The cloud texts and some aspects of modern theory

Abstract

[Extract] This essay experiments with applying ideas selected from later twentieth-century theory to The Cloud of Unknowing and associated writings. The aim is to discover whether the ideas can shed light on the social positioning of these texts, beyond the insights achieved by traditional textual, theological and literary approaches. The ideas are selected from the body of theory that I know, based on resonances produced when the ideas are read in association with the texts.