Pseudo-Autobiography in the Fourteenth Century: Juan Ruiz, Guillaume de Machaut, Jean Froissart, and Geoffrey Chaucer by Laurence de Looze

Abstract

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER LAURENCE DE LoozE. Pseudo-Autobiography in the Fourteenth Century: juan Ruiz, Guillaume de Machaut,Jean Froissart, andGeoffrey Chaucer. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1997. Pp. xi + 211. $49.95. Autobiography has been investigated by literary theorists, but strangely enough, little attention has been paid to medieval texts; when it has, it has hardly ever extended beyond the scope of a specific text. Following Philippe Lejeune's assumption of a "pacte autobiographique," Paul Zumthor could argue that both the concept of a personal 'T' and that of a clear distinction between history/truth and fiction were alien to the Middle Ages, and he overtly questioned the very existence of medieval autobiography ("Aucobiographie au Moyen Age1"). But the Middle Ages are not a monolithic era, and the late thirteenth century was marked by a shift in mentality. A number of issues were reconsidered, among them the modes of reading. What de Looze calls a pan-European phenomenon (I would reduce the geographical span to "West­ European," especially since he limits his demonstration to Spain, France, and England) has been favored by similar reexaminations. Typically, the terms auctor/actorlautor underwent significant changes and became asso­ ciated with auctoritas ("authority") and Greek authentin ("authenticity"), and the author's actual life and personal experience gave weight to the events of the text, particularly in vernacular literature. The contempo­ rary rise of single-author codices pertains to the same logic; more and more narratives cast the poet as protagonist. The author's status had utterly changed; because of the presence of a group of semiprofessional poets supported by grand patrons, the poet/patron relationship could easily become an element of the narrative. At the same time, the social and political crises of the time marked a turning point in Western cul­ ture. The ravages of the plague and of endless wars, the birth of new social classes, not to mention the overt Schism and "heretic" move­ ments, threatened the traditional order and gave birth to a "crisis of truth." The presence of two popes, the disturbing debates over the legiti­ macy of the English kings reactivated the thirteenth-century theory of two truths (one could believe one thing as a philosopher and another as a theologian). Although the latter theory had been condemned, its de­ nial of monologic truth was revived by Ockhamism. What Jacqueline Cerquiglini has called a "crisis of signs" (universals were mental con­ structs; the only true signs stood directly for actual experiences in the 346 REVIEWS real world) had considerable implications on the writing process.Fic­ tional truth could not be true; in literature there was no real difference between truth and lie, and the two could easily be inverted.It is not astonishing, then, that authors such as Guillaume de Machaut, Juan Ruiz, Jean Froissart, and Geoffrey Chaucer should use a number of equivocal signs, neither is it astonishing that the Liar's Paradox should have been so central to their work (Machaut claimed that "nothing was true except the lie") or that today's truth should become tomorrow's error (the decision of theJugement Behaingne is refuted as unjust in the Jugement Navarre, and, I would add, The Legend of Good Women recants Chaucer's earlier defamation of women in Troilus & Criseyde). There also arose a general scrutiny of generic classification.Being con­ structs of the mind, generic categories had to be unstable and relative. As Hans Robert Jauss has maintained, pure, stereotypical works became atrophied; great examples of a genre were generically mixed and upset the reader's expectations. Some of them lend themselves to a double reading, each based on different generic conventions; the level of fic­ tionality of an autobiographical narrative is particularly controversial, especially since it involves highly complex issues such as authorial in­ tentions and sincerity.De Looze proposes a reader-oriented typology of autobiographical writing and delineates four major categories-autobi­ ography, autobiographical fiction, autobiographical pseudo-fiction, and pseudo-autobiography: "Autobiography implies a perception of nominal identity between the author and the T of the narrative and a reading of the first-person narrative as sincere" (p.27).The reader does not suspend disbelief and opts for a...