Patterns of Religious Narrative in the Canterbury Tales by Roger Ellis (review)

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER ROGER ELLIS. Patterns of Religious Narrative in the Canterbury Tales. Totowa, N.J.: Barnes & Noble, 1986. Pp. 316. $29.50. This book consists of an introduction, in which Ellis seeks to explain the classificatory scheme fundamental to his work, followed by three parts. Part 1is on"The Narrator as Translator," subtitled"'I Amthe Handmaid of the Lord,' Said Mary (Luke 1:38)." It contains readings of The Clerks Tale, The Pn'oresss Tale, The SecondNuns Tale, and Melibee. Part 2 is entitled "Religious Subjects, Literary Interests and the Sense of a Performance," subtitled"There Was One That Wrestled with Him Until Daybreak (Gene­ sis 32:24)." In this part Ellis considers The Man ofLaws Tale, The Monks Tale, and The Physicians Tale. Part 3 is headed"Towards a Conclusion: The Steward Tasted the Water and It Had Turned Into Wine (John 2:9)." This part contains two chapters, one on The Pardoners Tale, one on The Nuns Pn'ests Tale. Ellis's overwhelming preoccupation throughout the book is on the rela­ tions between fictional narrator (the pilgrim teller), the received matter (fictional, homiletic, dogmatic), narrative forms, and the pilgrim audience within Chaucer's great collection. He seeks to show that The Canterbury Tales includes"religious narratives" varying from apparently transparent vehicles for orthodox dogma (narrator as impersonal translator) to ones where the"narrator's personality" becomes the disturbing focusofattention (often at the cost of narrative and dogmatic coherence), to one where "literary" interests overturn "religious" interests (The Monks Tale), to The Nuns Priests Tale, devoted to"constant shifts ofperspective inimical to the expression of a simple religious view" but displaying that "inconclusive­ ness" which Ellis takes as a mark ofthe great virtue of"inclusiveness." The book is built around the kinds of assumptions about Chaucer's systemat­ ically fictionalized narrators and narrative voices recently and, for this reviewer at least, decisively refuted by Derek Pearsall in his book on The Canterbury Tales (London: Allen and Unwin). But why, areader may well ask, did Ellis select these particular nine works from The Canterbury Tales? After all, a system which classifies The Clerks Tale, Melibee, and The Nuns Priests Tale as "religious narratives" but excludes The Summoner's Tale, The Wife ofBaths Prologue, The Canons¼omans Tale, and The Parsons Tale has not got its principles neatly written over its face. And what are the critical paradigms guiding the commentaries? The second question is not directly addressed, and I shall turn to it in a moment. The first question is confronted in the first chapter. 144 REVIEWS Ellis's procedure here suggests that he himself is rather puzzled: he ponders "how three other tales, those of the Physician, Pardoner and Nun's Priest came to be included," telling us that, while "other reasons" than those offered eleven pages into the chapter "have to be found to support their inclusion," "the tales of Pardoner and Nun's Priest are not too difficult to accommodate" to the "pattern" he is sketching.But if, as he claims, The Nun's Priest's Tale "must surely belong to the class of "moralitee" and yet is "not too difficult to accommodate" to a book on "religious narrative," why not include The Knight's Tale or a host of other tales that could easily be seen in these terms? Ellis replies: "To resolve this difficulty I have applied Procrustean measures and deliberately resorted to the narrow view of religion implied in the Physician's invocation of 'the doctour.' In practice, therefore, I have included only those narratives which explicitly invoke specifically Christian traditions as the source of ultimate authority" (p. 15). But the "therefore" here is not convincing: to find The Nun's Pn·est's Tale included in such terms and The Summoner's Tale excluded is, to say the least, puzzling. T he quotation also includes a statement which indicates one of the most pervasive and mistaken features of the book: its "narrow view of religion. " With this goes an equally "narrow view" of what con­ stitutes "literature." In the brief space remaining I shall try to indicate the issues involved here. Ellis asks, "What, in any case is a religious...