Man Of Law Research Articles

Marriage, Adultery and Inheritance in Malory's 'Morte Darthur' by Karen Cherewatuk

MLR, 103.2, 2oo8 507 theevolution of the Tales. The drawback is that the 'Testament' isnot independently extant: it was only ever 'effectuated inone ormore reading performances' (p. 222) and detective work is required to recover its lineaments now.Accordingly, Lindeboom's book revels inmind-boggling archaeological sleuthdom. On the tiny foundations of the famous Confessio allusion toChaucer and of the Man ofLaw's alleged insinuations about Gower's subject-matter, amassive superstructure of speculation is erected. Parts of the superstructure involve reversion to obsolescent critical positions. In what is called the 'Gowerization' (p. 46) of the tales, the Parson's Tale emerges as the 'eschatological key', converting what had begun as amiscellany into a focused spiritual and confessional work addressing the sins and virtues (pp. IO-12). Linde boom maintains that 'the Wife, Pardoner and Parson, the only threepilgrims whose speeches are sermons constructed out of confession joined to an exposition of the Deadly Sins', are complementary figureswho constitute the core of the 'Testament' (P. I07). The Wife ofBath's Prologue and Tale especially are 'a sparklingminiature Confessio amantis intended to outdo Gower at every turn' (p. I48). Gower is defi nitely 'outdone' if,as Lindeboom supposes, the Wife simultaneously mimics Gower's Amans (making her confession of sins), Genius (the Pardoner calls her a 'prechour'), and Venus (as debauched seductress). Above all, the Wife's performance isalleged to be a systematic self-indictment of sins specifically found in theParson's catalogue and the Pardoner's performance is a self-indictment of any that are leftover. This manages to ignore altogether what ismost demonstrable about the Wife ofBath and Pardoner: that their 'confessional' stimulus comes fromChaucer's fascination with theRoman de laRose, not from theParson's Tale. Lindeboom surrounds his major premiss with multiple ancillary speculations. In order to reconstruct the 'Testament', tales and portions of them are radically filleted, reassigned todifferentspeakers, and recontextualized. The Envoy to theClerk's Tale, for example, is found to have been originally a comment on theWife of Bath, fol lowing her original participation in the relic-kissing scene at the conclusion of the Pardoner's Tale, which in turnwas originally aimed against her. The last portion of the book is devoted to proving that theWife of Bath's and Pardoner's performances are sermons at the same time as they are confessions; and that the sermons include furthermini-sermons. This is as confusing as it sounds, and it is further complicated by the author's adherence to 'exegetical' readings of these 'sermons' whereby anythingwritten can signify many other things. The unfinished state of theCanterbury Tales will always be an enticement to those who like to solve puzzles. Lindeboom marshals the pieces to fithis particular jigsaw with extraordinary tenacity.Even so, he has to introduce many of his headier spe culations with the formula 'What if . . .?'. One can only respond: what if the reader does not accept thehypothesis thatGower provoked Chaucer into a literarysparring match? A book of 477 pages is an enormous risk in thatcontext. GOLDSMITHS, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON ALCUIN BLAMIRES Marriage, Adultery and Inheritance in Malory's 'MorteDarthur'. By KAREN CHERE WATUK. (Arthurian Studies, 67) Cambridge: Brewer. 2006. ii+ I53 PP- ?45; $8o. ISBN 978-I-84384-089-3. This book is a series of short studies on a single theme, although it involves the investigation of a variety of extremely interesting 'subthemes'. Karen Cherewatuk establishes and accepts the idea of an aspiring gentry audience for Malory. She notes also that the storieswere read and owned by those inhigher levels of the elite. Cherewatuk examines the idea of companionate and political/societal marriage, and the interaction between the two,by comparing literaryevidence from the Morte 508 Reviews Darthur with historical evidence from the contemporary Paston Letters. She draws comparisons between Gareth and Lancelot, noting the attitudes tomarriage this reveals for Malory, and (by implication) forhis audience. The Church's ideas ofmar riage are then compared with those of the contemporary English nobility and gentry. Gareth's story foregrounds, and deals with, the tensions which existed (as, again, demonstrated in the Pastons' letters) between companionate relationships and the gentry's need for social stability.We cannot escape, Cherewatuk maintains, the fact that love...

Textual Subjectivity: The Encoding of Subjectivity in Medieval Narratives and Lyrics by A. C. Spearing

MLR, 102.3, 2007 835 in tale-telling on the evidence of 'grys' and 'gold' inhis array (pp. I I9-20, I28-29). The fur-edging to his sleeves is a sign of social status asmuch as of ostentation, for the abuse is a commonplace matter (pp. I 19-24). With the Friar there is amarked descent inboth the social and moral orders. The double worsted is a good ifnot fine material but even so at odds with the ideal of evangelical poverty (pp. 145-48). Worse still is theuniquely significant detail of the tippet transformed into a receptacle for a pedlar's wares (pp. I3 5-44). The criticism of the Friar is generalized in so far as no detail of his clothing identifieshim with a particular order of friars (pp. I38-39). The Physician is 'the most lavishly dressed' (p.2 I9) of thepilgrims inhis 'sangwyn and [. . .]pers' (A 439) and silk linings of taffetaand sendal. These are indispensable asmarks ofworldly success and guarantees of futurebusiness (pp. 220, 225). Further down the social and moral scale is thatunamiable pair, Summoner and Pardoner, the one grotesque with garland and cake-buckler (pp. 25 I-55), theother odious with his vernicle, prominently and inappropriately displayed on his unhooded head as a badge of faithand of thepilgrimage toRome (pp. 230-37). The Pardoner's religious status (whether that of friaror minor orders) is impossible to discover from his outward appearance (pp. 243-47). How different from the Parson, whose staff is a sufficient indication in itselfof the lifeof a good shepherd (pp. 26i-62). The least convincing chapter is thaton theClerk ofOxenford, an intellectual novice of twenty-onewhose collection of twentybooks is 'excessive' (p. I93) and whose love ofAristotle a sign of intellectual narrowness (p. I9 I).On this analysis the threadbare 'courtepy' (A 290) is tobe taken as a sign ofworldly pride and curiosity (pp. I84-89) rather than of humble devotion to learning (pp. I75-77). This book iswritten in a clear style, although the pressure of an argument some times leads to infelicities such as 'the speculative, escalating-as-rumors-do types of critical comments' (p.29). There isa case forseemliness of style aswell as forpropriety of dress. TRINITY COLLEGE DUBLIN GERALDMORGAN Textual Subjectivity: The Encoding ofSubjectivity in Medieval Narratives and Lyrics. By A. C. SPEARING. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2005. Viii+ 273 pp. ?50; $95. ISBN 978-0-I9-8I8724-0. Textual Subjectivity does not deal with the thoughts and emotions of individuals in literary texts,but with subjectivity elsewhere in such writing. So it isnot concerned with Troilus's feelings forCriseyde, or theWife of Bath's views on husbands. In stead, we learn of elusive narrators (of Troilus, Pearl, the Man ofLaw's Tale), forms of love-lyric,verse-letters, and so on. It has seven chapters. The firstis inpart theo retical, surveying the ideas ofBakhtin, Banfield, Barthes, Derridas, Fludernik, Lacan, and others, which it then uses in an account of thenarrators inLa3amon's Brut and Mannyng's Chronicle. Chapters 2-5 discuss narrators inKing Horn and Havelok; Troilus and Criseyde; theMan ofLaw's Tale; and Sir Gawain and theGreen Knight, Cleanness, Patience, and Pearl. The book's lastpart concerns lyric.Chapter 6 analyses Chaucer's Complaint unto Pity, and love poems from the Findern Manuscript and Humfrey Newton's commonplace book; Chapter 7 examines epistolary poems by Ovid (Heroides) and Charles ofOrleans, plus twoEnglish poems ofCharles's time. The result is criticism of the highest order, both subtle and impressive. For forty years Tony Spearing has been among themost perceptive critics ofMiddle Eng lish literature.Yet Textual Subjectivity goes further than his previous books in its acknowledgement thatpostmodernism exists, even thoughmany pretend itdoes not. Spearing's intelligence shows how much can be gleaned from it.He performs a 836 Reviews brilliant act of dissolution on concepts of author, narrator, and narrative, which he persuasively shows asmore evasive and flickeringentities thanmost ofus imagine.He also gives a sharp call toorder on 'narrator abuse'. This is an intellectual vice, com mon in theUSA, which allows interpretations of teller and tale that are 'limited only by the powers of human fantasy' (p. I05), and which enables critics of...

John Finlay. Men of Law in Pre-Reformation Scotland. (Scottish Historical Review Monographs Series No. 9.) East Linton, U.K.: Tuckwell Press. 2000. Pp. x, 253. $31.95 paper. ISBN 1-86232-165-5.

John Finlay. Men of Law in Pre-Reformation Scotland. (Scottish Historical Review Monographs Series No. 9.) East Linton, U.K.: Tuckwell Press. 2000. Pp. x, 253. $31.95 paper. ISBN 1-86232-165-5. - Volume 34 Issue 4

Proving Constant: Torture and The Man of Law’s Tale

Proving Constant: Torture and The Man ofLaw's Tale James Landman University ofNorth Texas Tthicd pate ofChaucet's Man ,JI.aw\ Tai, opens with the toc­ ture ofKing Alla's messenger to extract the vital information that Alla's mother, Donegild, offered the messenger lodging on his way to and from Alla's military camp in Scotland. This information confirms that Donegild had the opportunity to plant the counterfeit letters, delivered by the unfortunate but unwittingmessenger, that secure Custance's ban­ ishment from Northumberland. The messenger's torture occupies a brief passage (the desired information is quickly obtained), involving a minor character, in the middle of what is considered to be one of Chaucer's "problem" tales. Not surprisingly, the passage has received little critical attention. The absence of the messenger and his torture in discussions of The Man ofLaw's Tale seemingly befits the messenger's insignificant role in the tale. Perhaps also this absence is a product of an understanding of the Middle Ages that reads an incident such as the messenger's torture as a nonproblematic, albeit unpleasant, attribute of medieval culture. Yet the messenger's torture becomes increasingly troublesome as we inquire into the English analogues of Chaucer's tale, and the legal cul­ ture with which its fictional narrator is identified. It is striking that neither Nicholas Trever's Anglo-Norman Chroniques ecrites pour Marie d'Angleterre nor John Gower's Confessio Amantis (the two English ana­ logues ofthe tale ofCustance) depicts the messenger's torture. It is even more striking that an incident of torture should be inserted into a tale assigned to an English man of law. 1 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER As a serjeant of law, the Man of Law is near the top of the English legal system, a legal system that in the later Middle Ages was distin­ guished from its continental European counterparts by the absence of institutionalized judicial torture in its criminal procedure. It is this very distinction that the fifteenth-century English juristJohn Fortescue seizes upon in his De laudibus legum Anglie to set apart and commend the laws of England as compared with the continental legal system repre­ sented in his text by France. Fortescue's condemnation of torture is, however, notably lacking in his fictional predecessor's tale. Indeed, the Man of Law's description of the messenger's torture as part of a process of "wit and sotil enquerynge" (MLT 888)1 suggests approval of a pro­ cedure seemingly perceived as a proper method for the retrieval of in­ formation from an unreliable source. This article shall argue that the messenger's torture is not a unique incident within the Man ofLaw's narrative, nor, despite England's long­ standing avoidance of institutionalized torture, is it necessarily an anomaly within a tale told by an English man of law. Instead, the appearance of torture within The Man ofLaw's Tale is a reminder of the fragility of the common-law institutions he represents, and of torture's alluring promise ofcertainty. This promise shineswith particularbright­ ness for the Man of Law-and those like him-whose livelihood and professional reputation depend on the control of narrative, a control that can never be fully achieved within the institutions ofthe common law. The Man ofLaw and his colleagues work within a legal system also distinguished by an increasingly insular delegation of the factfinding power to local juries over which men of law exercise little control. In Fortescue's later writing the jury will become the mark ofEnglish legal procedure's superiority over the inquisitorial methods assigned to the continent, yet despite the vigor of the De laudibus's defense of English law, both its commitment to the jury and its condemnation of torture prove markedly guarded. And later still, torture eventually, ifonly tem­ porarily, finds a place in English law. The treatment of judicial torture in The Man of Law's Tale, in other words, places the tale in a complicated and enduring dialogue in English writing on the question of torture's potential to discover the truth. Early in this essay, I will consider how the professional profile of 1 All citations of Chaucer...

A Voice for the Prioress: The Context of English Devotional Prose

A Voice for the Prioress: The Context of English Devotional Prose Richard H. Osberg Santa Clara University Em th, initial !in, of he, invorntion-"O Lo,d, oure Locd"-to the first line ofthe final stanza-"O yonge Hugh ofLyncoln"-the Prior­ ess apostrophizes with incantatory zeal; fourteen instances ofthe trope are compressed into 237 lines, a density of rhetorical color unmatched else­ where in The Canterbury Tales.1 Apostrophe is only one of a number of tropes in the tale, but even without underscoring rhetorical strategies like comparatio, sententia, determinatio, or circumlocutio, almost everyone who comments on the tale notes its salient stylistic features: the frequency with which certain words are repeated, its rhyme royal stanza,2 and the character 1 The Prioress's fondness for apostrophe in her tale and the exquisite table manners of her portrait in The General Prologue may be opposite sides of the same coin. Geoffrey ofVinsauf remarks: "Take delight in apostrophe; without it the feast would be ample enough, with it the courses of an excellent cuisine are multiplied. The splendor of dishes arriving in rich profusion and the leisured delay at the rable are festive signs"; in Alex Preminger, 0. B. Hardison, and Kevin Kerrane, eds., Classical and Medieval Literary Criticism: Translations and Interpretations (New York: Ungar, 1974), p. 392. Apostrophe occurs elsewhere in The Canterbury Tales, of course, most notably in The Man ofLaw's Tale: see discussions of the trope inJoseph E. Grennen, "Chaucer's Man of Law and the Constancy of]ustice,"JEGP 84 (1985): 498-514, and Kevin]. Harty, "The Tale and Its Teller, the Case of Chaucer's Man of Law," American Benedictine Review 34 (1983): 361-71. All citations of The Prioress's Tale are from Larry D. Benson, gen. ed., The Riverside Chaucer, 3d ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987), unless otherwise noted. 2 Rhyme royal in Chaucer's hands is always, as Charles Muscatine remarks, "an imple­ ment of seriousness"; Chaucer and the French Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957), p. 192. G. H. Russell describes the rhyme royal stanzas in The Prioress's Tale as "statuesque, formal stanzas which recall an earlier, 'courtly,' phase of Chaucer's creative work," and he also characterizes the tale's vocabulary as "simple and undemonstrative"; "Chaucer: The Prioress's Tale,'' in D. A. Pearsall and R. A. Waldron, eds., Medieval Literature and Civilization: Studies in Memory o/G. N. Garmonsway (London: Athlone, 1969), pp. 213, 216. Stephen Knight observes of rhyme royal in The Prioress's Tale that "it is by no means a highly worked stanza; rather it is the easy, varied rhyme royal stanza that . . . Chaucer seems co be able co produce without strain"; Rymyng Craftily: Meaning in Chaucer's Poetry (London: Angus and Robertson, 1973), p. 29. Carolyn Collette characterizes the style of The Prioress's Tale somewhat differently: "It is as if she (the Prioress] meant us co experience the 25 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER of its syntax.3 Dorothy Guerin, for instance, argues that verbal repetition serves many purposes: to heighten emotions through liturgical and biblical associations; to elicit pathos through reiteration ofthe child's sweetness and littleness; to suggest a sincere and simple piety through a limited vocabu­ lary; and to replicate "the boy's single-minded innocence."4 C.David Ben­ son, following Alan T.Gaylord, argues that repetition in the tale means that "childlike innocence ...characterizes its artistry."5 Against the grain of critical estimation that reads the tale as the expres­ sion ofa naive and untutored piety, I would like to explore the implications religious significance ofher tale through the same intense, emotional reaction she obviously has ro the action ofher own story. In this effect the rhyme royal stanza, intensely expressive in its inherent periodicity, works as part of the story, not just as form, but as form become content"; "Sense and Sensibility in The Prioress's Tale," ChauR 15 (1980): 138-50.Martin Stevens pushes the stylistic implications ofthe stanza further than anyone, suggesting it is "an implement ofcharacterization" and a "vehicleto explore literary concepts": it reveals the Prioress as a person given to the external form ofthings; "The Royal Stanza in Early English...

Job, Boethius, and Epic Truth by Ann W. Astell

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER The publication of these volumes prompts some general reflections on the direction of the Variorum Chaucer. The gap between the cutoff date of 1985 (p. xv) for citations in Andrew's work and the publication date must be a cause for some concern. In an age of advanced computer technology, such a hiatus is not easy to justify, even in a volume as substantial as this one. Clearly some further thought needs to be given to the factors that have occasioned such delay if future volumes are not to be in need of consider­ able revision by the time they are published. More fundamentally, one must wonder increasingly about the validity and purpose of the textual portions of this work. Is it in any real sense an edition at all? A variorum is, by definition, a record of annotation. The assembling of such commentary needs to be hung on some sort of textual peg. But the record of manuscript variants largely duplicates that in Manly-Rickert. Nor is it clear what value is served by the extensive, if unsystematic, collation of nonsubstantive printed editions, whose readings are of interest only at a small number of points. Would not much fruitless industry be avoided by simply keying the Commentary to the readings of a standard edition, like the Riverside, or even to those of a single manuscript, such as Hengwrt? For clearly the lasting value of this undertaking will be found only in the quality of its record of annotation, not in its text. And if future editors can match the standard of Andrew's scholarship, we will have much for which to thank the Variorum Chaucer. A. S. G. EDWARDS University of Victoria ANN W. AsTELL.job, Boethius, and Epic Truth. Ithaca, N.Y., and London: Cornell University Press, 1994. Pp. xiii, 240. $32.95. Ann Astell's ambitious goal in this well-written, innovative, and carefully argued study is to outline a new theory of literary-historical development, a theory that will account for the phenomenon that literary historians refer to as "the decline of epic and the rise of romance." The crux of Astell's challenging thesis is that two great works, the biblical Book of Job and Boethius's De consolatione phi/osophiae (as it was interpreted by Gregory the Great and other authoritative Christian exegetes), served jointly as models for the medieval formal and philosophical redefinition of the "epic truth" of 160 REVIEWS Homer and Virgil, especially in a significant portion of those narratives we group under the rubric of "romance." Astell's detailed account ofhow "epic truth" made its way through Job and Boethius into "romances" and other works by Dante, Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, and other writers is far too complex to summarize in the present brief review. I shall concentrate in­ stead on Astell's discussions of Chaucerian texts. In chapter 4, "Hagiographic Romance" (pp. 97-126), Astell treats the Clerk's tale of patient Griselda and the Man of Law's tale of Constance in light of the medieval explications ofJob and Boethius that have been set out in preceding chapters. Johan materials in The Clerk's Tale are of course not far to seek. Griselda echoes Job's "Naked came I out of my mother's womb" speech (Job 1:21) in The Clerk's Tale 871-72; Griselda's father, Janicula, echoes Job's cursing the day of his birth (Job 3:3) in lines 902903 ; and there is an explicit reference to Job, whose patience Griselda's is said to surpass in lines 932-38. Finding Boethius in The Clerk's Tale is another matter, however, and Astell fails to clinch her case because she is unable to cite unequivocal echoes of the De consolatione. In The Man ofLaw's Tale, Astell finds a "simultaneous confluence and opposition of Boethian and Johan themes" similar to that which she finds in The Clerk's Tale (p. 107). Reading The Man of Law's Tale as a satire, Astell concludes that Chaucer's primary satiric object was not the tale's sentimental and materialistic lawyer-narrator but "the popular piety" he is made to exemplify (p...

Chaucer’s “Court Baron”: Law and The Canterbury Tales

Chaucer’s “Court Baron”: Law and The Canterbury Tales

Power and Punishment in Scott's Novels (review)

290 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION 5:3 Bruce Beiderwell. Power andPunishment in Scott's Novels. Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, 1992. xiii + 156pp. US$30.00. ISBN 0-8203-13513 . When Janet Adam Smith wrote an essay in the Times Literary Supplement on Redgauntlet to mark the Scott bicentenary in 1971, she subtitled it "The Man ofLaw's Tale," an epithet that could be applied to almost any of the Waverley novels, given the frequent presence of lawyers or of plot strategies that tum on issues of legality orjustice. Scott was, of course, born to the law—the son of a Writer-to-the-Signet, apprenticed as a solicitor at the age of fourteen, subsequently an advocate, then Clerk to the Court of Session in Edinburgh, and Sheriff, or chief magistrate, of the county of Selkirk. While a number of lawyers have written interestingly about legal points in Scott's fiction and most literary critics make passing reference to the law in discussing the Waverley novels, there has been no fullscale attempt to examine both the thematic and narratological dimensions of this topic until the publication of Bruce Beiderwell's thoughtful and informative survey. The great strengths of Beiderwell's study derive from his responsiveness to alt aspects of Scott's own fascination with the law together with his detailed knowledge of the legal debates that were current at the time the Waverley novels were being composed— an especially "active and vital period in the history of criminal law reform" (p. vii). Beiderwell's focus is not on the law of property or equity—the area that occupied Scott's day-to-day attention in the division of the Court of Session in which he served as Clerk— but on penal questions and on the criminal law seen in relation to larger issues of justice and power. Beiderwell has a learned but deft way of presenting key aspects of the eighteenth and early nineteenth-century philosophical and legal debate about crime and its punishment, so that Scott's fiction is situated within the context of familiar texts by Hobbes and Locke on the one hand and of less familiar writings by Gilbert Stuart or Cesare Beccaria on the other. Readers with a mainly literary background are put comfortably in possession of the necessary theoretical and philosophical material without being subjected to any gratuitous display of the monograph writer's superior learning. With little time or space wasted, Beiderwell is able to show how, for example, understanding of Waverley is enhanced by setting it not only against Locke's Second Treatise but also against the views of William Paley and Martin Madan or the efforts of Samuel Romilly to enact some of Bentham's thinking in legislative form. The Heart of Midlothian is similarly illuminated by reference to Hegel and Kant, as well as to various Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, the necessary citations being managed with incisiveness and economy, not to mention a sharp-eyed ability to discriminate the genuinely pertinent from the merely impressive. In selecting examples for detailed study Beiderwell draws attention to two distinct groups: early novels whose narrative mode is essentially realistic—Waverley, Old Mortality , Rob Roy, and The Heart ofMidlothian—and a series of texts from the 1 820s whose dominant mode is that of romance—Ivanhoe, The Talisman, and, more controversially, Redgauntlet. He sees the early group as reflecting Scott's attempts to grapple directly with the kind of philosophical and practical issues that occupied the attention of legal reformers in the preceding decades and in his own day. The later novels, on the other hand, are seen as exhibiting a different kind of impulse, what Beiderwell characterizes as "a profound desire to make fiction correspond to wishes" (p. ix). It is in the discussion of this second group that the study is at its most innovative, demonstrating how concerns familiar from the early novels—the social containment of wrongdoing, the relationship between punishment, deterrence, and retribution, the difficulty of vindicating innocence—are translated into romance terms, enabling the man of law as narrator to deploy poetic justice to transcend the clumsier and less effective workings of that ordinary REVIEWS 291 human justice which expresses...

'The Man of Law's Tale' as a Philosophical Narrative

Several of the Canterbury Tales belong to a genre I would like to distinguish as 'philosophical narrative', because their primary purpose seems to be to demonstrate a philosophical position. The philosophy of Boethius, which affirms the purveyance of God in the teeth of the apparent triumph of Fortune, seems to lie behind not only the Knight's Tale, but the Clerk's and Man of Law's as well. Recent criticism on The Man ofLaw's Tale in particular has tended to make this point. J. A. Yunck calls it 'a drama of Providence, of the greatness of divine power and the helplessness of man in the face of worldly vicissitudes' (p. 257).1 E. Clasby's and P. M. Kean's excellent and rather similar interpretations view Constance as a Boethian heroine heroically withstanding the alterations of Fortune. As Clasby says in response to S. Delany's attack on the characterization of Custance, 'her womanhood is not a sign of human bondage, but an image of human freedom ... of independence from circumstances' (p. 225).2 V. A. Kolve even finds potential for a fourfold reading of the poem which includes the allegorical trials of the Church in the sea of Fortune, and the moral trials of the human soul faced by fortune and temptation.3 There is, however, an apparent difficulty in reading either this or The Clerk's Tale as philosophical narrative, namely the exceptional quality of their heroines, and of the experiences they undergo. Philosophical truths are essentially universal, because they are arrived at not from individual experiences acting on different personalities, but 'a priori', from the use of reason. If the only character able to demonstrate the triumph of constancy is a Custance, and the triumph of patience a Griselde, then such triumphs can be seen only as inimitable exempla, not as philosophical demonstrations of universal positions. Indeed even as exempla they are of doubtful use, for what have such exceptional beings to teach a sinful audience enmeshed in quite different circumstances? Chaucer himself of course (following Petrarch)

Chaucer’s Measuring Eye by Linda Tarte Holley

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER through her text and, perhaps, only as a text. In his analysis Hirsh fails to acknowledge the essentially narrative self that is Margery Kempe and thereby allows himselfto create a figure who, not surprisingly, confirms his own argument about the paramystical. For scholars studying religious visions as universal, transhistorical experiences, this book will contribute good discussions ofseveral Middle English mystical and devotional works. But for scholars engaged in the study ofMargery Kempe's Book for what it may reveal about gender, culture, economic standing, and religious senti­ ment in a particular historical era and place, this book, unfortunately, will disappoint. LAURA L. HOWES University of Tennessee LINDA TARTE HOLLEY. Chaucer's Measun·ng Eye. Houston, Tex.: Rice Uni­ versity Press, 1990. Pp. 189. $24.95. On the face ofit, Holley's project is fascinating. She attempts to bring the thirteenth-century perspectivists-Roger Bacon, Robert Grosseteste, John Pecham (the Oxford perspectivists), and Witelo-to bear on Chaucer. According to Holley, their "rationalization of seeing, ...demonstrated scientifically" (p. 13), influenced Renaissance art (beginning with Giottowhose work, according to Holley, Chaucer saw) and, in the case of Grosseteste, the "ideasWycliffe popularized for his owndoctrinalends" (p. 13).Theseare the linesofconnection, for Holley, betweenChaucerand the perspectivists, not drawn with great precision in chapter 1, though meant to indicatedirectlines ofinfluence. Holley's claim is that "Chaucer's visual aptitude is directly related to his geometric sensibility, a sensibility sharp­ ened by seeing perspective drawings and knowing the optical scientists' mathematical theory" (p. 40). Unfortunately, as a historical argument, Holley's claim is shaky. Her evidence for Chaucer's seeing Giotto (or works of "native English painters who used new artistic techniques ofperspective in Westminster Palace and Abbey by the second halfofthe fourteenth century") is simply speculative (see pp. 37, 160-61 n.44). And Holley cites no passages in Chaucer that directly echo the perspectivists. The broad references in Troilus and Cnseyde to Boethius's optical theories (see pp.73-74), ifthat is what they 158 REVIEWS are, only show how ubiquitous were theories of "measuring" throughout the Middle Ages and how purely intellectual (unpictorial) they might be. As a theoretical-critical observation about Chaucer's poetry, Holley's claim is fraught with conceptual imprecision.Perhaps most egregiousfor her own position is that Holley confuses the idea of the pictorial (or scenic) in Chaucer-she insists that Chaucer is a pictorial artist- with the idea that each of Chaucer's narratives has a visualizable structure, a geometric shape we can see. Holley gives surprisingly few examples of the pictorial in Chaucer, who is not, I still think, a visual poet, perspectivist or otherwise. Even V A.Kolve does not claim that Chaucer is a perspectivist, and there is, I think (despite Holley's objections), some truth to H. A. Kelly's argument that Chaucer's narrative comes from reading and imagination instead of pictures. Kelly says that Chaucer does not think through the visual and spatial implications of his scenes, and with that even Kolve might agree. In chapter 2, Holley gives us two instances of "paratactic" scenes in Chaucer, one in The SecondNun's Tale and one in The Man ofLaw's Tale. Her analysis of the scene in The Man ofLaw's Tale where Constance gazes at the Virgin (pp.57-59) is sensitive indeed.But what Holley is describing here, and describing well, is the moral structure of the religious tale, a structure we do nothave to behold in any literal sense to appreciate.Holley also gives us in chapter 2 one instance of a "periodic" scene, the scene in fragment VI of The Canterbury Tales of the Physician, the Host, and the Pardoner on the Canterbury road.But if Chaucer is a perspectivist in any literal sense here, even an imperfect (or budding) one, he surely would have initially worked out where everyone is in this "scene," which includes a rather discontinuous description of events. Is everyone on horseback? Walking together within earshot? Who else among the Canterbury pil­ grims is listening to the Physician and the Pardoner? This is the problem of roadside drama, now raised as the first concern of a so-called...

Apostrophe, Prayer, and the Structure of Satire in The Man of Law’s Tale

Apostrophe, Prayer, and the Structure of Satire in The Man ofLaw's Tale Ann W Astell Purdue University TEMAN OF LAw's TNE h.s figmcd prnmincntly in the ongoing debate about the teller-tale relationship in The Canterbury Tates. 1 Is The Man ofLaw's Tate primarily a satire exposing the hypocrisy of its pilgrim narrator?2 Or is it a pious legend about its saintly heroine, more properly called "The Tale of Custance"? The historical division of critics into two camps suggests that auditors are hearing two different voices in the tale, the narratorial "I" isolated as direct discourse and the oppositional "I" of Custance herself as a speaking subject. 1 Pointing to the tenuous relationship between the Head/ink, the "poverty prologue," and the pious legend in rhyme-royal stanzas, Bernard F. Huppe and others have insisted that "the Tale must speak for itself without regard to its particular dramatic setting or its narrator." See Huppe, A Reading ofthe Canterbury Tales (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1964), p. 96. See also John Tatlock, "The Man of Law's Tale," in The Development and Chronology a/Chaucer's Works (Gloucester: Peter Smith, 1963), pp. 172-88. Arguing on different grounds, David Lawton, in Chaucer's Narrators (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1985), has insisted that "lines using a narratorial 'I' in the body of any of the tales cannot be used to demonstrate a point about the ostensible teller" (p. 104). Observing that narrator's voice in all of Chaucer's "high-style" stories (including The Man ofLaw's Tale) is virtually the same (pp. 76-105),Lawton restricts the applicability of speech-act theory to the prologues of tales, excluding the tales themselves (cf. p. 4). C. David Benson makes an argument similar to Lawton's in "Their Telling Difference: Chaucer the Pilgrim and His Two Contrasting Tales," ChauR 18 (1983): 61-76. H. MarshallLeicester,Jr., in "The Art oflmpersonation: A General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales," PMLA 95 (1980): 213-24, was among the first to discredit the dramatic model by shifting emphasis away from the voices of pilgrims ro the voicing of the tales themselves. 2 For excellent treatments of the appropriateness of the tale's assignment to the Man of Law as a satiric object, see Warren Ginsberg, The Cast of Character: The Representation of Personality in Ancient and Medieval Literature (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1983), pp. 144-51; Roger Ellis, Patterns a/Religious Narrative in the Canterbury Tales (Totowa, N.J.: Barnes and Noble Books, 1986), pp. 119-68; Alfred David, "The Man ofLaw versus Chaucer: A Case in Poetics," PMLA 82 (1967): 217-25; Chauncey Wood, "Chaucer's Man of Law as Interpreter," Traditio 23 (1967): 149-90. 81 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER Chaucer's additions to his source, Nicholas Trevet's Anglo-Norman Chronique, chiefly consist of (1) apostrophe, exclamatio, and rhetorical questions interjected by thenarrator, and (2) prayers uttered by Custance.3 I argue that Chaucer's additions effectively convert a saint's legend into a satire through the systematic opposition of two rhetorical figures-apos­ trophe (assigned to the narrator) and prayer (assigned to Custance)-that punctuate the unfolding plot line and provide a divergent commentary on the events being related.4 Not only does Chaucer oppose the viewpoints of the tale's heroine and her pilgrim narrator in a conflictus of providential and fatalistic orderings ofexperience, but he assigns to each a characteristic figura that has its proper sign value, its power to define not only the individualpersonae as such, but also the differences between them. Cus­ tance's prayers do more than characterize her as a saint. As direct discourse they give Custance a voice and personal genre, allowing her to speak for herselfand thusprovidea counterinterpretation ofeventsotherwiserelated to the audience only by the shortsighted narrator. The tale itself is episodic, its story line punctuated by five sea voyages, its chronology spanning all of Custance's adult life, the setting for its action changing from Rome to Syria to England and back again. The natural division of the tale into discrete episodes lends itself to narrative intrusion and provides ample opportunity for the teller...

Les Contes de Cantorbéry. Second Part by Geoffroy Chaucer

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER maiden but in the process woke three Englishmen who thought he was a thief and pursued him. Other passages recall Chaucer even more strongly; with self-deprecation Dafydd presents himself as the object of ridicule of the girls he would love, and he relates how a magpie once garrulously lectured him for being an old man in love. Unlike Chaucer, however, Dafydd is fond of realistic portrayals of the wonders of nature; for the former Reynard is the sly voice of flattery, but for the latter he is a flash of amber in pursuit of a fat hen. Moreover, Dafydd rests secure in his sense of his own poetic achievement, while Chaucer, whoseEnglishmedium lacked the uninterrupted tradition and poetic status which Welsh had in Wales, could only toy with the posture of an "auctor." Still, the power of each writer's poetry is clear (Dafydd's satiric verses on the contemporary poet Rhys Meigen are "so involved and obscure in their range of abuse that it is not too difficult to credit the later story that the unfortunate victim fell down dead as the result of hearing them"; p. 62), as is their importance in their respective traditions; Chaucer inspired the "Chaucerians," and Dafydd was a model for contemporary and subsequent cywyddwyr, who variously describe him as pensaer yr ieithoedd ("architect of words"), pensaer gwingerdd ("architect of song"), and athro pawb ("everybody's teacher") (p. 160). This collection is part of a renaissance of sorts in Dafydd studies. All of the poems are now accessible to nonspecialists in Richard Loomis's excellent translation (Binghamton, N.Y., 1982), and a selection ofthe originals with accompanying translations are available in an edition by Bromwich herself (Penguin, 1986). "Gwell yw ystafell, os tyf," Dafydd observes; better is a room if it grows, and all these books will better any library which has room for them. TIM WILLIAM MACHAN Marquette University GEOFFROY CHAUCER. Les Contes de Cantorbery. SecondPart. Fascicle 9. Trans.Juliette de Caluwe-Dor. With the English text of the edition of John Hurt Fisher. Louvain-Paris: Editions Peeters, 1986. Pp. xii, 265. $8.00 paper. We may indeed welcome the appearance of the second volume (of a planned four) of]uliette de Caluwe-Dor's French translation of The Canter130 REVIEWS bury Tales. The close ties of Chaucer's Middle English with the French language make furthering the appreciation of his work among French speakers particularly feasible and desirable. Chaucer knew the language well, his English was imbued with the lexicon and usages, and many originals of his works were French. His Gallicism indeed is strong enough that Emile Legouis could with reason call The Canterbury Tales "un des plus remarquablesprolongements al'etranger de notre poesie nationale."1 The French affiliations suggest that Chaucer would be especially translata­ ble, and de Caluwe-Dor has previously testified that this is so: "Chaucer's English being often closer to French than to present day English (a.o., his vocabulary and sentence structure), in some cases I felt my task far lighter than if I had had to translate into English."2 The new volume seems particularly well suited to nurturing Anglicist proclivities of French students of medieval literature. Directed at readers who seek precise understanding of Chaucer's text, and taking up where the first volume leaves off, it presentsjuxta!ineare-line-by-line-translations ofthe prologues and tales of the Reeve, the Cook, the Man ofLaw, the Wife of Bath, the Friar, and the Summoner. It also has the Middle English from the Fisher edition on facing pages, a feature not present in volume 1. Both the parallel text and the fuller glosses placed on the same page with the text rather than in the back, make the second volume more usable than the first. In both volumes the translation is carefully executed and laudably functional. As de Caluwe-Dor declares in the introduction to volume 1 (p. iii), where a choice is necessary, she is willing to sacrifice brevity and grace for fidelitephilologique. At the same time, we know from her earlier declara­ tion thatfidelite is for her no simple matter; in particular, she sees finding...

Men of science v. men of law: some comments on recent cases.

Men of science v. men of law: some comments on recent cases.

The Kalendarium of Nicholas of Lynn ed. by Sigmund Eisner

REVIEWS reader will respond. While Peck's essay should certainly be read (and Scarry's too, for all its unevenness), little else in this collection demands the attention of medievalists or their students. EDMUND REISS Duke University SIGMUND EISNER, ed.; Gary Mac Eoin and Sigmund Eisner, trans. The Kalendarium of Nicholas of Lynn. The Chaucer Library. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1980. Pp. xii, 248. $30.00. Chaucer's continual fascination with the stars and heavenly motions has provided a rich lode for the scholar. Witness, for example, those subtle celestial clues in Troilusand Criseyde that allowed Root and Russell to date its composition. Or consider the puzzlement provided by such a simple couplet as, "the yonge sonne / Hath in the Ram his halve cours yronne," in the prologue to The Canterbury Tales. (We can readily check in the calendarium under review that the sun gets halfway through Aries on March 27, hardly consonant with "April with his shoures soote" of the opening line.) Or, ponder what Chaucer really had in mind when in the beginning of The Treatise on the Astrolabe he states: The thirde partie shal contene diverse tables oflongitudes and latitudes of sterres fixe for the Astrelabie, and tables ofthe declinacions ofthe sonne, and tables of longitudes of citees and townes; and tables as well for the governaunce ofa clokke, as for to fynde the altitude meridian; and many anothir notable conclusioun after the kalenders of the reverent clerkes, Frere J. Somer and Frere N. Lenne. Frere N. Lenne is, ofcourse, none other than Nicholas ofLynn, whose calendar is meticulously reproduced, translated, and commented upon by Professor Eisner. Because of the Astrolabe we can be quite sure that Chaucer indeed used this almanac, but now that it is printed, we can all see that it does not contain longitudes and latitudes of fixed stars or of cities or towns, nor does it include solar declinations. Neither, apparent­ ly, does the almanac ofJohn Somer, though Eisner is not quite as explicit on this point as he might be. What Nicholas of Lynn does have, and 149 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER rather uncommonly so, is a detailed table for solar altitudes and shadow lengths at Oxford, which could well be used to set a clock. And that is precisely how Chaucer uses the Kalendarium in at leastthreeplacesin The Canterbury Tales-not explicitly to set a clock, but at least to establish the time by shadow length. In good Chaucerian manner this sets more problems for the interpre­ ter, but now, armed with a readily available almanac, we can all play the game. The first example is in the introduction to The Man ofLaw's Tale, where the host, knowing that it is the 18th of April, deduces from the observation that every shadow equals "the body erect that caused it" that it is 10 a.m. From the table (p. 87) we can readily see that at 10 a.m. and at 2 p.m. on April 18th this is so, and at no other tabulated time in all of March, April, or May. Nicholas' entry is like a wonderful footnote awaiting some supporting text, and Chaucer has indeed found a place to exploit it. But there is a problem-has Chaucer done it deliberately just to confound us? His host also "saugh wel that the brighte sonne / The ark of his artificial day hath ronne / The ferthe part, and half an houre and moore." Chaucer knows full well that the artificial day is the time between sunrise and sunset; he defines it so in the Astrolabe, and he can read the length for each day, so labeled, in Nicholas' Kalendarium. On April 18th the artificial day is 14h 19m , and a quarter part of that is 3h35m , or 8:25 a.m. Matterswould be much simpler ifChaucer had said a third part of the arc, which would be 4h47m , or 9:37 a.m., and with about half-an-hour more, it would be at least approximately 10 a.m. With the Kalendarium now conveniently available, it can be left as a problem for the reader! The second example, from The Nun's Priest's Tale...

Biographical Books about Lawyers: Men of Law: From Hammurabi to Holmes

Biographical Books about Lawyers: Men of Law: From Hammurabi to Holmes

Men of Law: From Hammurabi to Holmes

Men of Law: From Hammurabi to Holmes

Men of Law

Men of Law

Men of Law from Hammurabi to Holmes

Men of Law from Hammurabi to Holmes