Conclusion: The Agency of Medieval Narrative

Abstract

Any book about medieval narrative, and particularly one focused on the absences that characterize and condition the way medieval narrative operates, must necessarily confront what it leaves out. By its own assumptions, the goal of this study is not, and cannot be, to offer the last word on the subject. It has worked to extend previous analyses of medieval narrative; it also looks toward an extension of its own analysis, both in terms of texts that may be similarly studied and those that could prove intractable (as perhaps Piers Plowman, with its allegorical thought, may do). As I write my “conclusion,” my last word on the subject of narrative absences, it seems inevitable that I assess not only what I have written but also all that I have managed to omit. While I have chosen my examples here for their representativeness, as the major figures of the later medieval narrative tradition in English, I also know that that has to be an entirely insufficient justification for their presence. Readers may ask about the exclusion of various authors and texts. If there is an absent narrative here— and I am certain that there is—I will not be the one who can speak to it.