Political Allegory in Late Medieval England by Ann W. Astell (review)

Reviews ann w. ASTELL, PoliticalAllegory in Late MedievalEngLnd. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999. Pp. 218. isbn: 0-8014-3560-9. $35. This ambitious book argues that the major writers of late medieval England— Ricardian poets Langland, Gowet, Chaucer, and the Gawain-Voet, as well as Sir Thomas Malory—employed an allegorical method ofcomposition in order to make a political point, which was usually to give covert advice to their king. Although the book is nominally indebted to New Historicism, with epigraphs from Michel Foucault and David Wallace, among others, it in fact uses an Augustinian model, so that, without actually citing D.W. Robertson's Preface to Chaucer, it shares his exegetical approach. As a consequence, attention to social history is often slighted. Nevertheless, many of Astell's readings offer important insights into individual poems. One of the most persuasive is in chapter 2, '"Full of Enigmas": John Ball's Letters and Piers Plowman.' Langland is at once the most topical and the most allegorical ofthe Ricardian writers, and even ifthe historical parallels may seem a bit strained at times, Astell's general argument that he would have approved ofthe radical use to which the preacher John Ball put his peasant hero Piers Plowman during the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 is convincing. In subsequent chapters, however, the attention to social history recedes and the arguments increasingly depend on specific correspondences between fictional characters and historical persons. At such moments Astell risks falling into the kind of 'antiquarianism' she is anxious to disclaim (161). In chapter 3 she moves from the fact that John Gower is known to have written political allegory in the Vox Clamantis (with its portrait ofthe Peasants' Revolt as a rampage ofwild beasts) to argue that he does so in the Confessio Amantis as well. By identifying Gower with the legendary poet Arion from Ovid's Fasti, and recounting the unusual occurrence of a dolphin swimming up the Thames to London in the winter of1391-92, she concludes, contrary to most scholars, that all three versions of the Confessio Amantis were written after 1392. This reveals that Gower was critical ofRichard II all along, and that his dedication to the newly crowned Henry IV in the final version does not represent a sudden shift of loyalty. In 'Chaucer's Ricardian Allegories'(Chapter 4), Astell turns to an author less overtly topical than either Langland or Gower, and suggests that he wrote political allegory not only in his recognized pieces of advice to Richard II—the Parliament ofFowls and the F-Prologue ofthe LegendofGood Women—but in some ofthe Canterbury Tales as well. She reads the catalogue of fallen princes in the Monk's Tale as a warning to Richard about the dangers of pride, and offers her own allegorical interpretation of the Nun's Priest's Tale. Through the character of Chauntecleer, the regal barnyard arthuriana 10. i (2000) 131 132ARTHURIANA cock carried off by a fox, Chaucer starts by hinting that Richard may have a fall, but at the end ofthe tale flatters the king by alluding to a moment ofttiumph early in his reign. When, during the Peasants' Revolt, the fourteen-year-old king bravely confronted the rebels who had just seen their leader mortally wounded, he declared himselftheir captain and thus defused the rebellion. Astell suggests that Chauntecleer's escape from the fox's jaws by advising him to taunt the 'proud chéries' chasing him is a parody ofthis event. She does a fine job ofusing the historical material to elucidate the poem, particularly the line famous as the only reference to the Peasants' Revolt in Chaucer's entire work, his comparison of the noise of the fox chase to that of 'Jack Straw and his mcincc'(Canterbury TalesVW. 629-30). In chapter 5, 'Penitential Politics in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Richard II, Richard ofArundel, and Robert de Vere,' Astell takes on a poem generally agreed to be even more detached from politics than the Canterbury Tales, and argues that it is really about 'what Lee Patterson has called "the subject of history"'(ii7). In fact, however, this chapter is only slightly infotmed by New Historicism, for it views history from...