Schools Of Thought Research Articles

Chaucer and Scriptural Tradition ed. by David Lyle Jeffrey

REVIEWS earth. Adams argues that "Langland's social and theological conservatism are such" that, in dealing with the profound problems of his age, his outlook is apocalyptic: "Only supernatural or preternatural intervention can totally reverse the hellbent course of human society" (p. 209). The essay refutes those readings that, following Morton Bloomfield's Piers Plowman as a Fourteenth-Century Apocalypse (1961), discernJoachim of Fiore'sinfluence on the poem. It further shows that "Langland's Antichrist is, in fact, the final Antichrist of traditional Augustinian eschatology" (p. 205), an argument that I have made elsewhere and which can be bolstered further by Robert Lerner's recent analysis ofJoachim's multiple Antichrists [Speculum 60 (1985), 553-570]. Together with his earlier article on "The Nature of Need in Piers Plowman XX" [Traditio, 34 (1978), 273-301], Adams provides a coherent and persuasive analysis of the poem's concluding passus. His essay is, in my opinion, the best argued and probably the most significant of the collection, which is no small praise, because this handsome volume is packed with many excellent essays that will make an enduring contribution to Middle English studies. RICHARD K. EMMERSON Walla Walla College DAVID LYLEJEFFREY, ed. and comp. Chaucer and Scriptural Tradition. Ottawa: University ofOttawaPress, 1984.Pp. xvi, 242. $20.00 paper. Recent collections of essays by D. W. Robertson, Jr. (Essays in Medieval Culture [PrincetonUniversity Press, 1980]), and by Robertson and some of his students Uohn P. Hermann andJohnJ. Burke, eds. Signs and Symbols in Chaucer's Poetry [University: University of Alabama Press, 1981]) are reminders of the considerable influence Robertson has had on medieval studies over several decades. An impressive amount of current medieval scholarship is being produced by his students. And now comes a new volume, Chaucer and Scriptural Tradition, edited by DavidJeffrey, with a lead essay by Robertson, to whom the book is dedicated. Yet the dangers one might look for in the development ofsuch a school ofthought do not seem to have materialized. These essays have an unmistakable diversity, despite the fact that many of the contributors are "Robertsonians." It should be a matter ofgreat satisfaction to their mentor that his students not 203 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER only have become reputable scholars but also have developed an indi­ viduality of outlook that is as significant as their areas of agreement. Despite the tendency of the Chaucer bandwagon to attract predictable and repetitive studies, Chaucer and Scnptural Tradition is a refreshing departure from the norm. This is emphatically not just another collection of Chaucer articles. Its theme is the importance of the Bible for the study of Chaucer, and the twelve essays it contains bring new information to bear on this important subject in a variety of ways. Robertson's essay provides a context for the studies that follow; as such it serves a vital purpose, though it holds no real surprises for those familiar with his earlier work. Biblical rubrics announce the subsections of the essay, but Robertson's main concern is "to suggest that Chaucer's narratives would have been impossi­ ble without the traditions of patristic and scriptural teachings as they were adapted and elaborated to meet the needs of medieval life" (p. 32). It is easy to disagree with some of the sweeping "asides" in this essay (e.g., Robertson's comparison of The Canterbury Tales and Piers Plowman, p. 30n.128), but the panoramic view he presents of church doctrine, its biblical dimension, and circumstances affecting the stability of late-medi­ eval life and society, provides an ideal background for the following studies. Chauncey Wood is interested in "artistic intention and Chaucer's uses of scriptural allusion" (pp. 35-46), but especially in what he calls "covert or implicit non-specific biblical allusions," where we have the feeling that Chaucer is alluding to a text but cannot be sure. Such uses Wood inge­ niously refers to as "the biblical 'quarks' ofhumanistic scholarship" (p. 36). The effect of such a phenomenon is that it "transforms the literary text by a kind of catalytic magic and adds spiritual meaning to what seems at first reading only physical description. Like the quark of modern physics, it is a hypothetical...

A Critique of the Philosophical Thought of Lu Jiuyuan

Lu Jiuyuan was an idealist philosopher representing the "school of mind," which, since the time of the Southern Song dynasty [1127-1279], has always stood in opposition to the "school of principle" in idealist philosophy, this latter being represented by Zhu Xi. Lu has also matched Zhu Xi in reputation all the way.

Evolution After Darwin: Vol. I—The Evolution of Life; Vol. II—The Evolution of Man ed. by Sol Tax (review)

Evolution After Darwin: Vol. I—The Evolution of Life; Vol. II—The Evolution ofMan. Edited by Sol Tax. Chicago: University ofChicago Press, i960. $10.00 each. It has taken a hundred years for the study ofevolution to return to the language in which it started. Darwin spoke ofisland birds and snails, of changes in butterflies and beetles over a geographic range, proud hoofs ofhorses and the ways offlowering plants. Wallace, in 1855, showed that the distribution ofanimals in time, in the fossil series, was in the same pattern as their distribution in space, and drew from this observation strong circumstantial evidence for evolution, three years before the joint publication with Darwin in 1858. The approach ofboth men was ecological. From this start the study of evolution retreated to the laboratory, and Elton caused some surprise in biological circles by including in his 1927 Animal Ecology a chapter on "Ecology and Evolution." What could ecology have to do with evolution? We have now returned to the outdoors—where, after all, most animals and plants live. The geneticists, backed by years of work on Drosophila and Gammams, have been discovering how their immense laboratory knowledge can be applied to, and modified by, the study ofnatural populations in their natural surroundings. This comes out with particular brilliance in E. B. Ford's essay in this Chicago symposium. Dr. Ford and his group are studying evolution at work, from year to year and from month to month. Professor Dobzhansky's contribution on "Evolution and Environment" brings fresh air from California , Mexico, and Brazil. The title ofSewall Wright's paper includes the term "ecology ofpopulations." Marston Bates's paper is on "Ecology and Evolution," and contains a discussion ofthe evolution ofcommunities, or paleoecology. Emerson writes on levels of integration and on selection at levels higher than that ofthe individual or ofthe species population. Andinthe second volume, ontheevolutionofman,his cultures, and societies, the ecological approach is made quite plain. Dr. Emiliani, for instance, makes the suggestion that ifthe Pleistocene glaciations had not occurred, modern man might have failed to develop, because Pithecanthropus wouldhave spread over the whole earth. Glaciations split the hominid populations into small groups, allowing our forebears to go their own way. These two volumes are in fact unusually difficult to review; each volume alone would be difficult. They contain forty-two long papers from the pens ofmany ofthe pioneers in the field and some of the old hands. On the historical time-line, they range from Sir Julian Huxley's very able account of Darwin himself to examinations by H. J. Müller and Sir Charles Galton Darwin of the prospect of man controlling his own evolution. Harlow Shapley's reminder that "terrestrial biological evolution is but a rather small affair, a complicated side show" compared with the total cosmic development, contrasts with Dr. Leakey's decision to place the origin ofman, that insignificant creature, squarely on the continent of Africa, and about the middle ofit at that. Some of the papers are paleontological and descriptive, as those ofG. G. Simpson and Daniel Axelrod. Some are closely analytical and often somewhat difficult, such as Professor Bernhard Rensch's essay on the "laws ofevolution," which is both Teutonic and oddly medieval in flavor. I am not sure in what sense he refers to Darwin as "the ingenious English scientist," but I hope that it is not with the attitude shown by Radi, some years ago, who wrote: "Darwinism was never taught in England as a scientific system. German scholars were the first to trans268 Book Reviews Perspectives in Biology and Medicine · Winter 1961 form this teaching into a school ofthought. It was the Germans who gave it a dogmatic and logical form." Boo. Volume I, The Evolution ofLife, shows how much further we have travelled toward understanding evolution as such than toward understanding the strictly human evolution and the development ofcultures and mind, described in fairly generalterms in Volume II. Man as an animal is better known than is man as a man. The complexity ofselection becomes greater the more we study it, both culturally and ecologically. One of the most interesting papers—at least to this reviewer—and one which certainly emphasizes the...

Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism

Franz Neumann's classic account of the governmental workings of Nazi Germany, first published in 1942, is reprinted in a new paperback edition with an introduction by the distinguished historian Peter Hayes. Neumann was one of the only early Frankfurt School thinkers to examine seriously the problem of political institutions. After the rise of the Nazis to power, his emphasis shifted to an analysis of economic power, and then after the war to political psychology. But his contributions in Behemoth were groundbreaking: that the Nazi organization of society involved the collapse of traditional ideas of the state, of ideology, of law, and even of any underlying rationality. The book must be studied, not simply read, Raul Hilberg wrote.