The Age of Saturn: Literature and History in the Canterbury Tales by Peter Brown, Andrew butcher (review)

REVIEWS considers patterns of feminine and masculine persuasion as exemplified, respectively, in The Tale ofMelibee and The Parsons Tale. Cowgill presents an innovative argument that I found immediately convincing and il­ luminating. She shows that women persuaders in the Tales almost always are involved in dialogue with those whom they hope to influence, whereas a masculine persuader such as the Parson uses the disembodied but im­ plicitly masculine voice of monologic and hierarchical authority. There is no doubt that these essays advance our critical understanding of this group oftales by several degrees. As Benson notes, all the contributors share an agenda of reevaluation, and the essays show a way out of the miasma ofironizing interpretations that claim to be historical but are not. In the common insistence that these tales be treated as serious works ofart and situated within appropriate religious, intellectual, and literary con­ texts, many will find the inspiration for further study, exploration, and appreciation. THOMAS H. BESTUL University of Nebraska, Lincoln PETER BROWN and ANDREW BUTCHER. The Age ofSaturn: Literature and History in the Canterbury Tales. Oxford and New York: Blackwell, 1991. Pp. ix, 296. $49.95. The Age ofSaturn, relating Chaucer's Tales with fourteenth-century his­ tory, comes in the wake of a spate of works by David Aers, Paul Strohm, Peggy Knapp, Lee Patterson, D. W Robertson, and others making the same attempt in the last five years. These works testify both to renewed interest in Chaucer's mirroring of his own times and to the explosion of theoretical interest in historical interpretation generated by traditional historical criticism, the various Marxist schools, the New Historicism, and deconstructionism. Brown and Butcher appear to have been influenced by all ofthese currents though least by the deconstructionists, whom they see as having created a "hell of relativity" (p. 14). In placing themselves among the schools, Brown and Butcher wish to argue that Chaucer was not the conservative posited by the "exegetical school" but a radical Christian whose meaning can, paradoxically, be discovered through the conservative iconographic procedures of "Robert101 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER sonian criticism." Iconographic and iconological studies in their view need not lead to the conservative or "hegemonic" findings that Lee Patterson argues are necessarily implicit in them. Yet Butcher and Brown begin with modern political terminology, and it is not really adequate to medieval reality. Is Wyclif with his temporal court absolutism and his neo­ Spiritualist critique of the Church a conservative or a radical? Is he neither of these? It may not be incorrect to call Chaucer a radical Christian, but to mean much in using this language one must have a clear sense of how he relates to other "radicals" such as Wyclif, the Spiritualist Franciscans, the author of Piers Plowman, or Dante. In pursuing the "radical Christian" notion, Brown and Butcher posit a reflection of a series of social crises in major Chaucerian tales, but these interpretations often have little to do with radicalism or Christianity. Their attractive interpretation of The Pardoner's Tale argues that it both reflects and questions aspects of the Wycliffite critique of the Church. Their useful disquisition on The Knight's Tale argues that it addresses both the internal instability of England in the period 1388-97 and its peace process. The remaining analyses of the tales posit like historical mirrorings, often per­ suasive ones, but hardly radical Christian expressions. Brown and Butcher run into the greatest trouble when theyposit detailed relationships between Chaucer's poetry and contemporary figures and situations. For example, one doubts that Chaucer's patrons, Richard II as king orJohn of Gaunt as duke of Lancaster, would have enthusiastically patronized a poet who put forth a tale in which Gaunt is presented as the leader, Duke Theseus, and Richard II as his subordinate, Palamon. The Wzfe a/Bath's Tale, as our authors see it, is not about the wooltrade or Bath or Epicurean materialism or LollardJovinianism but "dissolve(s) any sense of stable relationship between poet and audience" (p. 243) and questions the position of the poet within the society of the royal court. The Squire's Tale and The Franklin's Tale question aristocratic value systems with their...