Chaucer's Religious Tales (review)

Abstract

136 Reviews The book is much more, however, than a series of random insights. The philosophical basis for the discussion is the debate in Plato's Cratylus between Cratylus himself, w h o argues for an essential relationship between a name and its bearer, and Hermogenes, for w h o m the connection is arbitrary. A good example of the perceptions arising from this distinction is: 'The more urban and familiarly allied to the times Elizabethan and Stuart comedy is, ... the more likely it will be to gravitate away from the hermogenean in the direction of descriptive names'. Tragedy, contrariwise, favours hermogenean naming, exploring 'the plight of the individual suddenly stripped, through some misfortune, of a previously existing personal name'. In a few writers, however, such as Ben Jonson, cratylism appears to be 'an ingrained habit of mind', colouring virtually all of their work. There is some uncertainty about the book's range and scope. Greek and Roman comedy are treated quite thoroughly, as are Elizabethan and Jacobean comedy. One might question the discrimination against Restoration comedy, not tackled until almost the end of the book, and against m o d e m writers, who are mentioned only briefly. But in general this is a stimulating, gracefully written, and well-structured study. T. G. A. Nelson Department of English University of N e w England Benson, C. David, and Elizabeth Robertson, eds, Chaucer's Religious Tales (Chaucer studies 15), Woodbridge, Boydell and Brewer, 1990; cloth; pp. xiii, 190; R.R.P. £35.00. This volume of essays brings into view a problem of general importance for readers of The Canterbury Tales: the place of the 'religious' in Chaucer's fiction. The larger tale of the pilgrimage may force together the supernal and the quotidian but, even so, how does spirituality sit at the same board as fictionality? The answers here are numerous and differ in scope and focus. Accordingly, they are collected into three categories: 'General essays', 'Reception' (mostly m o d e m ) and 'Essays in criticism'. This may seem to offer sensible variety but in practice it tends to deliver many workings of the same argument. While there may be problems with the religious fictions, religious fiction is no problem. It is the author's spirituality which this fiction makes visible. Conelatively, it is that spirituality which both justifies the various religious tales and, apparently, has rendered them critically invisible to m o d e m readers. The religious tales have become under-read, under-examined and misunderstood. They have been driven to the margins of critical interest. However, fortunately, our lattermost age is discovering the pleasures of Reviews 137 marginalized literature, so now is the time for the religious tales to make then return, reasserting their original claim to be taken most seriously. Is the complaint justified? Charlotte Morse notes in her provocative article on the 'protestanf reception of the Clerk's tale the familiar difficulty of 'teachercritics ' in getting the tale accepted by students. Is it not really this reader, new to Chaucer, w h o is likely to have this broad difficulty with his religious fiction? D o critic-scholars of Chaucer, the book's apparent target, in general dismiss this fiction so easily? Are the tales so under-represented in m o d e m critical discussion? The useful critical bibliographies included in a number of these essays would suggest otherwise. If attitudes to the religious tales have differed widely, interest in them has been constant and often intense. I myself find more interesting work done elsewhere, such as the clutch of articles (especially Penelope Curtis's) in the festschrift for George Russell, himself a notable commentator on the Prioress's tale. Nevertheless the best of these essays will join a strong tradition of serious discussion of Chaucer's religious fiction. Morse describes the Clerk's tale as a 'tale of piety'. That is the common position taken here. The tales m a y not be so many spiritual exercises, but they are studies of transcendence (Nolan), they celebrate virtue (Frank), or perhaps disclose how, with God's help, w e might find 'solace, joy, and meaning in [this] world' (Keiser). This shameless affirmation...