New Perspectives in Chaucer Criticism ed. by Donald M. Rose

Abstract

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER account of the procedures he carried out, and, except for the implications of his commentary, the reader has no way of knowing whether the exam­ ples given are complete, representative in their numbers, the most striking instances, or a mere random selection. This absence of scholarly rigor will make it difficult for others to use the frequently interesting material that Roscow assembles. What we have in the book is a set of observations on a number of syntactical features, some of which contribute to Chaucer's style. We also have a series of critical comments on Margaret Schlauch's exemplary PMLA article published in 1952, "Chaucer's Colloquial Eng­ lish: Its Structural Traits." At one point (p. 47) Roscow quotes half of Schlauch's discussion of a syntactic feature as if it were the whole. At no point does he do justice to the balance, sensitivity, and scholarly control of her presentation. The book includes a general index and a useful "Index of Chaucer Quotations." The bibliography, confined to references in the book, shows somesurprisingimbalancesandomissions.Spearingappearsfivetimes;J.A. Burrow and]. A. W. Bennett, twice each. The Tatlock-Kennedy Concor­ dance and Muscatine do not appear. Medieval poetics and modern stylistics have each a single item. CHARLES A. OWEN,JR. University of Connecticut DONALD M. ROSE, ed., New Perspectives in Chaucer Criticism. Norman, Okla.: Pilgrim Books, 1982. Pp. x, 248. $21.95. This volume comprises a collection of revised papers, originally read at the conference of the New Chaucer Society in New Orleans in April, 1980, and here organized into three broad thematic sections. But first, George Kane, in an opening paper ("Langland and Chaucer: An Obligatory Compari­ son"), compares aspects of Chaucer and Langland and modern reactions to them, justly remarking on the extent to which critics of either poet, by ignoring the existence of the other, miss some illuminating comparisons. Kane points out some shared elements in the two poets' education: "rigorous inculcation of Christian doctrine," some experience of the "alle202 REVIEWS gorizing activities ofthe classicizing friars," and some knowledge ofthat "old system ofmoral categorizing,estates satire," together with the com­ mon basis of their education in Latin grammar. Kane speculates on Langland's knowledge of profane rhetoric or of courtly and Arthurian literature,as well as on Chaucer's knowledge ofFrench religious allegories or ofantifraternal literature.An interesting comparison follows on the two poets' conception ofthemselves as artists.Along with a self-consciousness about their art and a common tendency to invoke modesty topoi, there is also aself-confidence approaching arrogance discernible in both poets,and that this emerges in two poets in comparable degrees at this period "bespeaks a new condition of poetry in post-conquest England." Both poets also register in their poems their personal problems of art and morality, and Kane compares the implications of Chaucer's Retractions with Langland's allusions within his poetry to doubts about his own poetic activity ("The poet sees,ifonly momentarily,the act ofcomposition as self­ gratifying and therefore, to the extent that it fails in charity, sinful notwithstanding its ostensible pious objectives ofspiritual understanding and moral reform. Here is the real abjectness.... By contrast Chaucer's 'retracciouns' seem serene,almost confident."). Part 2 of the book consists of five essays on various aspects of literary theory,modern and medieval,as applied to Chaucer.In his essay "Con­ temporary Literary Theory and Chaucer," Morton W.Bloomfield discusses "what aspects of modern disciplines are...useful in interpreting and evaluating literature," and he reviews the claims ofsemantics,semiology, literature and philosophy, the concept of speech acts, psychology, and sociology.On the study ofsocial aspects ofliterature Bloomfield comments that "audience and reader are not to be limited to the 'real' author and reader, but may include the internal audience and reader who are both presupposed in and even brought into Chaucer's poetry." Little has yet been said on that internal audience to whom the so-much-discussed author-persona is presumably speaking.And in an interesting comparison of MLT and the tale of Alatiel in Decameron, Bloomfield himselfantici­ pates those advances in the study ofnarratology and literary structuralism he predicts in Chaucer criticism.His concluding...