2024: Fragile finality. Narratological and cultural-historical perspectives on endings in pre-modern short stories
This anthology sheds light on conceptions, forms of representation and patterns of interpretation of the poetic ending in the field of medieval short stories. The end is a culturally extremely powerful strategy for creating meaning, signaling completion and defining the goal and result of what precedes it. Specifically in a historical perspective, the end appears as a polymorphic phenomenon, which cannot easily be defined. In pre-modern short stories, the question of how to define and delimit the end becomes particularly virulent. Here, the ending often proves to be fragile, as the end of the plot and the conclusion unfold opposing semantics. Using specific case studies, the articles in this anthology examine questions of whether and in what way the ending is able to create closure and how its potential to create order conflicts with forms of an open ending.
