Chaucer and the Craft of Fiction ed. by Leigh A. Arrathoon

Abstract

REVIEWS can we say that Chaucer was translating Innocent and writing The Miller's Tale at the same time? And whether or not Lollards like Clanvowe or Clifford commissioned the translation, he surely warmed to the work because he found its grimness fascinating, if distorted, like the extreme doctrines of Adversusjovinianum which he studied and criticized so mi­ nutely. On p. 93 we read: "De Contemptu Mundi-the very title, trans­ lated by Chaucer as The Wretched Engendering ofMankind, conjures up images of cowled monks in dank cells"; Chaucer's very title, in Robinson's edition, is "of the Wreched Engendrynge of Mankynde" (LGW 414) and seems to translate De miseria conditionis humane, the title now usually preferred. Occasionally minor inaccuracies creep in. The number of Jews im­ prisoned, executed, or released at the time of the death of Hugh ofLincoln does not accord with the number given by Matthew Paris or by Gavin Langmuir(Speculum 47 [1972]: 459-82). On p. 176 the Host is said to call on the Prioress after the Knight. On pp. 147 and 162, Solomon is rather too glibly blamed for concluding all women evil: not even Proverbs 7 implies so much. And ifJimmy Carter said in his inaugural address that God requires justice, mercy, and humility rather than sacrifice, he was quoting Micah, not Hosea, as stated on p. 65. B. S. LEE University of Cape Town LEIGH A. ARRATH00N, ed. Chaucer and the Craft ofFiction. Rochester, Mich.: Solaris Press, 1986. Pp. xxv, 430. $20.00 paper. Arrathoon represents this volume of fourteen original essays as an heir to Percy Lubbock's The Craft ofFiction (1921), but its more recent ancestor is A Preface to Chaucer, by D. W Robertson, Jr. {1962). Among the mis­ cellany of critical approaches it is Robertson's influence which is most frequently felt. Three essays show the usefulness and the pitfalls of the allegorical method. Some works respond well to it, as Bernard S. Levy demonstrates in "The Meanings of the Clerk's Tale." At the literal level the Clerk makes an effective response to the Wife of Bath's views on marriage: Griselda is subservient, loving, obedient, and patient, as her low social position 119 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER requires that she should be. At the spiritual level Griselda emulates Christ and Walter is a servant ofGod. Emerson Brown,Jr. ("OfMice and Women: Thoughts on Chaucerian Allusion"), concentrates on two references easily misconstrued with biblical and patristic contexts. The Merchant's com­ parison ofMay to "Queene Ester" (MerTl714) does not indicate meekness so much as the terror, treachery, and hatred that lie beneath a demure exterior. Second, the Prioress's response to "a mous / Kaught in a trappe" (GP 144-45) shows that her sentimentality is seriously misguided. Com­ mentators and artists represented the devil in the form of a mouse and Christ as a mousetrap. Charlotte F. Otten's "The Love-Sickness ofTroilus" is more forced. Scrupulously avoiding reference to any medieval source in her account oferotomania, she goes on to find Troilus's malady gluttonously lustful, irredeemably egocentric, and life-denying. Release comes only with death. His case is an exemplum to be shunned in favor ofChristian love. Like Brown,John Fleming ("Smoky Reyn: FromJean de Meun to Geof­ frey Chaucer") expounds the significance ofdetail. More concerned with "translation" than with allegory, Fleming relates TC 3.628 to the Virgilian rainstorm in book 4 of the Aeneid and to the emanations of Genius's aphrodisiac candle in RR 20638-48. The process oftranslation exemplified here is symptomatic ofChaucer's Boethian critique of the Ovidian erotic code, as known to him through Boccaccio. His practice follows that of Jean de Meun, who also "translates" the Consolatio by using it as a commentary on Ovid. According to Edmund Reiss ("Chaucer's Fiction and Linguistic Self-Consciousness in the Late Middle Ages") translatio traditionally en­ tailed the transformation of meaning and content and the creation of ambiguity. Medieval logic and grammar also dwelt on the limitations and inadequacy of language and the difficulty ofinterpretation. Chaucer's ludic use oflanguage reflectssuch trends; in The Nun's Priest's Tale, for instance, the play of significance moves...