Explicit Content: Ends and Endings in Medieval Texts

Explicit Content: Ends and Endings in Medieval Texts

The manuscript context of medieval literature often means that we are
uncertain where one text ends and another begins. The Old English
poems in the Exeter Book are a classic example of this phenomenon.
Within certain genres, such as hagiography, conventional endings
develop which structure the concluding sections of various texts in
parallel ways. Moreover, if a work features a colophon or signature,
it will be appended to the end of the text. In fact, Geoffrey of
Vinsauf wrote in his Poetria Nova, "Let the conclusion, like a herald
when the race is over, dismiss it honourably." This session will
bring together scholars from a range of periods, languages, and
genres to examine how various medieval writers closed the texts they
were penning "honourably," and what issues their sense of an ending,
whether authorial or scribal, raises for audiences both then and now.