Chaucer and Costume: The Secular Pilgrims in the General Prologue by Laura F. Hodges

Abstract

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER bridge History of the Book in Britain, first in the series, is already late on the scene. William Kuskin University of Southern Mississippi Laura F. Hodges. Chaucer and Costume: The Secular Pilgrims in the General Prologue. Chaucer Studies 26. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2000. Pp. xiv, 285. $90.00. Who among us, reading The General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales, has never felt puzzled by an article of a pilgrim’s array? The Merchant’s ‘‘Flaundryssh bever hat,’’ the Wife’s hat ‘‘brood as is a bokeler or a targe’’; the Franklin’s ‘‘girdel, whit as morne milk,’’ the Miller’s ‘‘whit cote’’ and ‘‘blew hood,’’ the Pardoner’s hood ‘‘trussed up in his walet’’; the Plowman ‘‘in a tabard,’’ in the Tabard Inn. Since the mid-nineteenth century, at least, Chaucer scholarship has been shaped by the (unspoken, unexamined) assumption that Chaucer never ‘‘nods,’’ that every word and every detail, because carefully chosen and crafted, is brimful of significance . We make mighty efforts, therefore, to unravel every last scrap of meaning, whether what we are hoping to find at the end of the thread is Chaucerian irony, Pauline allegory, or (perhaps these days) patriarchy and imperialism. In our heart of hearts, though, we’ve all had to admit to ourselves that some things in Chaucer’s texts may be irrecoverable. Clothing semiotics is likely to be one such matter, because it is among the most rapidly changing of social codes and least likely to be set down in writing. Thus we are stymied, able neither to admit that Chaucer may have meant nothing in particular, may merely have been filling out an iambic couplet, nor to locate the precise semiotic valence of that puzzling ‘‘whit cote,’’ And without that, we cannot by rights push on to read the array at any deeper level. Looking back on the most recent essays we have read or written on any of the pilgrims, we have to admit that we all stiff the clothing details we can’t read. That excuse will no longer be tenable with regard to The General Prologue portraits of the secular pilgrims now that Laura F. Hodges has collected her writings of the past decade in a superbly documented, beautifully produced, and eminently readable book. Hodges goes for 408 ................. 9680$$ CH16 11-01-10 12:37:17 PS REVIEWS broke from the start with that perennial interpretive headache, the Knight’s ‘‘gypon / Al bismotered.’’ It seems a realistic detail to most of us, and because we are fond of the Knight, few of us are willing to grant it the allegorical significance of a sin-stained soul. Hodges doesn’t decide for us out of hand, but she doesn’t flinch from the allegorical reading either: instead, she reviews contemporary literature and art to help us recreate the social meaning of a knight in filthy clothes. Along the way, she provides an enlightening survey of how the Knight’s clothing has been misread by scholars (such as Terry Jones) who, circularly, begin with their assumptions about his character and read his clothing in that light. Her conclusion: sometimes dirt is just dirt; the Knight’s portrait is realistic. The next chapter, on the Squire’s richly embroidered gown, is then rather surprising in its conclusion that the gown does indeed serve as a symbol of the postlapsarian world, ‘‘the style of Lechery, Pride, and Vainglory’’ (73), but Hodges provides plenty of evidence for this reading , too, not only from the expected Roman de la Rose and The Former Age, but also, taking a hint from the Squire’s flute, from Berchorius and Dante. And so it goes, each chapter freshly examining the evidence and reading the clothing with neither an umbrella theory of characterization in The General Prologue nor any preconceived notions of the pilgrims’ characters—she doesn’t look ahead to their tales or their roles in the links. Naturally, in the process, Hodges upsets many a critical apple cart. The Man of Law’s ‘‘medlee’’ might be read simply as ‘‘an appropriate legal costume’’ (125), were it not qualified by the conspicuous absence of the coif, the omission of which...