Finis coronat opus? About the Endings of Literary‑Studies Articles

Abstract

The paper is an attempt to consider the issue that so far has not been discussed frequently in the Polish philological current. It focuses on the endings of 18 selected articles in the field of literary studies. Authors of textbooks on academic discourse argue that it is the ending that plays a fundamental role in the scientific discourse as a concluding, summarising, and potentially memorable part. This approach to a conclusion is often shared by scholars themselves, who choose different strategies with regard to endings of their articles. When studying articles published in the period of 2015‒2019, we identified about 15 different ending strategies, e.g. an apologia for a literary work selected by an author, suggestions for further research possibilities, an attractive punch line, and an quotation from another paper. As the analysis reveals, the conclusion of an academic article is not only a place for introducing conventional rhetorical figures; it also becomes the researchers’ contribution to the understanding of the role ascribed by literary-studies scholars to their own scientific practice.