STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER Davenport to lie in his "sense of concreteness," what critics of the novel tend to call "sense of place," and in his mastery of formal structure, this first, by the way, a very unusual quality in an age where a castle might be at best "strong" and a forest "dark." For example, I do not think I had ever realized how vividly Bertilak's castle was pictured "as a well organized, upper-class, Christian household shaping its life according to mass-times, meal-times and bed-times, engaging in suitable occupations, lighting torches when they are needed, cleaning armour and looking after horses properly." And may I add that it is a relief not to have the poet's art discussed in terms of the tortured intricacies of meter and language, the bases of recent studies which, however valuable, do seem to reap scant harvest for the effort expended. But one cannot ever suggest by such cramped summaries either the richness of Davenport's fabric or the skill of its weaving. Indeed the only points at which Davenport can be faulted are those at which his enthusiasm and his anxiousness to communicate as vividly as possible leads him into casting Joan Greenwood as Bertilak's lady and seeing Gawain as a "Wimbledon champion." One can thus recommend Daven port's book with very little qualification indeed both to the scholar and more importantly to that singular anomaly, the general student seeking a fresh, perceptive, instructive, and handsomely phrased survey of the works of the Gawain-poet. CHARLES MooRMAN University of Southern Mississippi ALFRED DAvrn, The Strumpet Muse: Art and Morals in Chaucer's Poetry. Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1977. Pp. vii, 280. $15. Alfred David's book, The Strumpet Muse: Art and Morals in Chau cer's Poetry, is full of the sensitive criticism we have come to expect of its author. At the outset he disclaims a priori theories of what medieval art can and cannot mean. Instead he promises us an exploration of Chaucer's development as a poet,-the early effort to instill in the love vision a philosophic depth, the images of art that take on a life of their own in Troilus and Criseyde, the ironic personae that in The Canter- REVIEWS bury Tales speak through the mouths of the pilgrims. At the same time Chaucer's poetic genius takes him away from the reality he believes in. The art of illusion and the demands of morality turn out to be incom patible. The strumpet muse is in the end disavowed. But the proportions of the work are revealing. David does not dwell on the disavowal. Three introductory chapters bring us to The Canterbury Tales. Two final chap ters show us the turn from art to spiritual reality. The eleven in between constitute the heart of the book; they reveal what David calls the poet's "Protean being." David sees Chaucer's career as reflecting the "struggle between the moralist who calls for judgment and the artist who refuses to judge" (p. 36). At the same time the poet is sensitive to his position vis a vis his audience. Thus he is both preacher and servant. He stands in a pulpit as in the Corpus manuscript of Troilus and Criseyde, above the royalty and nobility who surround him. He deferentially addresses his patron John of Gaunt in The Book of the Duchess, a humble narrator who must win rather than command attention. These two oppositions, art-morality and preacher-servant, give the book its thematic structure. They form the complex framework for an informed criticism, at ease, knowledge able, and sophisticated. This criticism is at its best in the third chapter, entitled "The Paradise of Earthly Love," a consideration in the main of the F (early) Prologue to the Legend of Good Women. The Prologue is seen as not just a super ficial palinode to the Troilus. Rather, it goes to the heart of the matter, retracting the epilogue of that work and affirming the permanent validity of what in the Troilus had come through so strongly as the "transient sweetness" (p. 34) of human love. Here...