Chaucer and Dante: A Revaluation by Howard H. Schless (review)

REVIEWS many students.Althoughthe information it contains is accurate enough, it is presented in a way which many students in England and America may find difficult to employ.No concessions are made to students of a more literary inclination, and they will probably react by not using it. N.F.BLAKE University of Sheffield HOWARD H. SCHLESS. Chaucer and Dante: A Revaluation. Norman, Okla.: Pilgrim Books, 1984.Pp.xiv, 268.$85.0 0. In ChaucerandDante Howard H.Schiess aims to provide a revaluation of Chaucer's indebtedness to Dante by considering the "vast majority...of posited ascriptions...in terms of their strongest argument for inclusion" (p.ix).Following an introductory chapter which considers aspects of the Chaucer-Dante relationship within its European setting, Schiess examines supposedDantean influence within specific Chaucerian texts.Each chapter opens with some general remarks on Chaucer's borrowings before proceed­ ing to a detailed analysis of each posited ascription. Each ascription is scrupulously accredited to the critic who has advanced "the strongest argument for inclusion"; each such argument is then analysed in detail, often at considerable length.Schiess juxtaposes the Chaucerian text under investigation with its supposed Dantean source and provides standard modern translations of Italian and Latin passages. The great majority of ascriptions derive (Schiess freely admits) from the doctoral dissertation of ]. P. Bethel, "The Influence of Dante on Chaucer's Thought and Ex­ pression" (Harvard University, 1927). At first glance it seems that Schless's method is a direct continuation of the kind ofsourcestudypracticedby Chauceriansin the first twodecadesof this century-critics such as H.M.Cummings,].L.Lowes,].S.P.Tatlock, and Karl Young. But although he is evidently fond of such pioneers, Schiess is acutely aware ofthe limits and defects oftheir methods and ofthe methods he has adapted from them.His own project is, from first to last, hedged with qualifications and with acknowledgments ofits own inherent limitations. The chief limitation of positivistic source study is, I would argue, its tendency to treat the favored text as "live" and its source as "dead"; that is to say, attention is focused on the creative struggles of the 245 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER poet in the foreground (in this case Chaucer) and little attention is paid to the poet he is borrowing from (Dante). Such an imbalance of critical attention is, perhaps, inevitable, for if we bring the Dantean text to life, how can we then confine Virgil to the realm of mortapoesia? And so on. The quiescence of Dante in Chaucer andDante may, then, be seen as a methodological necessity. Schiess concentrates on Chaucer's "makynge" and maintains a discreet silence about Dante's creativity which doubtless aspires to be neutral. Judgments do creep in, however. For example, Schiess remarks that Chaucer, unlike Dante, "was not trying either to indoctrinate or to pass judgment," and he reminds us that we should not "expect to be able to impose Dante's fiercely held doctrine on Chaucer's poetry" (p. 150). Such comparisons tend to make Chaucer seem more homely and acceptable and Dante more alien and strange-more like (in the celebrated formulation of Horace Walpole) "a Methodist parson in Bedlam." The fact that a critic offers himself as an impartial judge of literary indebtedness does not, of course, guarantee impartiality. The account of the Chaucer-Boccaccio relationship offered by Cummings, for example, contains some spectacular distortions and omissions. Schiess is a generous and balanced critic; he judges each case on its merits, censures those critics (such as Lowes) he most admires, disagrees with some of his own past judgments, and does not bend the evidence to fit his own theories. At the same time Schiess implicitly recognizes that the kind of neutral stance that earlier critics purported to speak from is illusory, is itself a critical fiction, something which is a product of literary criticism rather than a precondi­ tion for it. In evaluating Chaucer's use of Dante, Schiess is not exempting himself from literary criticism but is, rather, practicing criticism within tightly defined limits of his own choosing. The limits within which Winthrop Wetherbee explores the Chaucer-Dante relationship in Chaucer and the Poets are more broadly defined. Wetherbee's...