Chaucer’s Fifteenth-Century Audience and the Narrowing of the “Chaucer Tradition”

Chaucer's Fifteenth-Century Audience and the Narrowing of the "Chaucer Tradition" Paul Strohm Indiana University TEPRINCIPAL mpon.sibility of any theory ofliternry history is to account for stylistic change. 1 The shortcoming of a wholly enclosed history of the interrelations of literary texts is that it has no persuasive way to account for the challenge or supplantation of tradition by coun­ ter-tradition, for the replacement of one form or genre by another, for the revival of a form or style whose time might seem wholly to have passed. Presumably, none ofus still believes in the "evolutionary" model ofthe progression oftexts, in which forms and styles pass from youthful vitality to full maturity tosenescence, are born and die out, according to some imperative inherent in their own genetic structure. Yet, in its failure to produce a more satisfactory account of stylistic change, the self-enclosed history of texts causes us to behave as if this evolutionary model still possessed explanatory force. If we are to develop more efficacious models, we must enlarge the scope ofour consideration from the interrelationships ofliterarytexts to include the historical and social environments in which they were composed or written, heard or read. One promising linkbetweenliteraryworks and their environments is through the aesthetics of reception, with its interest in the relationship between artistic styles and their literary publics. Hans-RobertJauss has demonstrated the pertinence of reception-aethetics to the analysis of medieval literature, in his theory that a literary work is received by contemporary readers or hearers within their historically-conditioned 1 I am paraphrasing a comment made by Ralph Cohen at an Indiana University symposium on narrative, October 1980. 3 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER "horizon ofexpectations."2 Still more relevant to a discussion ofstylistic change are the theories of Arnold Hauser, with his recognition that audiences ofdifferent social composition (and different expectations and tastes) may co-exist or overlap or succeed each other. 3 In his view, writers within a period and even individual writers within their careers engage in various stylistic experiments, but a particular style is perpetuated when it finds its "point of attachment" in the encouragement of a socially-defined class or group of readers. So long as the position of this group is secure, the style it encourages is likely to persist; displacement of the group may have consequences for artistic style. One corollary of this view is that the emergence of a new style is likely to be associated with the emergence ofa new group. Another is that the eclipse ofa style is likely to be associated with a major deterioration in the position ofthe group. Hauser's is essentially a theory of reception. To be sure, his hypothesis ofa connection between stylistic tendencies and the different social levels of a society has possible implications for the genesis of works, ifwe were to seek them.4 Finally, though, he has most to tell us about why some styles, once available, flourish, while others, equally available, decline. These introductory comments are meant to frame the discussion of a particular issue in literary history: the striking narrowing in the decades immediately following Chaucer's death of what has been called the 2 "Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory," in New Directions in Literary History, ed. Ralph Cohen (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1974), pp. 11-41. 3 "Arr History Without Names," in The Philosophy ofArt History (Meridian Books, 1963), pp. 207-36, 253-76. 4 Implicit in Hauser'stheory is the notion that the work ofart does not merely "copy" or "reflect" economic conditions, but that it is a socially-conditioned creation co­ ordinate with other social creations. In this he anticipates such neo-Marxian theorists as Raymond Williams (who believes that works ofarr participate in parrerns ofhegemonic expression, which embrace the broadest range ofsocial and cultural creations) and Fredric Jameson (whose theory of structural causality presumes the simultaneous existence within works of art of a wide variety of impulses from contradictory modes of cultural production). See Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (Oxford Paperbacks, 1977), pp. 108-14, and Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious (Ithaca & London: Cornell UP, 1981) pp. 74-102. All these formulations resist the simple...