Reader, Teller, and Teacher: The Narrator of Robert Henryson’s Moral Fables by Rosemary Greentree

Abstract

REVIEWS of Margaret, Alexis, Eustace, Catherine, and Juliana), and familiarity with these sources might well have enabled Gehrke to say something more meaningful about the versions of the same legends in her manuscripts. Gehrke's knowledge of medieval Christianity also seems inadequate at some points-as, for example, when she equates the miraculous with "magical power" and sets it against an ethical understanding of the faith (e.g., p. 28) or when she suggests that stories about holy hermits invited believers to reject the sacraments and clergy ofthe "official" church (p. 99). Despite its weaknesses Gehrke's book should be of interest to many students of medieval religious literature. It will of course be indispensable for anyone working with these particular manuscripts. In addition, it gives detailed and useful information on a number of vernacular religious works in Old French, most notably collections of miracles ofthe Virgin and tales from the Vie des Peres. It encourages further attention to such works, and to their reception history in particular, by demonstrating the heterogeneity of the manuscript traditions and the degree to which they were shaped by scribal choice. Nor is the value of this book confined to the kinds of groundwork it lays for other scholars to build on. In the most successful chapter, entitled "Saint Francis and the Mother of God: An Ascetic Ideal for the Laity," Gehrke constructs a fine interpretation of MS Bibliotheque Nationale franfaise 2094, showing how illuminating the close analysis of a manuscript can be when it is combined with an adequately complex and nuanced model of medieval religious culture. The book has neither an index nor a list ofthe abbreviations used. More seriously, it fails to translate the many passages it quotes from the manu­ scripts, making parts of its argument inaccessible to readers who do not know Old French. SHERRY L. REAMES University of Wisconsin, Madison ROSEMARY GREENTREE. Reader, Teller, and Teacher: The Narrator ofRobert Henryson's Moral Fables. Publications of the Scottish Studies Centre of the Johannes Gutenberg Universitat Mainz in Germersheim, vol. 15. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1993. Pp. ix, 120. $27.95. The contents of this study, originally the author's Master's thesis, are indi­ cated by the title. The volume consists of nine brief chapters, each dealing 207 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER with some aspect of Henryson's narrative persona, an appendix on the order of the fables (the Bassandyne order is approved), and a bibliography, appar­ ently of works consulted, since several entries are not cited in the text or the notes. There is no index. Greentree summarizes her argument at the outset: "As reader and teller, the Narrator serves as the window through which the audience may gain an experience of the fanciful world of the tales. . . . As a teacher, he demonstrates and juggles with the truth, and arranges the moral lessons which he gives to erring man" (p. 1). This central thesis is an attractive one, especially sihce Henryson has tradition­ ally been thought to have been a schoolmaster, and beast fables were a standard element of the medieval curriculum. By reinterpreting Aesop's Fables, however, Henryson also becomes a critic, a role which is similar, but not identical, to his role as teacher. As both teller and critic, Henryson's narrator combines the roles of the pilgrim Chaucer and Harry Bailly of The Canterbury Tales, and a comparison with Chaucer would have been instruc­ tive. In any case, the various chapters consider such topics as the narrator's style, the narrator's world, the moralitates of the Fables, and "the wolfs progress." I found the last of these particularly well done, and many local felicities are scattered throughout. For example, Greentree notes that only the first fable, "The Cock and theJasp," has a lesson which is limited to the moralitas and of which the protagonist is ignorant. Thus the moral is di­ rected specifically at the audience, and the absence of an obvious correlation between fable and moral forces that audience to be dependent upon the narrator for moral instruction, thus establishing the narrator's role as teacher (pp. 10-15). Similarly, the chapter on the wolf(pp. 53--63) distin­ guishes...