Chaucer at Large: The Poet in the Modern Imagination (review)

192 Reviews Ellis, Steve, Chaucer at Large: The Poet in the Modern Imagination (Medieval Cultures 24), Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2000; cloth; pp. xiv, 204; R R P US$29.95; ISBN 0816633762. In this engaging and informative study, Ellis offers a survey of the modem reception of Chaucer organised into thematic areas, ranging from the nineteenthcentury Pre-Raphaelite interest to m o d e m cartoons and Gothic novels using ideas from the Canterbury Tales, with due attention given to the debated issue of translation. Ellis carefully deals with the implications of the links between academic and non-academic interest in the work of the 'father of English literature', while guiding the reader's perception of the phenomenon in an intelligent and comprehensive manner. In the first 'taster' chapter, Ellis analyses the Kelmscott edition of Chaucer's work, a defining point in the m o d e m use of his work. This edition and its use display the Pre-Raphaelite preference for Chaucer as a poet of nature, his work being regarded as a medium of access to the classical world, from a positive yet selective point of view (p. 9). Ellis cogently traces the discrepancy between Morris's socialism and his sympathy for Chaucer's portrayals of nobility: for Morris Chaucer became a 'gentleman-aesthete, sunning himself on the social sidelines' (p. 14). Informative, yet concise, the chapter provides a basis for discussion and reference for what follows, albeit at timesfrustratingfor the non-specialist reader, as there are no illustrations of the Kelmscott edition. Popular Chaucer is the theme of the following section, in which Ellis brings to light the process through which Chaucer's work became a domain of academic research rather than of general interest. M u c h of the chapter is concerned with the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century preference for what was called Chaucer's 'normality', seen as a sign of his 'manliness', his freshness and a healthy sense of life even in the bawdy content of his Canterbury Tales; in other words a Chaucer of 'merrie England' (p. 21), to the extent that this cheerful mode was seen even in works like Troilus and Criseyde. However a positive aspect of the academic investigation at the beginning of the twentieth century was, according to Ellis, Kittredge's interest in human nature as depicted by Chaucer, and Chesterton's interest in Chaucerian depiction ofmedieval guild identity. Both critics thus brought Chaucer reception into the area of close literary and contextual analysis - taking it away from the Pre-Raphaelite exclusive view of nature in his work. Chaucer's 'childlike manfullness' is furthermore uncovered by Ellis Reviews 193 through an analysis of children's literature based on retellings of the Canterbury Tales. From Victorian moralizing, dismissive of the 'low' tone - and distorting Chaucer's work to the point of making him a precursor of Luther, to the m o d e m versions of his tales (1984), completely devoid of historical contextualisation, Ellis notes the 'usefulness' ofthe tales in a context that pares away any indication of time and period'- forefronting the universality rather than the particular. A common feature of all retellings is the glossing over of the indecent aspect of the fabliaux, with the exception of the last decades of the twentieth century, when the Miller's Tale retains almost all its details, albeit in a jovial tone. The result appears to be, Ellis contends, the 'Chaucer-as-child trope"- perhaps an image used by Chaucer himself 'as a strategy of opposition' (p. 57). In 'Writers' Chaucer', Ellis tackles the use made by m o d e m writers of the legacy of Chaucer's work. Pound dismissed Chaucer's work for not using more literary techniques (p. 81), while he himself showed only 'sporadic' engagement with Chaucer's work. In an earlier chapter Ellis has already highlighted Chaucer's influence over writers like Yeats, whose 'debt' to the great poet becomes the theme of the section on 'Spoken Chaucer'. Translations of Chaucer's work become the most contested area of discussion in the book, in which specific examples from the work of Nevill Coghill, Frank Ernest Hill and David Wright are...