Inept Chaucer

THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS The New Chaucer Society Sixth International Congress August 9-11, 1988 The University of British Columbia VANCOUVER Inept Chaucer Robert Worth Frank, Jr. Pennsylvania State University Prologue My assignment this evening has obliged me to reflect on the curious genre the presidential address. It has some interesting features. It's a bit like surfing on the Sargasso Sea or dog paddling in the Bermuda Triangle. The genre seems to have more "don'ts" than "dos." A scholarly article is not really what is called for. The speaker isn't on the rostrum because of expertise in a particular subject or unusual credentials for addressing an issue vital to the audience. He or she is there because-well, because he or she holds an "office." The speaker, furthermore, must not seize the mo­ ment to denounce an old enemy or flay a critical position long detested. Nor is it cricket to play the Green Knight at Arthur's Christmas feast and ride one's hobby horse boldly into your midst. I would love to be talking about my local miracles of the Virgin from Chartres and Rocamadour and Coutance-fascinating materials-but I dasn't. The don'ts are so imperative, in fact, that they inspire in some-me, momentarily, among them-the perverse impulse to subvert the ritual moment and play Boy Bishop, introduce some sense offreedom, fun, and riot. This, ofcourse, is chancy and can lead to disaster. A case in point is the late Sir William Empson's inaugural lecture as professor of English Liter­ ature at Sheffield University, or so legend has it. Having spent some years of semiexile in eastern Asia, he devoted much of the hour to piling and moving chairs about on the lecture platform demonstrating the best way to mount an elephant. The lecture, I understand, was never published. Occasionally there can be dazzling successes, notably Talbot Donaldson's presidential address to the Medieval Academy ofAmerica, composed from first to last in alliterative verse. No, for guidance I have reread the addresses of my more distinguished predecessors in the New Chaucer Society. They have, by and large, seen the assignment as best met by suggesting wise counsel or assessing a trend in contemporary Chaucer studies. I shall try to profit from their example. One of them, the sage and generous Derek Brewer, wrote me a few weeks ago 5 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER expressing his regrets that he would be unable to attend our Vancouver meeting. He referred to what he termed the "dilemma" ofthe presidential address. It is, Derek observed, "a rather formidable task to put together something ofthe appropriate length and solidity that shall not be at the same too heavy." Amen. Oh, for a muse offire, that I should not be too heavy! "O God ofscience and oflyght, I Appollo, .. .make hyt sumwhat agreable." Here endeth the Prologue. I begin with a confession. I share Pandarus's fondness for proverbs. One of my favorites-ofGerman provenance, I believe-is, "He who says A must say B." This can, in the way ofproverbs, mean several things, I assume, but for me itasserts the reality ofboth the elusive world ofimplication and the iron-bound world oflogical sequence. Ifl sayA, I may have intended to say only A, but absolute isolates are rare. I cannot deny the possibility that something-B-may be linked to A and demands acknowledgment and examination. And B in turn implies the possibility of a further conse­ quence or linked entity, C. And so on-perhaps to Z. But do relax. I am interested here only in the simple sequence A-B. That we should examine the implications of what we say if possible before we say it is a commonplace ofgood manners, ofmorality, and of rational discourse. We are as responsible for the unspoken logical conse­ quences or implications ofour words as we are for what we actually voice. True, we often arenot heldresponsible because neither we norouraudience perceives them. But they are there, and at times they emerge from the shadows to embarrass us. It is far better that we should seek them out and face them in the strong light...