Essays on Troilus and Criseyde ed. by Mary Salu

Abstract

REVIEWS development of allegorical theory which support her own interpreta­ tions. I am thinking, for example, of the Victorines, and their twelfth­ century anticipation of her argument that the literal surface of the text must be encountered and valued in its own right, rather than simply decoded and thrown away. Such qualifications aside, this remains a work ofconsiderable theoret­ ical energy, keen textual sympathy, and admirable lucidity in the face of frequently perplexing subject matter. Although it does not address the concerns of literary historians, it will be of special interest to those reader-theorists who have enjoyed the works of Honig and Frye and­ more recently-Fish, Foucault, and Derrida. PAUL STROHM Indiana University MARY SALU, ed., Essays on Troilus and Criseyde. Chaucer Studies, III. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, Ltd., 1979; Totowa, New Jersey: Rowman & Littlefield, 1980. Pp. 143. £10.00; $23.75. In recent years, Troilus and Criseyde has finally come back into its own. For three hundred years after Chaucer's death, Troilus was by far his most popular work and the principal reason he was considered, in Usk's phrase, "the noble philosophical poete in Englissh." During the eight­ eenth and nineteenth centuries, however, readers generally preferred the human comedy of The Canterbury Tales and frequently judged the Troilus to be "tedious" and much too long. Now that most Chaucerians can face both sexual love and medieval thought squarely, the Troilus is once again highly regarded. In recent years several books on this one poem alone have appeared, and now D. S. Brewer's admirable press offers a volume of seven original essays by British and American scholars. Essays on Troilus and Criseydecontains no singletheme or approach (the editor, Mary Salu, notesthat "the range in this book is wide"), and there is no sense here ofradically new readings or fresh ground broken. Nevertheless, none ofthe essays is without merit, and together, while not representing an accurate cross-section, they may 171 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER suggest some general tendencies in contemporary Troilus studies. For example, we may note the great respect in which the poem is held even when passages are found awkward and confused, they are said to have been deliberately constructed so. Additionally, many old topics no longer seem of interest: although love is frequently discussed, the "system" of courtly love is not once mentioned, nor do the roles of Pandarus and the narrator attract much attention. Paradoxically, the best essays here, at least in the opinion ofthis reader, are the one that is most technical (by Windeatt) and the two that are most free-ranging and subjective (by David and Lambert). In "The Text of the Troilus," Barry Windeatt makes a strong case against R. K. Root's widely accepted view that the first version ofTroilus was carefully revised by the poet so as to form three distinct texts (a, 13, and -y), most obviously through the addition ofthree long passages­ Troilus' song in Book III (1744-71), his soliloquy on predestination in Book IV (953-1085), and his ascent to the spheres in Book V (180727 )--as well as in numerous passages marked by differences in language and line sequence. Windeatt notes that "the same evidence for authorial addition may turn out to be evidence ofscribal omission." He demon­ strates that even in those mss where the three passages are missing or added later, the context shows that they were always part of the poet's original conception. Since the Troilus is "a patchwork and embroidery" of passages added to its main source, Boccaccio's Filostrato, Windeatt suggests that the composition ofthe poet's copy may have involved "a series oflayers-perhaps physicallayers-ofwriting." Thus what appear to be distinctversions ofthe poem in the mss need not indicate authorial revision but might just as plausibly reveal "scribal misunderstandings after theevent ofthe layers ofcomposition present in a confusing exemplar, ofwhich loose sheets may always have been lost." As for those smaller changes (usually of a word or phrase), which Root took as further evidence ofdistinct versions ofthe Troilus, Windeatt argues in detail that many such variants are merely scribal and that even those that may represent genuine authorial reworking are too...