Philosophical Chaucer: Love, Sex, and Agency in the 'Canterbury Tales' by Mark Miller

Abstract

MLR, I02.2, 2007 477 different image of sexuality: the emotional, physical, and therefore erotic maternal desires which are, she argues, the focus of theRuthwell depictions ofMary. The final section deals with 'Sex, Violence, and theNation'. Shari Horner ana lyses 'The Language of Rape inOld English Literature and Law: Views from the Anglo-Saxon(ist)s' (pp. I49-8 I). She challenges the standard dictionary definitions, and concludes that the regulation of sexual violence inAnglo-Saxon texts informs a broader definition of physical, social, and spiritual identity. In 'Embodying Christ, Embodying Nation: 'Elfric's Accounts of Saints Agatha and Lucy' (pp. I83-202) Andrea Rossi-Reder uses postcolonial theory tohighlight the role IElfric assigns to female saints as symbols of both spirituality and nationalism, particularly in the link forgedbetween sexual assault and invasion of thehomeland. Finally, Dolores Warwick Frese's 'Sexing Political Tropes of Conquest: 'TheWife's Lament' and La3amon's Brut' (pp. 203-33) also examines women as national symbols. It seeks to reveal the meaning of 'TheWife's Lament' by tracing a developing tradition that linksconquest with sexual desire and the image of an imprisoned woman. Combining a strong sense of cohesion with a range of approaches and texts, this collection isof interestnot just for the subject-matter of individual papers, but also for theway inwhich the central themes progress, as theyare shaped by the interests of each author. In this respect, it isunfortunate that the finalessay is also thehardest to read,with passages inwhich sentences are rarely shorter than five lines, and some times as long as eleven. This can divert attention to following the grammar rather than the argument. However, this does not diminish the book's undoubted appeal and value to thoseworking in areas such as the interpretation of lexicalmeaning and the construction of identityand otherness, as well as thehistory of sexual identity. NEWCASTLEUNIVERSITY ADAMMEARNS Philosophical Chaucer: Love, Sex, and Agency in the 'Canterbury Tales'. By MARK MILLER. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2004. x+289 pp. J45. ISBN 978-o-52i-84236-5. The titleofMark Miller's book Philosophical Chaucer has the promise of taking the reader to the heart of Chaucer's poetry, but itquickly becomes clear that the intel lectual giants ofMiller's universe take us in a direction remote from the ideas and (hardly less importantly) the cultural ethos of Chaucer's universe. Thus we find in the index references to Foucault and Nietzsche, but not one toAvicenna, the great authority on the interior senses forAquinas and the laterMiddle Ages. The 'rich tradition of French and Italian poetry' forming 'Chaucer's literary inheritance' (p. 6) is curiously one-sided when it includes Petrarch but not Dante and Boccaccio. It is extraordinary to think thatChaucer himself 'never quite belonged anywhere in the society ofwhich he got to see somuch' (p. 30). No doubt the issues of agency and autonomy are of the firstimportance, but it is straining credulity toextend notions of autonomy ina literalway to the fictional tellers ofChaucer's tales.Thus we have to strugglewith 'theKnight's theoryof autonomy' (p. 99) and his 'comic project' (p. I02) and evenmore sowith aMiller preoccupied in his talewith the 'problem of ethical normativity' (p. 49). To describe a fabliau as the Miller's 'project' inwhich he develops his 'naturalistic theory' (p. 46) is to burden thatbrilliant (ifobscene) talewith aweight of academic learning that it is simply not designed to support. The Miller's philosophy is thephilosophy of intoxication ('the ale of Southwerk', A 3 I40). Many of the individual readings ofChaucer's textofferedhere (all too few) do little to allay these general misgivings. The desire forEmelye is reduced to 'a species of 478 Reviews scopophilia' (p. 85) forall thepurityof Chaucer's (notthe Knight's) portrait (A I033 55) of her (even by comparison with Boccaccio's Emilia). It is theportrait (A 3233-70) ofAlisoun (not 'afterall, the Miller's creation', p. 7 I)with itsshiftingpoints of view that is by contrast voyeuristic. The reference toTheseus's 'habitual anger' (p. 9I) suggests a failure todistinguish between emotions and acts ofwill. In a section entitled 'The Erotics ofAmbivalence' (pp. 204-09) we are introduced to a Platonic Wife of Bath who ison theverge of 'aPauline renunciation of...