Chaucer and the Universe of Learning (review)

Reviews Astell, A n n W., Chaucer and the Universe of Learning, Ithaca and London, Cornell University Press, 1996; cloth; pp. xvi, 254; R.R.P. US$35.00. The intended order of the Fragments of the Canterbury Tales has remained for most readers an unresolved question, the subject of much scholarly debate. A n n Astell boldly argues that Chaucer meant the Fragments to be arranged just as they are ordered in the EUesmere manuscript, and interprets the Canterbury Tales as a conventional encyclopedic compilatio or summa. Her book offers a new focus on an area of great significance for Chaucerians. The basis of AsteU's argument rests largely upon evidence drawn from the Ellesmere scribe and from the tales themselves of two major developing structures or themes: the medieval listings of the seven planets and the seven branches of philosophy. These listings work together to give the Fragments a logical sequence, with the storyblocks presented as topical units. Chapter 2 surveys the c o m m o n use of these philosophical and planetary models in didascalic literature as analogies of the spiritual journey of the soul to self-knowledge, and the resemblance of these divisions to those of society, thereby setting the foundation for an extended argument of the relevance of these models to the tales' social and religious concerns. In so doing, Astell P A R E R G O N ns 15.1 (July 1997) 172 Reviews simultaneously locates the work within the tradition of encyclopedic allegory; in particular, she argues, the tales act in 'conscious dialogue' with Gower and Dante. Although Chaucer, through his assimilation of the branches of philosophy to the planetary spheres, exhibits a world in which selfknowledge is gained through an encompassing of the spiritual and the theological, his view is notably less transcendental than Dante's. The eschatological solution of the Paradiso is finally subjected to interpretation by, and made answerable to, a world fuU of 'sondry folk' (GP. 24-5). In effect, Chaucer brings 'Dante's heaven back down to earth'. His is a vision notably more modest, for, 'whereas the Dante of the Commedia aspires to see God, the Chaucer of the Tales', says Astell, 'asks in the end only to be seen and judged mercifully by God'. In this way, Chaucer's text paraUels Gower's Confessio Amantis in its identification of m a n as a political and social being. Yet, at the same time, as the inclusion of the Parson's Tale makes clear, the largely ethical philosophy of Gower is, in the end, made subordinate to theology; a greater impulse towards Christian insight and vision is revealed in CT. Thus, through structure and topic, the CT ot Ellesmere responds to the all-encompassing world-view of the Paradiso and the more practical thought patterns of Gower. Astell argues that one must read the Canterbury Tales 'like a clerk'. Invoking a clerical audience's familiarity with the planetary or heavenly voyage as reflecting a kind of educational process of the soul, the Introduction and Chapter 1 survey the prevalence in didascalic literature of such journeys and their influence on Chaucer as a member of his unique estate. The EUesmere arrangement of stories and story-blocks and its presentation as a philosophical summa embrace such a journey, one, says AsteU, that begins at the highest astrological point and with the most philosophical of Chaucer's tales: the sphere of Saturn in the Knight's Tale. Marking KtT as a starting point for both the 'linear, literal pilgrimage to Canterbury and the circular, planetary journey into and out of the world', Chapter 3 investigates the tale's unique Saturnine qualities and reveals a pattern of descent in the imagery of Jupiter in the Miller's Tale and of Mars in the Reeve's Tale, two planets that, with Saturn, are associated with the Reviews 173 unfolding of the tripartite soul of neoplatonic theory. In accordance with such a theory, the Cook and the Cook's Tale illustrate a descent into the solar sphere and the infusion into the soul of those bodily attributes—sense perception and imagination—represented by this region. Appropriately, the epistemological issues raised in...