New Readings of Chaucer's Poetry by Robert G. Benson, Susan J. Ridyard

Abstract

MLR, IOI .2, 2oo6 5 I3 of ordinary women rather than virgin martyrs provides a significant correlative to the admittedly misogynistic tone which also occurs in the SEL. Thompson fruitfully applies to the SEL much up-to-date and wide-ranging re search in historical and literary scholarship. It is to be hoped that this study of the literary and social contexts of the SEL will be a significant prelude tomore extensive study of the work as awhole and inmore of its parts. The SEL offers farmore than an intriguing codicological detective story. UNIVERSITY OF LONDON ROSAMUND ALLEN New Readings of Chaucer's Poetry. Ed. by ROBERTG. BENSON and SUSAN J.RIDYARD, with an introduction by DEREK BREWER. (Chaucer Studies) Cambridge: Brewer. 2003. Vii+200pp. ?30;$50. ISBN0-85991-778-9. Selected from papers delivered at theApril 2000 Sewanee Medieval Colloquium, the essays in this collection present a stimulating range of perspectives on Chaucer's work. New Readings of Chaucer's Poetry offers a diversity of critical approaches, and invites us to encounter and consider multiple Geoffrey Chaucers. Indeed, investigations of Chaucerian multiplicity, ambivalence, and contradiction pervade the collection and draw together these wide-ranging and engaging studies. The two opening papers by Helen Cooper, 'Chaucerian Representation' (pp. 7 30) and 'Chaucerian Poetics' (pp. 3 I-50), foreground such issues of multiplicity. Cooper explores the different-and often contradictory-versions of Chaucer we encounter both in his own work and in later representations and appropriations. Her search for Chaucer via reception history takes in the 'classic' author of I532 onwards, the Protestant Chaucer, bawdy Chaucer, and the endless bifurcations and contentions of more recent criticism: Robertsonian Chaucer versus Lollard Chaucer, protofeminist versus misogynist. Chaucer's own versions of himself present similar contradictions: the ridiculed narrator of Sir Thopas alongside the brilliant parodist; the humble, unassuming 'Geffrey' versus the self-claimed stature of an 'Englyssh Gaufride', which Cooper argues is a naming of himself (p. 49). Rather than holding up amirror to nature, Cooper suggests that Chaucer presents 'ahall of mirrors: we see endless refractions that do nothing so much as reflect other Chaucers or other books' (p. 24) and our own changing ideologies and concerns. Other essays explore different aspects of Chaucerian multiplicity and contradiction. For example, R. Barton Palmer's paper on the Legend of Good Women (pp. I83 94) considers the tensions and frustrations of working as a court poet. The poem's 'harassed and troubled' narrative persona (p. I94) refracts back upon the challenges facing Chaucer himself as a poet responding to the desires and commands of patrons, and negotiating the attitudes and agendas of the texts and traditions he translates. In his essay on 'Aristocratic Friendship in Troilus and Criseyde' (pp. I65-82) John Hill presents us with a very different Pandarus from that of usual criticism, of fering an apologia for the male friend and the Ciceronian ideology of friendship in the poem. Traugott Lawler explores the Boethian philosophy underlying Chaucer's evaluation of 'delit', and the associated Golden Age ideals of contented labour and simplicity rather than luxury or Edenic indolence ('Delicacy vs. Truth: Defining Moral Heroism in the Canterbury Tales', pp. 75-90). In 'Thinking about Money in Chaucer's Shipman's Tale' (pp. I I9-38), William E. Rogers and Paul Dower reflect upon the problematic nature of money in the tale, arguing that we are projecting our own postmodern concerns upon the text in a process which is 'not anachronism, but hermeneutics' (p. I38). The authors suggest that 'Chaucer connects with us most profoundly, not in those places where we think we understand him completely, but in those places where we are most aware that we do not' (p. I38). 514 Reviews These problematic places are a fruitful focus throughout the collection. Yet some essays dare to glance away from Chaucerian ambivalence and multiplicity to the par ticular challenges of 'straightforward Chaucer'. In his essay on 'Chaucer's Endings' (pp. 9I-IO6), William Provost looks briefly at 'AnABC'-not regarded by modern readers as 'especially inspired, or possessed of the Chaucerian qualities of wit or irony that mark his better known work' (p. 93). Helen Cooper considers the difficulty of Anelida...