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Reviewed by:
  • Chaucer and Religion
  • Claire M. Waters
Chaucer and Religion. Edited by Helen Phillips. Christianity and Culture: Issues in Teaching and Research, 4. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2010. Pp. xix + 216. $95.

Discussions of Chaucer and religion generally take one of two approaches: a focus on religious forms, practices, and beliefs as elements in or contexts for Chaucer's writings; or an emphasis on Chaucer's personal relationship to religion. This volume of essays takes, for the most part, the first tack, although the excellent short introduction by Helen Phillips, in addition to surveying briefly the wide compass of "religion" in Chaucer's time, acknowledges the problematic unknowability of "Chaucer's own theological beliefs" (p. xvii) and the scholarly discomfort the subject can raise. The book as a whole aims to be accessible to a broad audience, and after chapters that treat such topics as the Bible, Lollardy, the cult of saints, and pilgrimage, concludes with a section of short essays on teaching Chaucer and religion to modern undergraduates.

Given the breadth of the subject, the volume, reasonably enough, does not aim at any overarching coherence except in its conviction that the subject is important and that while "it remains almost part of our scholarly credentials not to treat religious conviction seriously," we should not reduce Chaucer's treatment of religion to "satire alone" (p. xi). Probably most modern readers would happily assent to this point, but it is still worth making, particularly given the volume's explicit interest in pedagogy and the relative unfamiliarity of Christian culture to many American and British undergraduates (a point especially stressed in the essays on teaching).

As with most collections of this kind, the chapters vary somewhat in quality, though their usefulness will most be determined by the interests of a particular reader. They [End Page 416] also fall into three rough categories: in addition to the pedagogical essays at the end, there are those that address specific religious forms and practices (pilgrimage, use of the Bible, saints' lives and prayers to saints, Lollardy, the relationship of Christianity to other religions) and those that look at particular tales or groups of tales (romances, dream poems, fabliaux) in light of their religious motifs or implications. The main part of the collection, after the introduction, is bookended by two essays that escape these categories and demonstrate the uncertain boundaries of "religion" as a topic: these are Alcuin Blamires's "Love, Marriage, Sex, Gender" and Helen Phillips's "Morality in the Canterbury Tales, Chaucer's Lyrics, and the Legend of Good Women." Both cover their varied ground effectively, even if the inherent bagginess of their rubrics works against any strong central argument; instead they give a sense of the breadth of their topics and provide insights on such subjects as the challenge sexual desire poses to belief in a beneficent divinity (pp. 10, 23), the limited intertextuality of patristic readings (p. 158), and Chaucer's depiction of an "ethically lofty love" in the Legend of Good Women (p. 168).

The essays that address specifically religious topics do so in varied ways. Dee Dyas helpfully frames pilgrimage in terms of the "concentric circles" of community it involved (p. 132), from Christendom and the "pilgrimage of life" to the local social groupings that sent the pilgrim out and welcomed him or her back to a particular set of pilgrims. Carl Phelpstead provides a beautifully organized and thorough discussion of death and judgment, emphasizing the comfort offered by medieval artes moriendi rather than their sometimes terrifying details. He gives a good sense of how pervasively Chaucer uses prevailing ideas about endings despite his famous resistance to closure. In one of the best essays in the volume, Sherry Reames gracefully integrates a solid survey of work on Chaucer's Marian poetry with a persuasive argument, based on Chaucerian intertexts, for seeing the Prioress's Tale as stunted and theologically problematic. This would be an excellent introduction to the topic for undergraduates but also has much to offer to scholars well versed in the subject. Laurel Broughton's related discussion of the Second Nun's, Prioress's, and Man of Law's Tale is less successfully integrated. Its focus on...

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