Absent Narratives is a book 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 analyzes a set of unique and unnoticed 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.

Autorentext

ELIZABETH SCALA directs the Medieval Studies Program and teaches in the Department of English at the University of Texas at Austin. Her essays have appeared in The Chaucer Review, Film and History, Exemplaria, Studies in Philology, and Medieval Feminist Forum.

Inhalt

The Structural Study of Medieval Narrative Introduction: Absent Narratives and the Textual Culture of the Late Middle Ages The Wanting Words of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Remembering Canacee: Chaucer, Incest, and the Structure of Narrative Chaucer's Family Romancers and the Primal Scene of the Canterbury Tales 'Hic quasi in persona aliorum' : the Lover's Repression and Gower's Confessio Amantis The Arthur Function Conclusion