Rhetoric, Game, Morality, and Geoffrey Chaucer

Rhetoric, Game, Morality, and Geoffrey Chaucer Stephen Manning University of Kentucky To of th, most ,ewacding apprnaches to Chance, that hm ,e. ceived sharp focus over the past dozen years or so are those of rhetoric and of game theory. Rhetoric had, of course, provided commentators with ample material in,the past, but its recent resurgence has brought new emphases. As Robert 0. Payne has pointed out, what the medieval rhetoricians are actually touching upon in their treatises are some basic problems in aesthetics, and rhetoric has larger implications than orna­ mentation and topoi. In his book Payne was particularly concerned with the interrelation of language, truth, and emotion, and Chaucer's attempts at solving the problems which his individual works raised.1 In a recent essay his emphasis is on "the ways language mediates between speaker and audience," especially through the creation of a persona.2 Payne thus takes a problem in fictional point of view and restores it for Chaucerians to its rightful rhetorical heritage. This new emphasis thus conceives of rhetoric much as Wayne Booth in The Rhetoric of Fiction: the sum of all the techniques an author uses to influence a reader.3 1 The Key of Remembrance (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1963). In "Chaucer and the Art of Rhetoric," Companion to Chaucer Studies, ed. Beryl Rowland (Toronto: Oxford Univ. Press, 1968), pp. 38-57, Payne includes a bibliography for this approach. See also in the same volume Robert M. Jordan, "Chaucerian Narrative," pp. 85-ro2, also with bibliography. A desirable addendum is Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1950). 2 "Chaucer's Realization of Himself as Rhetor," in Medieval Eloquence, ed. James J. Murphy (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1978), pp. 270-87, where he brings his bibliography up to date. Other essays on medieval English literature in the volume are by Murphy and Jackson J. Campbell. 3 (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1961), p. i. Robert M. Jordan distinguishes STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER l (1979). © Copyright 1979 by The New Chaucer Society, The University of Oklahoma. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER To this significant re-emphasis upon rhetoric, Richard A. Lanham has brought the concept of play and game.4 To an earlier article on Chaucer which demonstrated the potentiality of this approach,5 Lan­ ham has now added in The Motives of Eloquence6 a more comprehen­ sive statement with philosophic, literary, and general cultural conse­ quences. Although the subtitle reveals the ultimate critical destination (Literary Rhetoric in the Renaissance), the book has tremendous value for Chaucerians. In his introductory chapter, Lanham distinguishes homo rhetoricus from homo seriosus. The latter is characterized by a "central self, an irreducible identity" whose success in communicating facts or concepts is called clarity, whose success in communicating feelings is called sincerity (i.e., "faithfulness to the self who is doing the feeling"), and whose success in representing nature or society through literature is called realism. The best style is that which least obtrudes upon the audience. Homo rhetoricus, on the other hand, has no central self to be true to, but a public or social self, or, more accurately, public or social selves. He is an actor whose roles vary from social context to social context; it is in fact his acting which establishes a self. Sincerity has micro-rhetoric (ornaments and colors of style) from macro-rhetoric ("the ways in which the poet chooses,shapes,and fits together his larger elements of narrative material "), "The Compositional Structure of the Book of the Duchess," ChauR 9 (1974-75),99-ro7. 4 A convenient brief history and summary of various game theories is provided by David L. Miller, Gods and Games (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), pp. 17-u7. Some works applying the concept of play to ME lit. are V. A. Kolve, The Play Called Corpus Christi (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press,1966); Martin Stevens, "Laughter and Game in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," Speculum, 47 (1972), 65-78; John Leyerle, "The Game and Play of Hero," in Concepts of the Hero, ed. Norman T. Burns and Christopher J. Reagan (Albany...