Chaucer in the Eighties ed. by Julian N. Wasserman, Robert J. Blanch (review)

REVIEWS mistakably echoes the Vulgate wording of Genesis 27:36 in the lament of the twice-cheatedEsau: 'Justevocatum est nomenejusJacob; supplantavit enim me en altera vice." Like the Authorized Version ("Is he not rightly namedJacob? for he hath supplantedme those two times") the Pearlpoet uses the word "supplanters" to denote those who chase a brother from his heritage. It shouldnot, therefore, be translated "usurpers" and the deliber­ ately direct allusion to the biblical source thus ignored. The late Paul de Man once "translated" Walter Benjamin's title "The Task of the Translator" ("Die Aufgabe des Uebersetzers") as "The Giving-Up of theTranslator" (from Germanaufgeben, "to give up"). Far from giving up, Vantuono's version honestly reflects the difficult task of translating so perfect a replica of medieval poetic art. There are many good stanzas and some excellent lines in Vantuono's translation, and it does justice to the music of the poem as a whole. DOROTHEE METLITZKI Yale University JULIAN N. WASSERMAN and ROBERT J. BLANCH, eds. Chaucer in the Eighties. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1986. Pp. xx, 258. $17.50 paper. With the publication of this book, the fourth collection of essays to honor Rossell Hope Robbins, the amount of scholarship generated in tribute to the distinguished medievalist seems on the verge of catching up with the critical mass produced in a long and varied career by Robbins himself. These essays, originally papers delivered at "Chaucer at Albany II," exhibit the wide-ranging interests of their dedicatee. As is often the case with collections of this sort, the essays are methodologically eclectic. In their introduction to the volume editors Wasserman and Blanch call attention to this feature, noting the collection's democratic mingling of distinctly different critical methods: here feminist and Marxist approaches stand side by side with formalist readings and essays appealing to the "intellectual analogue as 'historical context' " (p. xviii). The editors endorse this multi­ plicity of critical voices, even if, they admit, their cumulative utterance offers more of a "'Kek, kek, kokkow, quek quek' than of the harmonious 'roundel...imaked in Fraunce"' (p. xvii). 201 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER The greater proportion ofthe essays is given over to various forms ofwhat the editors call "traditional ways ofreading Chaucer" (p. xviii), ranging from Margaret Jennings's study of scribal variants in manuscripts ofthe Troilus to Allen Frantzen's formalist analysis of the function ofthe dreams in that work. Jennings's wonderfully humorous essay on the scribal inter­ ventions in the love scene ofbook 3 might have provided the lead essay for the entire collection: her discussion ofthe uncompromising variability and interdependence oftext, meaning, and reception furnishes a useful re­ minder ofthe provisionary ground on which all critical pronouncements are based. However much Chaucer himselfmay have been aware of the provisionary nature ofall writing, some critics will still comfortably and unproblematically ascribe to his narratives a logic and closure that the poet himself seems deliberately to have shied away from. Such is Larry D. Benson's "The 'Love-Tydynges' in Chaucer's House ofFame," which offers yet another attempt to identify that poem's "man ofgret auctorite" and his message. Other essays in this volume are not concerned with directing attention to the precise local circumstances ofChaucer's works but rather aim to situate them against the general backdrop of convention and tradition which informedhis unique poetic vision. Thus Renate HaasilluminatesChaucer's exploitation of the tradition oflament for the dead, while Laurel Braswell examines Chaucer's deployment ofhagiographical motifs. Shinsuke Ando remarks on the poet's appropriation of elements of "English" diction; Blanch and Wasserman detail the special meanings Chaucer gives to "white and red" throughout his work, showing how Palamon and Arcite subvert those meanings in TheKnight's Tale. William Kamowski's essay onMelibee and The Clerk's Tale attempts tolink the fictional audience's response to the tales with that ofan ill-defined "real audience." This collection is at its best when individual essays enter into significant dialogue with each other. Much of the critical energy of the book is concentrated in the sequence ofessays by Ames, Delany, and Diamond that "take up questions involving women" (p. xvi). To Ames's and...