Medieval Literature, Style, and Culture: Essays by Charles Muscatine (review)

230 Reviews Muscatine, Charles, Medieval Literature, Style, and Culture: Essays by Charle Muscatine, Columbia, The University of South Carolina Press, 1999; cloth; pp. ix, 252; R.R.P. US$39.95; ISBN 1570032491. Muscatine's title suggests a project, whereas his book is simply a collectio essays, many published long since and all familiar to most medievalist readers. It does declare the principal interests of a most distinguished academic career. In thefirst,famous essay, Muscatine tackles the 'Style of the M a n and Style of the Work'; its position here seems to extend an invitation to respond in kind. '[Chaucer's] tales were long in the writing,' w e are reminded, 'but nothing suggests that their styles are in any way related to their chronology'. The same might be said of Muscatine; the earliest piece, on the 'emergence of psychological allegory', published 50 years ago, possesses in full the poise we appreciate in the last, published just three years ago, on fabliaux and courtly culture. Muscatine constantly remarks on Chaucer's 'protean' genius; most satisfying for him, however, is the text that holds idealism and realism in tension, juxtaposing instances, or mixing them so that no fixed commitment is made to one centre of meaning: 'The comedy and the tolerant irony, the relativism, the necessity to perceive: these are the answers implied by his mixed style.' W h e n Chaucer matters this way so long, it is hard not to conclude that the poet's defining virtues are also those that Muscatine would like to be judged by. Tolerant irony, comic sense, civility, relativism. Muscatine seeks to comprehend texts in their entirety, even as he responds to particular moments with acumen and appreciation. And he never raises his voice, never shouts. The virtue of such a critical personality is obvious; analysis may be grounded in great learning, but authority is never used oppressively, so we never lose our pleasure in tracking this critical intelligence. In this he owes much to Erich Auerbach; in this, he himself was important for m y generation, because of the critical ambition he inspired this way. Criticism, he proved, did not need to be the cabalistic activity that D. W. Robertson demanded, nor need it depend on the kind of inert learning that reduces a text to representation of antecedents. Perhaps through this book he may have similar value for another generation. Sadly, I doubt it. Central to this collection is the group of linked essays first published in 1972 as Poetry in an Age of Crisis. Even then, before time had got round to rubbing off its sharp corners, it seemed 'disappointing' to its reviewers in Year's Work in English Studies, 'rather easy-going'. I remember Reviews 231 finding it stimulating, mostly because it insistently made a case for taking the poet's negotiations with stylistic traditions and conventions as a second story, registering engagements with a pressing social world. To m y way of thinking, the most striking work done by medievalists in the last 20 years has been driven by the need to make sense of this world-affiliated text. Muscatine anticipated, but never really took that step, perhaps. For him it is an 'Age of Crisis', and he does describe its aspects, but the description is broad, 'easy-going', maybe even second-hand. Ifwe think ofthe demanding, often graceless but provocative work of scholars like Knight, Paterson, Aers, Strohm, Delaney, Wallace, Staley and Dinshaw, it seems fair to say that, for all their insight, love of the text and integrity, these essays are indeed 'disappointing', even disengaged. Stephen Justice's work on the texts that surround the Peasants' Rebellion registers crisis to a degree Muscatine never approaches. This is the more disappointing since, in offering an idea of criticism that acknowledges the world, Muscatine aimed to win the interest of a new generation of students whose acquiescence in the game of scholarship could not be taken for granted. In his presidential address to the Chaucer Society in 1980, published as '"What amounteth al this wit?" Chaucer and Scholarship', he noted that medieval studies had lost its privileged constituency ('Mostly male'); indeed it was losing students absolutely. H e...