The Chaucer Review: A Volume of Essays in Memory of Judson Boyce Allen (1932–85) ed. by R. A. Shoaf (review)

REVIEWS Against this, and for its transfiguration, Schnapp sets the Cross, which for him is the Commedia's great triumphal image, gathering to itselfall of the poem's positive forces. And here Schnapp's prose and perspective seem to rise andrespondto the universality andsweepofDante'spoeticvision. It is here that Schnapp brings in so profitably his analysis of the breath­ takingly beautiful Ravenna mosaics, especially those of Sant' Apollinare in Classe. (And yet, one wonders why, if Dante wished to develop all that Schnapp so sensitively perceives, the poet put his reference to Classe not here but in Purgatorio 28.) Certainly this discussion ofthe centrality ofthe Cross should be carefully considered by future critics. Almost as effective are Schnapp's analyses ofCacciaguida and ofVirgil. Yet here andelsewherethroughoutthe study'sdiscussionofthe transfigura­ tion of history, there is the assumption that, in effect, Paradiso 14-18 is Dante'sconciserewritingofbook 6 oftheAeneid. So long as we areawareof this assumption, and of its possible dangers in in vacuo analyses, we can greatly profit from the breadth of Schnapp's reading and thinking. Aqui­ nas is, of course, a strong primary source, but so too is Richard of Saint Victor, especially the Benjamin Minor. And the bibliography shows the sweep ofhis secondary reading; but, especially in this discussion ofhistory, one wishes-is it mere campamlismo?-that more use would have been made of Mazzeo and Ferrante, if only to relate the perceptions and approach of this study to theirs. The direct pertinence of this book for Chaucerians is admittedly slight (perhaps pp. 6, 9, 17, 13, 27, 67, e.g.), and yet it serves two other purposes: first, in its delineation of zeitgeist, and secondly (and not facetiously), in being another example of the difference between Dante and Chaucer. As always, one thanks Princeton University Press for a hand­ some, well-illustratedbook, though one wishes at times that the notes were not printed in six-point myopic. HOWARD H. SCHLESS Columbia University R. A. SHOAF, ed. The Chaucer Review: A Volume ofEssays in Memory of Judson Boyce Allen (1932-85). University Park and London: Pennsyl­ vania State University Press, 1986. Pp. 309. $20.00. "The questions great scholars and critics ask are often more valuable than the answers they give." This observation is made byJohn V. Fleming in one 195 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER of the many fine essays in The Chaucer Review: A Volume of Essays in Memory of Judson Boyce Allen (1932-85).Judson Boyce Allen's career was distinguished by the questions he asked and the answers he proposed for them. While some of the essays gathered here by R. A. Shoaf may not satisfy everyone in the answers they offer, all of them raise thoughtful questions. For this quality the volume most fittingly pays tribute to Allen's life and work. The collection opens with a memoir of Allen by R. A. Shoaf, V. A. Kolve, and John A. Alford. It both commemorates Allen's vision and enthusiasm as a scholar and attests to how much Allen's unique and provocative contributions to our field will be missed. The wide range of Allen's scholarly interests is documented in the bibliography included in this collection and mirrored in the fifteen essays by his friends and col­ leagues who contributed to the volume. Appropriately, many of the essays concern medieval poetics.John A. Alford sees the tension between the Wife of Bath and the Clerk in The Canterbury Tales as a clash not only of personalities and ideologies but also of historically opposed modes of discourse-the Wife representing rhetoric and the Clerk dialectic.John V. Fleming puzzles out the attitude toward women in Troilus and Criseyde by focusing on Deiphoebus, who in the Aeneid is betrayed by Helen but in Chaucer is betrayed not by a womanbut byPandarusandTroilus.MarioA. Di Cesare's reading of the Disputationes Camaldulenses of the quattro­ cento Florentine poet and critic Cristoforo Landino presents a strong case for reconsidering the role Landino and other Latin writers played in the developing poetics of the Renaissance. Shoaf considers patterns of petrifac­ tion and astonishment in The Franklin's Tale and interrogates the rhetoric of literalism that pervades the Franklin...