The Canterbury Tales: A Literary Pilgrimage by David Williams

Abstract

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER been ampler throughout. What is a reader to make of an extraordinary word like "rewin" (in the first lyric quoted on p. 93), for example? This cettainlydemandsexplanation.Even so, theseare small points.The book is generally worthwhile and buttressed securely with scholarship. ALANJ. FLETCHER University College Dublin DAVID WILLIAMS. The Canterbury Tales: A Literary Pilgrimage. Twayne's Masterwork Studies, vol. 4. Boston: G. K. Hall, Twayne Publishers, 1987. Pp. X, 115. $17.95. The main argument ofthis short, shrewd study is that Chaucer "makes the problem of the function of language and poetry the very subject of his poetry" (p. 6). Aware that other critics (like Robert Burlin and Lisa Kiser) have made similar cases, Williams is concerned to show that this is so in the pilgrimage-framed Canterbury Tales: Basic to the pilgrimage is recognition of one's personal disorder and the desire to reconstruct order in the self through the discovery and reaffirmation of order in the world. In a pilgrimage like Chaucer's, created by the telling of tales with a confessional character, it is essential that the pilgrims, as audience, understand clearly the stories they hear, and that the pilgrims, as authors, understand the implications of their own stories, in order to perceive how these tales have ordered or disorderedtheworlds theydescribe. It is essential, that is, if fictionhas thepowerto redeem itself. [P. 53] In brief background chapters ("Historical Context," "The Philosophical Debate") Williams emphasizes Chaucer as a philosophical poet alert to contemporary debates between proponents of realism and nominalism. His ethical reading of the Tales (in a chapter entitled "Language Re­ deemed" that is half of the book) reveals Chaucer to be unsympathetic toward the nominalist view that language is "heuristic" and permits only relative meaning (p. 20). Particularly in the tales of those entertaining but deconstructively misleading pilgrims the Miller, the Wife of Bath, and the Pardoner(a "radical"nominalist),Williams seesvariousattempts at discon­ necting fiction from reality. Harry Bailly's reply to the Pardoner reflects not only the "common man's intuition" about mimesis (p. 85) but a general, 208 REVIEWS older Christian belief that "the basis of fiction is reality, and when that is removed all communication becomes expository" (p. 74). The Nun's Priest's Tale and The Parson's Tale insist on the stability of language, the former "by showing both the danger of its abuse in fiction and its inherent ability to correct that abuse," the latter "by clarifying and reaffirming the orthodox truths that through language can be applied to life," and they prepare for Chaucer's final statements on "right content and right lan­ guage" in the Retraction (p. 90). At that endpoint: Given Chaucer's formula for fiction, in which characters become authors, authors become audiences, and creatures become creators, we, as readers, discover through our association with Chaucer on this third level ofaudienceship that the existential formula is the reverse ofthe fictional: we, as audience, must become authors, and our stories will be, like those of the Canterbury pilgrims, as good as our lives. [P. 1031 Williams's claim that the Tales embodies Chaucer's mature poetics is convincing overall and in most of its details. Some passing observations couldhavebeen given more explanation:What are the "comicreasons" why Chaucer putsMelibee in prose (p. 37)? Is The Parson's Tale generically only a sermon, and for whom is it "boring" (pp. 38, 90)?Why does the Franklin "loathe" himself (p. 45)? Is the Reeve really aformer carpenter (p. SS)? Are the poor widow and her daughters in The Nun'.r Priests Tale undeniably "a standard medieval allegory of the Church" (p. 91)? And, whether or not that is the case, have they no other function? Had thisTwayne series allowed the author more space, he probably could have developed these assertions and tested his thesis against other tales besides the handful he analyzes at length. One broader sort of reservation. It is always a difficult assignment to write for a double audience such as the pair the Twayne series envisions ("an incisive critical reading...that is accessible to students"), and at times one notices a gap between the kernel ofWilliams's larger...