Chaucer to Shakespeare: Essays in Honour of Shinsuke Ando ed. by Toshiyuki Takamiya, Richard Beadle

Abstract

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER I would disagree with that judgment, suggesting the descriptions in The GeneralPrologue, Palamon and Arcite's first view of Emelye, and a number of passages in The House ofFame 3 that are strikingly definitive of the characters of Geffrey the Pilgrim, Palamon and Arcite, and the dreamer of The House ofFame. I am no less appreciative of Stanbury's book for this disagreement: good critics energize their readers, and more needs to be said on just how description functions in Chaucer's poetry. In summary, this is a serious, intelligent, and perceptive work that elegantly meets the challenge of studying technique in the Cotton Nero poems. It is not a comprehensive study to compare with those of A. C. Spearing and Lynn Staley Johnson (to cite two examples), but it is not intended to be so. Stanbury has taken what is in some ways a bolder and riskier tack- to explore a closely related set of descriptive topoi- and her success makes this a worthwhile and valuable book. J. STEPHEN RUSSELL Hofstra University TOSHIYUKI TAKAMIYA and RICHARD BEADLE, eds. Chaucer to Shake­ speare: Essays in Honour of Shinsuke Ando. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1992. Pp. xiii, 255. $70.00. Shinsuke Ando, still in his early sixties, is representative of the middle generation of Japanese scholars of English literature. The earlier genera­ tion, represented by the revered, recently deceased Michio Masui, made important contributions to the study of medieval and Renaissance lan­ guage and poetic. Ando's generation moved on to historical and critical interpretation of the literature, as represented in Ando's own bibliography, included in the volume. The younger generation, represented by the contributors to this festschrift, has moved on to psychological and the­ oretical study of the production and reception of the literature. The festschrift is acollection oftwenty-three very sophisticated essays, six on Chaucer, seven on Shakespeare, and the others on various medieval and Elizabethan authors and topics. One cannot hope in a review to analyze twenty-three essays individually, but let me say a word or two about those that interested me most. Ruth Morse's "Temperamental Texts: Medieval Discussions of Character, Emotion, and Motivation" is a very suggestive 282 REVIEWS exploration ofthe movement in medieval culture from interest in action to concern about intention. Richard Axton's "Chaucer and'Tragedy' " points up the incompatibility ofChristianity and tragedy, andChaucer's tendency to blunt tragedy with pathos. Yasunari Takada's "From the House a/Fame to Politico-Cultural Histories" is a sophisticated discussion of Chaucer's transformation ofthe Boethian vision ofa cosmosgoverned by enlightened authority to a politicohistorical macrocosm administered for "comune profit." Richard Beadle's "'I wol nat telle it yit': John Selden and a Lost Version ofthe Cook's Tale" offers interesting evidence for a lost text of The Canon's Yeoman's Tale, although it does not help explain the presence of Gamelyn in the manuscripts. John Burrow's "The Griffin's Egg: Gower's Confessio Amantts 1.2545" is a nice description, with illustrations, of goblets made ofostrich-egg shells, referred to by Gower and others in their poetry. Takami Matsuda's "The Presence ofPurgatory in Two Debates in BL MS Addit. 37049" is astonishing in its familiarity with a broad range of medieval European religious literature. Joerg Fichte's "The Passion Plays in Ludus Coventriae and the Continen­ tal Passion Plays" is likewise remarkable for the way it juxtaposes the English, French, and German Passion plays, an intercultural connection too seldom recognized. Soji Iwasaki's "Relative Values in Medieval and Renaissance Drama" goes beyond recognition ofthe morality-play opposi­ tions between good and evil to point out that reconciliation of these oppositions into harmony in the ideal image ofman is the Renaissance form of the medieval dichotomy. Derek Brewer's "Elizabethan Merry Tales and The Merry Wives of Windsor: Shakespeare and Popular Literature" finds the source of humor in Shakespeare's and others' plays in the popular Elizabethan "jest books." My own taste obviously inclines me toward the essays on medieval topics. Barbara Hardy's "Telling the Future: Forecasts and Fantasies in Shake­ speare's Narrative," Norman Blake's "Why and What in Shakespeare," Hidekatsu Nojima...