God’s Plenty: Chaucer’s Christian Humanism by Ruth M. Ames

Abstract

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER erance. Aers believes that The Parsons Tale (particularly because ofits views on marriage) should be read as a critical treatment of the Parson. He is sympathetic to the plight ofMay in The Merchant's Tale: "The text .. .never encourages any conventional moral judgments against May as it depicts her desperateattempt to alleviate hersubjection to thislegalizedrape [i.e., her marriage] by turning to Damyan" (p. 73). One might object that the text tells us nothing about her being forced to marryJanuary and gives her few, ifany, redeeming qualities. Aers sees Troilus and Criseyde as "a marvelous celebration of sexual love and gratification" and, like a number of other scholars, finds the epilogue unsatisfactory; he feels, in fact, that "the poem as a whole encourages us to reject [the epilogue's] generalised incantations and moralistic cliches" (p. 101). According to the publisher, this book is "especially designed for those relatively new" to Chaucer's work. Although, as I remark in my opening paragraph, there is much in this book that is of value, there is also, as I indicate above, much that is questionable. For this reason the book will be best taken upby those who have been reading Chaucerfor some time rather than by those who are relatively new to Chaucer's work. Some will find Aers's arguments convincing; others will not. Aers expresses hope in his opening paragraph that his book will "stimulate discussion of Chaucer's poetry." It will certainly do that. EDWARD DONALD KENNEDY University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill RUTH M. AMEs. God's Plenty: Chaucer's Christian Humanism. Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1984. Pp. xii, 269. $12.95. When the Miller alludes to God's plenty, he means that a husband should enjoy his wife's favors and not ask questions about her behavior when he is not by; when Dryden alludes to it, he means that Chaucer's gallery of characters is a rich and varied one, and that reading about them is a joyous and mind-expanding experience. Ruth M. Ames has another use for the phrase: to stress that the plenty is indeed God's. Ifthe whole duty ofman is to know Godand enjoy himforever, what are "dirty stories" like The Millers Tale doing among the writings ofa Christian humanist-one so Christian, in fact, that he feels obliged in the end to retract many of them? 116 REVIEWS In a book which skates lightly and readably over most of Chaucer's work, with generous allusions to the writings of contemporaries and to books he probably read, Ames argues that there is no conflict between Chaucer's spiritual and aesthetic values. She writes for a nonspecialist audience, and especially for new students of Chaucer badly educated in the belief that the Middle Ages were dark with ignorance and sexual repression and who delightedly conclude, therefore, that mirthful, outspoken Chaucer must have been anything but an orthodox, straitlaced Catholic. What such students, no doubt thick as motes in the sunbeam, need to be shown, apparently, is that Chaucer's secular exuberance is compatible with his Christian humanism, that Chaucer's plenty is God's plenty, and not, for example, the Green Yeoman's. First comes a survey of Chaucer's life as Christian courtier and poet, indicating the breadth of his sympathies-he was friendly with Lollard and orthodox alike. Ignoring court scandals and the infamous accusation of "raptus," Ames speculates only that, since his wife was lady-in-waiting to the Spanish wife ofJohn of Gaunt, Chaucer may have talked to the queen about love, science, and religion. The next two chapters are devoted to religion, and the following two to love; the item in the trio that is shortchanged is science. Presumably the physical universe is an aspect of God's plenty, and Chaucer was always mildly satirical of the antiintellectual disinclination to inquire into "Goddes pryvetee." In fact the subtlety might have been pointed out, to illustrate Chaucer's irony, that the Miller who in his Prologue advocates enjoyment without inquiry, then tells a tale in which oldJohn is punished for refusing to inquire into both his wife's conduct and God's...