Chaucer's Open Books: Resistance to Closure in Medieval Discourse

Author / Editor
McGerr, Rosemarie P.

Title
Chaucer's Open Books: Resistance to Closure in Medieval Discourse

Published
Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998.

Physical Description
x, 210 pp.

Description
Argues that all of Chaucer's major works "play with medieval concepts of closure" and that the inconclusiveness of these works self-consciously indicates that readers generate their own meanings.
Through play with (non)closure and (in)conclusiveness, Chaucer explores the goals of fiction and enables us to understand our limitations.
Open literary forms, closure, and conclusiveness were topics of concern for medieval theorists as well as for more modern ones.

Chaucer Subjects
Background and General Criticism.