Chaucer Aloud: The Varieties of Textual Interpretation by Betsy Bowden (review)

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER BETSY BOWDEN. Chaucer Aloud: The Varieties a/Textual Interpretation. Middle Ages Series. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987. Pp. xiv, 368. Accompanying cassette tape. $44.95. Between 1979 and 1983, Betsy Bowden persuaded thirty-two English, Canadian, and American academicians to record performances of five notable cruces in The Canterbury Tales: A. 118-62, C. 329-75, C. 895968 , E. 1213-1320, and E. 2320-2418. The project began in the hope of gatheringaural evidence about how Chaucerian scholarsperformlinesthat pose significant interpretative problems. However, Bowden found that at such cruces the "smoothest of readers-aloud is likely to stumble, stutter, skip, or at best stop performing and start reciting" (p. 6). Less problematic lines leading up to or away from the cruces, then, become the subjects of analysis. Drawing on folklore for an understanding of variation, Bowden contends in her book that "equally well-prepared and sensitive readers may have divergent yet valid responses to three Canterbury pilgrims" (p. 3). The cassette tape accompanyingthe book contains 100 separate "cuts"the "Chaucer Tapes"-which constitute the aural evidence for Bowden's "varieties of textual interpretation." The quality of the cuts is confessedly uneven, "the equivalent of anthropological field recordings" (p. 22). In some, readers compete with heavy traffic or tape buzz; in others, campus carillons toll the hour. For the most part, however, the cuts are intelligible, and the readings range from standard classroom recitation to intriguing dramatic performance. The cuts are given alphanumerical identification (A2, B4), Appendix A listing the readers who wish to be identified. One set of chapters presents "performance analysis" of the cuts as syn­ chronic evidence for variety. Since Bowden claims that "performance analy­ sis is busy being born" (p. 14), an example ofher method may be germane. On first hearing, four cuts-C2, 02, E4, and E5 (the Prioress)-elicited from Bowden the same observation, "Awwww," while others gave rise to "Thinks she's the cat's pajamas" or "Oh, lay offit, bitch" (p. 72). Gradually, Bowden refines such initial impressions, producing, for example, this analysis of cut 05 (A. 146-55): Chaucer-the-man actively disliking dogs. 1. 146-vocal frown at "houndes." 11. 148-49-yapping mutts get what they deserve. 1. 150-entire line means the opposite, as Augustinian irony. 186 REVIEWS 11. 151-55-don't blame her for physical appearance; "ffffair fffforheed" as hesitation to mention it (cf. D7). 1. 156-stress on "nat" helps create tolerant narrator (cf. D7). [Pp. 67-68) In the analysis of neglected prosodic features such as pitch, stress, pause, loudness, and some subjective features such as "oral onomatopoeia" (in which the voice does what it says), this book explores uncharted waters, but too often it abandons objective analysis for impressionistic description. Another set of chapters, based on reception aesthetics and Caroline Spurgeon's magisterial Five Hundred Years ofChaucer Criticism andAllu­ sion, studies the responses of pre-Victorian readers, whose frequently execrable modernizations (e.g., Lipscomb's) or additions (e.g., The Tale of Beryn) or paintings (e.g., Stothard's) are read as diachronic evidence of variety, despite the philologicalinexpertness and historical misinformation of their authors. Bowden relegates a third source of evidence, varying interpretations in contemporary criticism, to bibliographical notes. Bowden declares a plethora of purposes-attacking New Critics, re­ habilitating the language of New Criticism, deconstructing the scholarly "pretense of proclaimed authority," (p. 48), disproving certain tenets of reception theory, analyzing textual features that allow for variety- and the writing tends to be discursive.Furthermore, chapters appear to be autono­ mous (Spurgeon, for instance, is cited in full seven times), and some organizational problems crop up: "I refuse to go on. Rather than fulfill readers' culture-bound expectations of linear progression from beginning to end of the passage, I will not summarize what I already said about GP 11. 142-62" (pp. 74-75). Bowden's subjectivist stance is disarming, but the methodology is not without problems. For instance, Bowden attributes her preference for a reading of A 156 that stresses the personal pronoun-"For, hardily, she was nat undergrowe"-to the circumstances of her own youth, an insight that precludes further analysis. What, one wonders...