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(In)completeness in Middle English Literature: The Case of the Cook’s Tale and the Tale of Gamelyn
- Manuscript Studies: A Journal of the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies
- University of Pennsylvania Press
- Volume 1, Issue 1, Spring 2016
- pp. 115-134
- 10.1353/mns.2016.0000
- Article
- Additional Information
This essay considers the ways in which incompleteness – the de facto status of virtually all of Middle English literature – is both a type of failure and a special characteristic of this literature. The discussion is framed around the incomplete Cook’s Tale from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and the Tale of Gamelyn, a romance frequently misattributed to Chaucer that circulated with the Canterbury Tales, often to fill the gap left by the incomplete Cook’s Tale.