The Pattern of Judgment in the Queste and Cleanness by Charlotte C. Morse (review)

REVIEWS 75 ff.) casts light on a great deal of Chaucer's poetry. His filling in of what Paull Franklin Baum referred to as "Chaucer's silences" concerning the horrors of the Peasants' Revolt (pp. 150-60) and Chaucer's Italian journeys (pp. 119-31) relates these experiences directly to Chaucer's art. There is a touch of the schoolmaster in his treatment, but in his modest, informed, and beautifully illustrated volume, Brewer has provided an accurate and perceptive foundation for the appreciation of Chaucer's poetry. JoHN H. F1sHER University of Tennessee CHARLOTTE C. MoRsE, The Pattern of fudgment in the Queste and Clean­ ness. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1978. Pp. 238. $16.50. Charlotte C. Morse's The Pattern of fudgment in the Queste and Cleanness is a book deserving special acclaim. Its structure is tripartite, with an Introduction and an Epilogue framing three chapters, "The Paradigm of the Vessel as an Image of Man," "The Queste del Saint Graal and Malory's Tale of the Sankgreal," and "Cleanness." The work is well documented, with footnotes set conveniently at the bottom of the pages, and there is an extensive Bibliography at the end of the volume. In her Introduction, Morse points out that though the Queste and Cleanness are quite dissimilar, the metaphor of man as a vessel, to be filled with either good or evil, leading to either salvation or damnation, is central to both authors' art. Since monks and hermits interpret knights' adventures to knights in the Queste, that work unfolds more easily; Cleanness, on the other hand, "has exasperated some readers with its seeming incoherence and the poet's puzzling insistence that filth of the flesh makes God angry as other sins do not" (p. 2). In "Vessels as Images of Man," the first of five sections in Chapter 2, Professor Morse refers (p. 14) to Romans 9:20-23, in which Paul promises rewards to men who are vessels of mercy and threatens destruction to those who are vessels of wrath. In the second section, "The Vessel of Wrath: Adultery, Idolatry, and Murder," she notes that since every man is potentially God's bride, when he descends to lechery, he commits spiritual adultery and idolatry. Her authority lies in the Old Testament, 177 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER where the Hebrew word zanah means both 'to fornicate' and 'to worship idols'. Her third section, "The Concept of Sacrilege," springs logically from the two preceding parts, for if a man is consecrated to God, when he pollutes the vessel of his body and soul through adultery, idolatry, and murder, he spreads the defilement to others in a wasteland of sin and commits sacrilege. In the fourth section, "The Vessel of Mercy: Ritual Purity," Morse shows how the Christian leaves the wasteland of sin through the ritual cleansing of baptism and penance. This ritual cleansing is necessary if one is to reach the goal of the Beatific Vision. In the Queste, the con­ cept of cleanness seems to be treated simply, but in Cleanness, "appar­ ently different meanings of the word have led some critics to argue that the poem lacks coherence" (p. 39). Pointing ahead to her reading of Cleanness in Chapter 4, Morse gives a detailed etymology of the word clean toestablish that clannesse in Middle English connotes a broad moral meaning, a state of spiritual perfection in which the outer physical mani­ festation is only a sign of the inner soul. In the Queste, Galahad, the Christ figure, typifies clannesse; in the verse homily, those who conform to Christ, such as Noah and Abraham, represent the ideal. Journey to God is the subject of the last section of Chapter 2, "Christian Banquet: Rite of Fellowship and Rite of Marriage." The banquet, at which Christ and the members of his Church are united, is described in the Parable of the Wedding Feast in the Prologue of Cleanness. On earth, this banquet is prefigured in the sacrament of the Eucharist, which joins men at the altar in the rite of fellowship. Morse concludes this logically constructed chapter, which forms the basis for what follows, with an excellent summary, pp. 52-55, of medieval...