Author Description

Product Description Romance, sometimes described as an open-ended genre, can achieve closure through three methods: the successful completion of the narrative design, the establishment of a privileged locale to contain the narrative (thus enclosing it), or a revelation that releases the protagonist from that world and the reader from the text. The Promised End examines how Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Le Morte Darthur, The Faerie Queene, and The Winter's Tale toy with these closural gestures in order to effect the transformational ending peculiar to romance. Review Lenz's book is an excellent study of an important topic. He has many sharp and helpful insights that should not be overlooked by anyone concerned either with his particular texts (especially Gawain, Malory and Spenser) or with romance as a form. Mark Rose, University of California.