Transforming Talk. The Problem with Gossip in Late Medieval England. By Susan E. Phillips.

Abstract

The wordgossip in the sense of idle talk, is relatively recent—nineteenth century—and as the author points out in an early footnote, its medieval godparent (an etymologically nice choice of word) is jangling, or just idle talk, and it is of such theological significance that a special devil is assigned to record it, Tutivillus. Susan Phillips's opening chapter draws attention, in fact, to the theological implications of gossip as a danger just as bad, though not nearly as obvious, as, say, heresy. Indeed, the Penitential known as the Corrector, widely used from the eleventh century and printed in the 1540s, proscribes gossip in church, on a non-gender-specific basis, against a penalty of ten days on bread and water. This kind of gossip is the theme of the first chapter, which examines the question in the context of two late medieval English works, the anonymous (and barely known) Jacob's Well, in which chatter in church is condemned, and also Robert Mannyng's Handlyng Synne, whose aim, however, is to improve matters by using ‘compelling stories of his own’ (33). Pastoral exemplarity criticising, but making use of idle tales, makes for an interesting problem. So too the problem of the confessional, which is itself of course vulnerable to gossip; although giving too much detail in the confessional might be, in the words of Jacob's Well, cited p. 59: ‘bakbytyng & no shryfte’, the ‘ambiguity created by the competing requirements of completeness and self-accusation’ (61) can lead easily to gossip, because it is itself a narrative mode. In fact there are also parodies of the confessional, sometimes obscene (in German in the Karlsruhe Codex 508, for example, where it was probably not recognised by the compiler of the codex, who placed it first). The transformation, or potential transformation, of official narratives of this nature in more canonical literature, Phillips argues, is exploited by Chaucer in particular.