Absent Narratives, Manuscript Textuality - (New Middle Ages) by Elizabeth Scala (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

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

Review Quotes

"With the publication of Elizabeth Scala'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, Scala'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

"With the publication of Elizabeth Scala’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, Scala’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

"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

About the Author

Elizabeth Scala is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin.