A Game of Heuene: Word Play and the Meaning of Piers Plowman B by Mary Clemente Davlin (review)

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER acknowledges them. Critical of Robertson's allegorical approach (p. 150), she does not follow those who would deconstruct the Wife's discourse (while admitting that we have only Alice's word for things); nor does she see the Wife primarily as a female voice somehow created by a man, but, emphasizing the secular over the sexual, she notes the spirit ofcarnival that consistently balancesJerome's Lent. Cooper expresses that liberal humanism always under attack from left and right, which, ifnot exactly Chaucer's own philosophy, may be the best current position from which to appreciate the mixture of orthodox and subversive elements in the poet's works.She has produced a genuine guide whoseabundantinformation and good sense make it a sure foundation for seriouswork on The Canterbury Tales. Although especiallyuseful forthose, on anylevel, studying Chaucer for the first time, experienced Chaucerians will find it a helpful companion to The Riverside Chaucer. For teaching or research this is now the first book on The Canterbury Tales to consult after reading the text itself. C. DAVID BENSON University of Connecticut MARY CLEMENTE DAVLIN. A Game o/Heuene: WordPlay andthe Meaning ofPiers Plowman B. Piers PlowmanStudies, vol. 7. Cambridge and Wolfeboro, N.H.: D.S. Brewer, 1989. Pp. 147. $45.00 This book's title comes from Wit's comment at Piers Plowman 9.104 that human speech is a game of heaven: "Language in Piers Plowman," Davlin writes, "is something with which one plays," though that play is also "a way to truth" (p. 1). The ludic theory of Huizinga and some more recent the­ orists is used to assertthat a game involves the reader, as in solving a puzzle, "enjoying the pleasures of surprise and of intensified verbal awareness" (p. 3). Davlin also uses Kermode, rather than the more radical Derrida, to distinguish between straightforward narrative and its "secrets," to argue that the game aspect ofPiers is "designed to draw readers into wisdom, i.e. into the contemplation of divine mysteries as they impinge upon and irradiate ordinary experience; its enigmas, including its word play, invite and demand that readers learn attentive, contemplative, active reading" (p. 3), that is, meditative reading. 186 REVIEWS Many other scholars have commented on wordplay in Piers while empha­ sizing other points; Davlin's notes summarize this work judiciously and with courtesy.Unlike others, however, Davlin has made "the [word)-game of heaven" into her essential thesis; this allows her to synthesize much of the earlier work and to provide a coherent frame for it.Piers is "like litur­ gical texts...[whose) purpose is experience....No liturgical text is meant to be heard simply for...information; neither is Piers Plowman" (p. 5). Readers must "play with" Piers, or they will miss its meanings altogether. The book discusses various sorts of wordplay but focuses especially on puns, for "the form of the pun and the mental process of perceiving puns are models of the nature and purpose of the whole poem" (p. 10). An example is the important pun "son/sun," discussed on pages 14-15.This English pun's bilingual link to the Latin liturgical phrase "sol iusticiae" is used to illuminate 16.92: That oon Iesusa Justicessone moste Iouke inhirchambre....The phrase "a Justices sone" presents the incarnation asa simple story of village hospitality, as Gabrieltells Marythat a judge's son is to rest in herchamber.... But it echoes and seems to mis­ translate the sublime liturgical formula...with its image of the blazing glory of divinity.The Latin phrase is awesome; the English one, earthly and human.Thus the phrase is an emblem of the incarnation itself. [P. 15) The bilingual link had been noticed also by Huppe and by Goldsmith, as is carefully noted, but Davlin gives it her own particular emphasis by making the pun itself central rather than "merely" decorative or playful.Evidently the fruit of years of meditation on the text and its commentaries, Davlin's book is full of such particular illuminations. Such centralized focus on wordplay is, of course, also a feature of postmodernism. But Davlin's meditative deconstruction is not nihilistic: "... puns cannot be 'found' in violation of grammar or the...