Product Description

This volume is about the defining difference between medieval and modern stories. In chapters devoted to the major writers of the late medieval period - Chaucer, Gower, the "Gawain" poet and Malory - it presents and then analyses a set of phenomena in medieval narrative, namely the persistent appearance of "missing" stories: stories implied, alluded to, or fragmented by a larger narrative. Far from being trivial digressions or passing curiosities, these "absent narratives" prove central to the way these medieval works function and to why they have affected readers in particular ways. Traditionally unseen, ignored, or explained away by critics, absent narratives offer a valuable new strategy for reading medieval texts and the historically specific textual culture in which they were written.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2227764 in Books
• Published on: 2002-09-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 304 pages

Review
"With the publication of Elizabeth Scala7;s "Absent Narratives," the study of medieval English narrative comes full circle, reanimating an incomplete structuralist and formalist agenda by linking it with a new awareness of the material conditions of medieval literacy and textual production and circulation. The result is a book that will be welcomed both by beginning students and advanced scholars. "Absent Narratives" will be of interest not only to medievalists, but to specialists in the history of the novel, narratology and literary theory. While many of us have either lamented or welcomed the absence of the literary itself from English studies, Scala7;s beautiful readings stake a new claim for the aesthetic as a political and methodological category. This is the best book of its kind in a quarter century." "--"John M. Ganim, Professor of English, University of California, Riverside