Poetry Does Theology: Chaucer, Grosseteste, and the Pearl Poet by Jim Rhodes (review)

REVIEWS . . . enforme’’ prompts a lengthy and scarcely intelligible summary of seemingly unrelated arguments by James Simpson. At 1.1769 (‘‘go we to bedde’’), the reader is referred to an article ‘‘on Gower’s use of subjunctive mood rather than imperative mood, which he uses very little’’ (317). It would seem more useful simply to gloss the imperative. There are quite a lot of these ‘‘woods-for-trees’’ problems here, at times seemingly the product of considerable confusion. For example, this note on 8.1696: Avoi. An exclamation of surprise, fear, or/and remonstrance. Perhaps the best gloss would be something like ‘‘Ouch,’’ combined with ‘‘What do you take me for?’’ ‘‘Stop it!’’ ‘‘Hold on!’’ or ‘‘Don’t do that!’’ (341) The prolix futility of all this is underscored when one turns to the text and finds the perfectly adequate gloss ‘‘Desist!’’ (238). The commentary would have benefited from far more succinctness as well as more consistency. Above all, it would have benefited from regular consultation of, and reference to, Peter Nicholson’s Annotated Index to the Commentary on Gower’s Confessio Amantis (1989), the existence of which makes any commentator’s life a lot simpler. It is easy to snipe at any edition in a short review, especially an edition aimed at a student audience, where the expository rather than the scholarly is the proper mode. I feel the examples I have noted are representative of the problems in this edition, not just isolated aberrations. It does seem that an opportunity to present Gower constructively to students has been missed. Yet I must end by commending Russell Peck for producing an edition that is certainly going to be used for teaching purposes and also for his much wider services both to Gower and the TEAMS series, of which he has been general editor since its inception. In these respects he deserves our gratitude as scholars and teachers. A. S. G. Edwards University of Victoria Jim Rhodes. Poetry Does Theology: Chaucer, Grosseteste, and the Pearl Poet. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001. Pp. xi, 324, $54.95 cloth, $24.95 paper. As Jim Rhodes demonstrates in this readable and extremely intelligent book, the diverse ways in which Chaucer, Grosseteste, and the Pearl413 ................. 10286$ CH15 11-01-10 13:55:19 PS STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER poet treat theological themes are intricate and subtle. Unlike many other scholars who have recently brought theology to bear on medieval poetry, Rhodes seeks ‘‘to offset the growing tendency to reduce poetry to the status of a document and to show that poetry is a significant discourse unto itself and that it has its own interests’’ (2). True to plan, Rhodes repeatedly invokes general literary and philosophical authorities alongside his principal medieval primary and secondary sources—for instance , Adorno, Bakhtin, Bataille, Benjamin, Iser, Ricoeur, Rorty, and Rushdie rub shoulders with Anselm, Aquinas, Boccaccio, Bultmann, Courtenay, Dante, Kötting, Pelikan, Pieper, and Southern—and illuminating conjunctions abound. Chapter 1, ‘‘Poetry and Theology,’’ includes a useful survey of the variety and vitality of late medieval English theology. The chapter ends with an excellent essay on Chaucer’s Nun’s Priest’s Tale and the contrasting Monk’s Tale (a prolepsis of the book’s final chapter, which treats four other tales by Chaucer, also paired off for comparative analysis). What we begin to appreciate, and what the rest of the book illustrates in detail, is the way Chaucer and other late medieval vernacular poets could ‘‘do theology’’ creatively, and often with passion, at a time when many writers were afflicted by a sense of ‘‘the absence of God’s truth’’ (25). Chapter 2 starts from Grosseteste’s Le chateau d’amour, a mediocre Anglo-Norman poem by an important English theologian, and ends with a postscript on the topos of the Four Daughters of God in Piers Plowman. Rhodes focuses his analysis on the Anglo-Norman text but also draws on a fuller Middle English version in order to point out additions , omissions, and alterations in a work that ‘‘gave medieval audiences a greater purchase on the christological and incarnational elements apparent in the poetry of Chaucer, Langland, and the Pearl-poet’’ (51). Rhodes...