The Canterbury Tales Handbook by Elizabeth Scala (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Canterbury Tales Handbook by Elizabeth Scala Peter Fields Elizabeth Scala. The Canterbury Tales Handbook. Norton, 2020. 297 p. Elizabeth Scala knows that she does not have the luxury of scale. A handbook becomes a problem if it competes with its subject for the student's reading time. Her technique is to anticipate a disconnect between Chaucer and the modern reader and then to leap into the breach with a provisional explanation that moves the reader forward. The only slow place is dwelling momentarily on the General Prologue, taking advantage of the first 18 lines to introduce a model for explication. Especially well-done is how Scala seems to take on too much, making a point, for instance, of explaining the demande d'amour in "The Knight'sTale." What first seems like a needless excursus emerges as a great opportunity to acknowledge the difficulty the modern young person might have entering into the motives and emotions of courtly love as in the case of Arcite's bittersweet dilemma of regretful freedom. Suddenly released upon the wide world, Arcite frets the loss of that prison window he once shared with his fellow knight Palamon because it afforded an unencumbered view of Emelye, the idol of their hearts. [End Page 250] The Knight's own language presumes that the skeptical reader must be won over if only by flattery: "But almost as though he knows that his audience is made up of potentially resisting readers, the Knight preemptively turns it into a group of lovers—courtly, aristocratic, gentle lovers—subtly persuading us to play the demande's game" (47). Such is Scala's modus operandi of first highlighting a pitfall for modern students, then hinting that the astute and playful Chaucer is simpatico with modern sensibility. Interestingly, she does not feel the need to apologize for Chaucer's bawdy fabliaux like "The Miller's Tale," "The Reeve's Tale," "The Friar's Tale," and "The Summoner's Tale." Here the teacher can sit back and give Scala the wheel as she acquaints students with double-entendre like "quainte." Scala builds momentum right up to "The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale," where she makes a perfect compromise between examining the far-ranging implications of Chaucer's most important speaker and keeping the reader moving along. The concision of Scalas also does well with the motif of marriage-as-torture-of-women in "The Clerk's Tale" and "The Merchant's Tale." She makes an exceptionally compelling case for "The Man-of-Law's Tale" as genre-bending "secular hagiography," all the while staying breezy with her prose. Scala reconnoiters as of "The Squire's Tale," shifting from modern resistance to a more esoteric consideration of whether language can express the speaker's meaning. The Squire for instance seems conscious of the limitations of language to express the inexpressible. By surrendering to limitation, he enters another level of sensibility and wonder. The hinge of the book is the chapter on "The Franklin's Tale," a story that depends on the tension between marriage and courtly love and comes to a rather hip conclusion to the marriage debate: "The answer that the Franklin offers is that no one should have mastery (which we might define as control over another person or being), and everyone should have sovereignty (or control over themselves)" (179). However, "The Physician's Tale," whose story of a father who wins his daughter's permission to cut off her head (to avoid her marriage to a corrupt judge), would logically seem to present Scala a high hurdle for casting Chaucer as a hero of personal freedom. But Scala stands up for the story and reveals her previous strategy for reconciling the resistant modern reader: "But rather than suggest that the story is some kind of intentional failure (on Chaucer's part or the Physician's), we might see [End Page 251] the tale as provocatively experimental" (182). Another great explanation is her take on the Pardoner's subterfuge, which strategically blurs "[…] the distinction between forgiveness a poena (from the pain of punishment) and forgiveness a culpa (from guilt of one's actions or intent)" (189). Her larger purpose...