In the heterosexual context they establish the terminological and metaphorical patterns for the encoded rendering of homoerotic passion. Thus the linguistic ambiguities of the boy-sonnets are understood to reveal the wavering balance of adoration and desire which are suggested to be integral aspects of the human frame of body and mind.