The Erotics of Consolation: Desire and Distance in the Late Middle Ages

What is consolation and why is mourning so often bound up with erotic desire? This collection of essays explores consolation and mourning in the varied, sometimes provocative, readings of Boethius and of Stoic consolation by French, English, Italian and German authors, including Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Machaut, Chaucer, Wyatt and Queen Elizabeth I. The contributors consider how they remodeled the discourse of consolation through parody and satire, interrogating the limits of a consolatory rhetoric.