George Edmondson
Professor
Appointments
Professor of English and Creative Writing
Area of Expertise
Medieval literature,
Chaucer,
critical theory,
psychoanalysis ,
biopolitics
Biography
I work at the intersection, dangerous at times but well policed, of medieval studies and critical theory. On the medieval-studies side of the street you will find a book, The Neighboring Text: Chaucer, Boccaccio, Henryson, its Choice Outstanding Academic Title award still proudly displayed in the window, alongside articles and chapters in Studies in the Age of Chaucer, Chaucer Review, Exemplaria, New Medieval Literatures, and The Post-Historical Middle Ages. Venture down the critical-studies side of the street and you will run across the collection Sovereignty in Ruins: A Politics of Crisis, coedited with Klaus Mladek (Duke University Press, 2017), and A Politics of Melancholia: From Plato to Arendt , coauthored with Klaus Mladek (Princeton University Press, 2024). I have also been known to wander down side streets and blind alleys in pursuit of my other interests, which include psychoanalysis, biopolitics, and the literature of walking.
Education
B.A. University of California at Los Angeles
M.A. University of California at Los Angeles
Ph.D. University of California at Los Angeles
Publications
The Neighboring Text: Henryson, Boccaccio, Chaucer. The University of Notre Dame Press, 2011.
"Neighbors, Natural and Otherwise, in 'The Vox and the Wolf'." New Medieval Literatures 12 (2010): 89-114.
"Pearl: The Shadow of the Object, the Shape of the Law." Studies in the Age of Chaucer 26 (2004): 29-63. Reprinted in Classical and Medieval Literary Criticism Online. Thomas Gale, forthcoming.
"Naked Chaucer." In The Post-Historical Middle Ages, eds. Elizabeth Scala and Sylvia Federico. Palgrave, 2009: 139-160.
"A Politics of Melancholia," co-authored with Klaus Mladek. In A Leftist Ontology, ed. Carsten Strathausen. University of Minnesota Press, 2009: 208-233.
"Henryson's Doubt: Neighbors and Negation in The Testament of Cresseid." Exemplaria 20.2 (2008): 165-196. Reprinted in Medieval Literature: Criticism and Debates, eds. Holly Crocker and D. Vance Smith. Routledge, 2013.
Sovereignty in Ruins: A Politics of Crisis, co-edited with Klaus Mladek. Duke University Press, 2017.
"The Noise of Neighbors: An Essay on 'The Blacksmiths' and (Un)related Matters." Modern Philology 117.1 (August 2019): 1-23.
"Chaucerian Humor." Studies in the Age of Chaucer 41 (2019): 73-105.
"Response: Last Judgment on the Neighbor." Exemplaria 32.3 (2020): 269-281.
"Pulling Back from Politics: Second Nature and Oikonomia in the Franklin's Tale." Chaucer Review 56.3 (July 2021): 225-257.
"Guilt Historicism: Walter Benjamin's 'Capitalism as Religion,' Aura, and the Case of Chaucer's Pardoner." Exemplaria 34.2 (July 2022):103-129.
A Politics of Melancholia: From Plato to Arendt, coauthored with Klaus Mladek (Princeton University Press, 2024).
Works in Progress
Backpack: A History
Selected Works & Activities
2011 Choice Outstanding Academic Title for The Neighboring Text
ACLS Collaborative Research Fellowship, 2014-2015
Contact