Irony in the Medieval Romance by D. H. Green (review)

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER D. H. GREEN. Irony in the Medieval Romance. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979. Pp. x, 431. £27. 50; $62. 50. This magisterial study of the role of irony in the medieval romance will justly find its place in the major libraries of the world. Any criticismsthat are made of it will have to be addressedtoshortcomingsin the definition of irony its author offers and to the theory which has grown up around it, rather than to the nuances of interpretation of the various appearances of irony as defined by the author. As to the question with which the book opens, "Does irony exist in the romances of the Middle Ages?" as demonstrated in the works of Chretien de Troyes, Hartmann von Aue, Gottfried von Strassburg, Wolfram von Eschenbach, (with some attention to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and to Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde), it should be said in advance that this book demon­ strates beyond any shadow of doubt that irony is a pervasive presence in thesewriters; and from this readers willconcludethat irony exists in even purer manifestations throughout virtually the entire corpus of medieval literature. In brief, Professor Green establishes at the outset a definition of irony which serves him throughout the book: Irony is a statement or presentation ofan action or situation in which the real or intended meaning conveyed to the initiated intentionally diverges from, and is incongruous with, the apparent or pretended meaning presented to the initiated. Green admits that the phenomenon is a complex one, then addresses himself to M. S. Batts' objections to the discovery of irony in medieval literature, 1 which he examines with scrupulous care before concluding that irony was known to medieval writers, that it can be demonstrated with some security, and that the poets have in fact given explicit signals of such irony in their works. 1 "Harrmann's humanitas: a new look at Iwein," in F. A. Raven, W. K. Legner, and J.C. King (eds.), GermanicStudieJ in honor ofEdwardHeury Sehrt, Coral Gables, Fla.: U of Miami P, 1968, pp. 37 ff. 138 REVIEWS From this point, Green proceeds to lay out the applications of his theory of irony to chivalry, to love, to narrative technique, to verbal manipulations of it, to irony of the narrator and of values, to dramatic irony, and finally to structural irony. These substantives are in fact the chapter headings; each chapter is broken down into smaller sections dealing with a particular author or theme. And finally the book culmin­ ates in a series ofgeneralizations accounting for the presence of irony in medieval romance: the poet's status in society, the language ofcourtesy, the select audience for which poetry is written, written composition, patronage and rhetoric, secularism, the critical spirit, etc. I cite these only to indicate that Green has not neglected the social and aesthetic considerations ofhis study. So complete is its coverage, within the thesis offered in his introduction and first chapter, that one must conclude that irony as an aspect ofmedieval composition, both oral and written, and as a legitimate subject for critical evaluation, has come to fruition. His thesis is built up so carefully on every available resource in the scholarly reservoir and is pursued so patiently to its literary locale that as an exercise in comparative literature it stands as a model ofscrupulosity and sensitive judgment. The modern question, one that plagues the theory of irony and its application to literature written prior to the sophisticated theory, name­ ly whether modern literary terminology can be applied to the texts that long preceded it, is correctly dismissed on the grounds of modern intellectual needs and with the clear recognition that criticism must constantly invent a terminology, asking questions of texts "which were for the most part not even realized as possible questions at the time when these texts were composed." And in the process ofengaging the texts of his time, any critic explores his text more efficientlywhen simultaneous­ ly he makes advances in the vocabulary to be employed. The study of irony as a theory, in a welter of books and articles, has been largely the province ofthe late Norman Knox (The...