Chaucer's open books: resistance to closure in medieval discourse

Abstract

Rosemarie McGerr examines the open-endedness of Chaucer's narrative poems in relation to modern and postmodern theory and to medieval traditions. She discusses links between Chaucer's poems and modern definitions of form and then addresses medieval conventions of closure and pre-Chaucerian poems that subverted those conventions. Against this critical backdrop, she offers readings of Chaucer's narrative poems focusing on how they manipulate medieval conventions of closure and openness, highlight ambiguity in interpretation of texts, and raise questions about the relationship of gender and reading. McGerr's study demonstrates that subversion of closure plays a major role in all of Chaucer's narrative poems and provides an in-depth analysis of the treatment of closure in medieval poetic theory and practice, with evidence from a wide variety of Latin and vernacular texts. It also discusses medieval subversion of closure in relation to modern and postmodern theories of open poetics. In combining a comprehensive discussion of Chaucer's works and an innovative approach to a major issue in contemporary literary discourse, McGerr argues for a reinterpretation of Chaucer's poems that have long been thought incomplete as examples of form.