A Bibliography of Chaucer, 1974–85 by Lorrayne Y. Baird-Lange, Hildegard Schnuttgen (review)

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER example by rendering unto Caesar the things that are his. I must confess my own preference for King Arthur's view to Ross Arthur's at this point. Then there is the concomitant argument that, even in texts wherein Reason actually appears as an important personification, he does not inevitably and invariably rule the roost: one should remember just how relative, indeed limited, Reason can be in, for example, Guillaume de Machaut's]ugement dou Roy de Behaingne or Langland's Piers Plowman. The issue of the status of Reason is the Roman de la Rose is too large to consider here; suffice it to say that readers from Christine de Pisan andJean Gerson onward have regarded assimplistic andreductive the argument that this character is the poet's special spokesman. The great strength of Arthur's book is that it islacking in pretentiousness and hyperbole; the claims it makes are modest, and its conclusions are all the more thought-provoking for that. His ideas about medieval sign theory serve as talismans which protect him in his travels through the strange landscapes of medieval geometry and heraldry and even in the depths of the dark tower (viz., of panallegorization) itself, where many a historical critic lies captive, cut offforever from what the vernacular text actually has to say for itself- though, quite clearly, Arthur has felt that particular temptation. His user-friendly semioticsdeserve a wide audience. This book can even be recommended to those (still unreconstructed) critics who wince at the very term "semiotics": here they will find little to annoy and much to enjoy. But caveat /ector- there is nothing in medieval semiotics which renders those moral readings inevitable. They are very much due to the "free will" of this particular "institutor." A.J. MINNIS University of New York LORRAYNE Y.BAIRD-LANGE and HILDEGARD SCHNUTTGEN. A Bib/iogra­ phy o/Chaucer, 1974-85. Hamden, Conn.: ArchonBooks, 1988. Pp. lxxv, 344. $39.50 Lorrayne Baird-Lange and Hildegard Schnuttgen's bibliography extends the comprehensive coverage of Chaucer studies begun by Eleanor Ham­ mond (studies to 1908) and continued by Dudley Griffith (1908-53), William R. Crawford (1954-63), and Baird-Lange herself (1964-73). As a 248 REVIEWS result, the volume is part ofthe standard bibliography of Chaucer, follow­ ing the format of its predecessors and, like them, serving as a convenient one-volume reference for the years covered. It appears in the midst of an explosion of Chaucer bibliographies ofvarious sorts (see Introduction, pp. Iii-Iv) and will, no doubt, underpin the continued efforts of other bibli­ ographers, the Variorum editors, and students and scholars alike. It is a major work. In my opinion, however, it missed an opportunity to go beyond its predecessors by not capitalizing the annotations available for the great majority of its entries, those available in the annual Studies in the Age of Chaucer bibliographies. To be sure, the topical arrangement ofthe entries and the short identifications ofsubject matter in brackets that accompany many ofthem are helpful to a point. But the much more detailed annota­ tions of the SAC bibliographies would have made available much more specific information at great convenience and could have supplanted much ofthe generouscross listing. No doubtsuch a project would have been more expensive and more complicated, but Baird-Lange, as bibliographer ofthe New Chaucer Society since 1980, might have gotten support from the society and steered the book through difficulties of copyright and access to past records. Ifsuch a precedent had been set, Chaucer bibliography might have benefited for generations to come, especially since convenience be­ comes increasingly important as Chaucer studies continue to burgeon. My other concern with the volume is its tendency to exaggerate the expansion of Chaucer scholarship by duplication. Certainly, a comprehen­ sive bibliography had better err in the direction of excess than omission, but the overkillis distracting here. Among the 2, 500 + entries that pertain to Chaucer studies and the near 400 on "Backgrounds," Recordings," and "Pedagogy," too many appear more than once. Atleast 20 ofthe 348 entries under "General Criticism" are duplicated elsewhere in the work, on several occasions with different lists of reviews or with inaccurate...