Gender and Romance in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales by Susan Crane

Abstract

REVIEWS complexities surrounding the"self" to examine"Langland's self-representa­ tions" (p. 86). While criticizing the excesses of earlier"autobiographers," he also firmly distances himself from George Kane's"agnostic suspension of judgment" (p. 84}-which he characterizes as impossible in practice. The chapter focuses on"three episodes where the poet, in the person of Will, confronts his own poem, or rather is confronted by it" (p. 91): Imag­ inatif (which marks the transition from the A version to the B), Need (B.20), and Reason and Conscience (C.5). Through these problematic epi­ sodes he illuminates the nuances of"autobiography" in this poem. Following a brief"Afterword" and two appendices--"Langland and De­ guilleville: Le Pelerinage dejhesucrist" and"Piers Plowman and Saint Peter: B xv.195-212"-are a highly select bibliography and brief index (which does not include footnote materials). I detected very few errors in the book, but a couple of repeated ones may deserve notice:"McGurr" for"McGerr," and"Complete" for"Critical" (in the subtitle of Schmidt's edition). In his acknowledgements Burrow professes a"debt of gratitude to the Oxford University Press for undertaking the publication of a rather short book." By giving them the occasion to produce it with their imprint, he has more than adequately recompensed that debt-but this means that it is now transferred to our accounts. Redde quod debes! Mfc:EAL F. VAUGHAN University of Washington SusAN CRANE. Gender and Romance in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Prince­ ton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994. Pp. viii, 233. $35.00 cloth, $14.95 paper. Susan Crane's new book shows the extent to which gender studies have succeeded in raising the analysis of men and masculinity to parity with women and femininity. Her thesis, much more specific than the initial claim that"gender is crucial to Geoffrey Chaucer's conception of romance in the Canterbury Tales" (p. 3), proposes that romance is intimately bound up with the creation and articulation of male subjectivities. Although ro­ mances seem to make self-determination available to the male hero, the genre constructs him within a rigid social unit, and"only by its consensus is he distinguishable and self-determining." Heterosexual courtship ap185 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER pears to be the sole arena for the hero's definition, Crane suggests, but homoerotic relations tug at him too, juxtaposing the tensions between male and female against those between the hero and other men (p. 13). Crane explores her thesis in five chapters: the first on masculinity in romance; the second on feminine mimicry and masquerade; the third on gender and social hierarchy; the fourth on magic and the uncanny; and the last on adventure. In every chapter Crane makes ample use of Old French romances, drawing on texts and insights familiar from her earlier book, Insular Romance (1986), sometimes nearly presenting the Middle English texts as continuations not only of the French traditions but of the French texts themselves (as, for example, in the courtship and brotherhood in the Eneas, Bree et Enide, and The Knight's Tale; see pp. 49-51). Crane's compari­ sons between English and French texts greatly enrich her analysis of narra­ tive and generic conventions, since the French romances are often more explicit about certain gender issues (sodomy, for example; see pp. 39-43) than the English texts. Crane's comparatist approach avoids the simplistic crosscutting between Chaucerian text and modern theory that characterizes many discussions of Chaucer's work. Equally promising is Crane's focus on the interaction between gender relations and social hierarchy. The social systems in question are not fully described, however, even in chapter 3, where Crane uses estates literature to situate the Tales in relation to extratextual issues. Crane does not step back, as I wish she had, to take up larger questions of readership and audience that her contextualized approach raises, although she refers to her recent essay on Chaucer and the "writing lesson" of 1381 to suggest how she might have pursued such topics as the relation of romance to women's literacy (see pp. 20, 125). Recent studies by Paul Strohm and others have moved discussion of the tripartite...