Trigg, Stephanie. 2002. Congenial Souls: Chaucer from Medieval to Postmodern. Medieval Cultures Series, vol. 30. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. $22.95 sc. xxiv + 280 pp.Near her first monograph's end, Stephanie Trigg reckons that Congenial Souls no doubt . . . has offended or frustrated many readers. Prominent among these are Chaucerians unfriendly to her refusal to offer reading of single Chaucerian poem. Her decision not to do so would seem to stand in direct contradiction with whole purpose of writing about surely, so Trigg's apparently cross-purposive decision not to enter into business of hermeneutics invites obvious question, What kind of Chaucerian doesn't interpret Chaucer's poetry? (2002, 234). The answer that immediately follows is crisp, clear, altogether consistent with hypotheses that Congenial Souls works to demonstrate. Its author's contention is this: it's impossible to separate reading of Chaucer from reading of Chaucerian discourse; that when we read Chaucer's poetry, we are necessarily reading through conventions and traditions of editorial presentation, of criticism and commentary, and of highly socialized models of reading communities, clustered around familiar presence of beloved author (235). Now, what litterateur(e), especially in postmodern times, when culture studies are anything but neglected, could take all that much umbrage at what Trigg contends here?This reader, for one, found nothing offensive or frustrating in Congenial Souls. Quite contrary: I found its argument sympathetic, its scholarly achievement quite impressive. Trigg took good ten years to write her book, and it shows. The first chapter, Speaking for leads into terrain rich in signs of contemporary critical theorizing, with canon and community as salient points of reference for reading of metaphysical assumptions more often than not unconsciously held by generation after generation of Chaucerians errant in their quest to find their master or companion's voice (2002, 26). In Chapter two, Trigg provides an informative account of contending models of authorship latent in different ways in which Geoffrey Chaucer is named or renamed, 'signed' by himself or countersigned, in different ways, by in different periods (72). The next chapter, Writing Chaucer: The Fifteenth Century, implicitly delivers cautionary tale to writerly (Lydgate, for example) humbly deferring to their master's authority, even as they make themselves authors in their own right (and so, ironically enough, give Chaucer new life). Trigg's sustained commitment to historist method pays substantial dividends here as she recalls crucial difference-between medieval concept of auctoritas (in sense of communally authoritative, a repository of wisdom) and (post)modern carry-or burden?-of private auctor (in sense of the performer of work (77-78)).Much to author's credit, subsequent three chapters of Congenial Souls are substantially informed by an awareness of that considerable difference. Loving Chaucer in Privacy of Print: The Sixteenth Century nicely brings together lines of development that converge in study. And Chapter five, Translating Chaucer for Modernity on case of Dryden (whose Fables Ancient and Modem provides Congenial Souls with its title), reflects on his status as inaugurator of modern publicly private practice of Chaucerians who imagine themselves into presence of Chaucer, his books, and his other readers (2002, 148). Readers not deeply theorized, so to speak, may be expected to find themselves closer to home in next installment of Trigg's discourse, Reading Chaucer outside Academy: Furnivall, Woolf, and Chesterton, written as it is in language accessible to non-specialists. Here, she calculates something of price professional Chaucerians naturally pay for their exclusion of amateurish populists from their fold. …