To Be Continued: Four Stories and Their Survival

Description: Chaucer's pilgrims in CT do not reach the martyr's shrine in the cathedral, Langland's pilgrims in "Piers Plowman" do not attain any of his even remoter visionary goals, and Spenser's Arthur in "The Faerie Queene" falls short of his ideal destination at the court of Gloriana. The four essays in Conrad's book discuss the unfinished state of CT, "Romeo and Juliet," "Lear," and "Prometheus" and analyze various modern continuations of these works. For Chaucer, twentieth-century writers such as Eliot, Burroughs, Murray, Chesterton, Powell, Pasolini, and Jarmusch ("Mystery Train") propose several answers. Their continuations variously declare that the pilgrims did not deserve to arrive at their sacred destination; that they might have arrived after all, received the blessings denied by Chaucer, and departed once more to save the civilized world; or that their arrival is a calamity that has given them power to bolster dogma and to destroy our secular civilization by medievalizing the modern world.

Chaucer Subjects: Chaucer's Influence and Later Allusion; Canterbury Tales--General