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REVIEWS DAVID AERS. Community, Gender, and IndividualIdentity: English Writ� ing, 1360-1430. London and New York: Routledge, 1988. Pp. viii, 215.$49.95 From David Aers, reader in the School ofEnglish and American Studies at the University of East Anglia, we have come to expect provocative work lucidly argued and solidlysupportedin historical research withouta trace of pedantry.The present book does not disappoint.To call this-to borrow a phrase from Robert O.Payne-"the historical criticism we need" is not to suppress differences among left sociological historicists, or to imply that only one historicism will answer all our needs.But the differences are, for the present reviewer, fraternal ones, and the version of historicism congenial. The Introduction takes its stand on a model defined by, among others, Mikhail Bakhtin (the work of Norbert Elias would be equally relevant). This model holds that "linguistic, social, and subjective processes...are ultimately understood as bound together in the structure and history of particular communities" with "their economies and their social relations, their discourses and practises" (p. 3). Therefore, struggle, change, am­ bivalence, contradiction, and anxiety will characterize language, liter­ ature, and personality as they did social life in the later Middle Ages. The book is thus polemical, its target a competing model-we might call it an idealist one-which, taking orthodox Roman Catholic ideology as nor­ mative rather than as expressive of certain social interests, produces a unified, consensual Middle Ages.The bete noire here is D.W Robertson, but also included are the moralistic "priestly caste" (Aers borrows the phrase from Stephen Knight) and critics who use language "in an anti­ historical, idealized, and irresponsibly metaphoric sense" (p.208). Aers explores the social and subjective dimensions of "cultural hetero­ geneity in late medieval England" (p. 17) through four of its literary monuments, with a chapter devoted to each.The first is Piers Plowman. The chapter traces Langland's thinking on poverty as it weaves back and forth between two extremes: the evangelistic-Franciscan call for charitable and nonjudgmental generosity and a newer "welfare bum" attitude of suspicious hostility.Langland's ambivalence mirrors contemporary social theory and fact, both in flux. 239 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER Why the shift in theories of poverty? Aers emphasizes postplague de­ population of the manorial working classes, which enabled them to resist the employer and make new demands, thus provoking the new (employ­ ers') doctrine of opportunistic poverty. Medieval social historians continue to debate the question of where to locate the decisive factors in long-term social and ideological change. To foreground the plague is perhaps to downplay already existing economic factors which the plague sharply intensified and without which its political effects could not have been so dramatic: the competition and example of urban money economy, social mobility from manor to town, production for the market, rising costs of demesne cultivation, and rising wages. Consistent with the tendency to lessen economicfactors-particularly the role ofthe urbanbourgeoisie-is Aers's remark that "the only class that could offer any challenge to the late medieval ruling classes, in rural, urban, or national spheres, was the peasantry" (p. 37). In light ofthe plethora ofeffective challenges-whether economic, legal, or armed-offered by the urban bourgeoisie to the feudal ruling classes of Italy, France, Germany, the Low Countries, and England, this assertion seems simply perverse. I find it equally unconvincing in its source, Rodney Hilton's claim to the same effect. And it is inconsistent with Aers's stress throughout on "the market." One need not agree with Aers that the conclusion to Piers is "profoundly subversive" (p. 66) to appreciate his skillful elicitation ofLangland's inner debate as worked through in this great poem with its polarities, contradictions, evasions, and-as Aers so finely shows-inadequacies. With the second exemplary text, The Book ofMargery Kempe, we are squarely within the urban economy and its "decisive role in shaping [Margery Kempe's] identity" (p. 77). The three areas in which this is evoked are her quantitative consciousness even in spiritual matters, her (relative) autonomy or free agency and sense of individuality, and her rupture with the "sacred" nuclear family. Yet, true to the theme of heterogeneity...

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