Sentence and Solaas: Thematic Development and Narrative Technique in The Canterbury Tales by Tsutomu Satow (review)

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER which Gaylord complains, and yet surely they describe a genuine re­ sponse to the poem and one of the reasons for its renewed popularity six hundred years after its composition. C. DAVID BENSON University of Colorado TsuTOMU SATOW, Sentence and Solaas: Thematic Development and Narrative Technique in The Canterbury Tales. Tokyo: Kobundo Publishing Company, 1979. Pp. 400. 8000 yen. That Chaucer studies should flourish inJapan should not surprise us: English is a second language for many Japanese, and in school and university curricula literary study has traditionally accompanied linguis­ tic training. An analogous situation exists in Germany where, for generations, students have learned not only phonetics and grammar but Old and Middle Englishliteratures as well. In addition, German scholars have of course given the world some of its most significant Middle English scholarship--in the past, much of it philological, but today critical in most senses of that word. Japanese Chaucer studies have followed the German pattern: there have been philological works such as the study of the structure of the rhyme-words by Michio Masui (Tokyo: 1964). Professor Satow's book is a critical study of a sort familiar to us all. As he says in his Introduction (pp. 6-7): "We will engage in literary research in Chaucer's greatest work the Canterbury Tales by 'new criticism' and sometimes by 'historic­ ism. There is not much of the latter: Satow speculates, for instance, that the geaunt that opposes Thopas may in some oblique way refer to John of Gaunt. Most ofthe book is concerned with structural matters-parallels and contrasts among the tales, for example-viewed from a point ofview that I suppose we may, with the author, label "new critical." Satow has profound, and readily acknowledged, debts to English and American critics, notably Bowden, Corsa, Kittredge, Lumiansky, Rug­ giers, and Whittock. The insights are therefore for the most part 176 REVIEWS familiar. Satow shows that The Knight's Tale establishes a triangular pattern that is reflected in its successor, The Miller's Tale; and that this same arrangement of incidents and characters may be found in The Shipman's Tale and The Merchant's Tale as well. There is a more sophisticated critical perception in Satow's treatment of The Physician's and Pardoner's Tales, both of which deal with the "gift" of death. And the author provides a vigorous appreciation of the Wife of Bath-somewhat flawed, perhaps, by his apparent unawareness of de­ tails such as the Wife's (or Chaucer's) alteration of incidents in Ovid's Midas-story. Thus, though the critical perceptions are familiar, they make up a full-length study of The Canterbury Tales that should be of value to the advanced Japanese student of English literature. It might be suggested, on the other hand, that such students would have welcomed more observations drawn from the writer's own culture. In the immensely rich Japanese history and literature, there must be parallels and contrasts that a scholar like Professor Satow might have called upon-but he takes advantage of this possibility only three or four times in his book. For instance, he points out that the pilgrimage is a Japanese tradition, as it was in fourteenth-century England (p. 17): "Take the Japanese for example. They go on a pilgrimage for the purpose of great enjoyment." But the motives are different: for the European (p. 19), "each shrine is likened to the recovery of paradise. This is quite different from the Japanese pilgrimage." In the same passage, Satow suggests some tenta­ tive parallels with theJapanese poet Basho. He also draws upon his own traditions when dealing with The Physician's Tale (pp. 220--21): "The dialogue and persuasion between Virginius and his daughter is very interesting and kabuki-like. Since the knight could never accept the shame as the Japanese samurai could never do, he withdrew his sword and cut off his daughter's head." He also observes (p. 320): "Such questions and answers between the Host and the Canon's Yeoman continued in a way that intrigued and puzzled, just as in kakeai in Japanese Rakugo," traditions of which I confess I have...