Rebels and Rivals: The Contestive Spirit in The Canterbury Tales ed. by Susanna Greer Fein, David Raybin, Peter C. Braeger (review)

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER oretical horizons and sufficient patience,Ratio andInvention will prove an exciting intellectual experience. R. W HANNING Columbia University SUSANNA GREER FEIN, DAVID RAYBIN, and PETER C. BRAEGER, eds. Rebels and Rivals: The Contestive Spirit in The Canterbury Tales. Studies in Medieval Culture, vol. 29. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 1991. Pp. xxiv, 269. $32.95 cloth, $14.95 paper. This volume traces its history from a six-week Institute on Chaucer's Canterbury Tales held at the University ofConnecticut in the summer of 1987. The purpose of the institute, which was sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, was in part to reenergize Chaucer teachers faced with a real or threatened decline in institutional support for medieval studies. "Chaucer's Institute," as it came to be called after the conference coordinating office printed the badges that way, sounds like an impressive success in C. David Benson's account of it, "A Memoir of Chaucer's In­ stitute." The essays in the volume suggest the nature ofthat success, which is based not on unanimity of outlook or adherence to a particular the­ oretical school (or even commitment to consider theory important to Chaucer studies) but on a genial pluralism and a pleasure in writing about The Canterbury Tales. The disclosure of new knowledge is quite varied among these essays, but all are written in accessible language, are focused closely on the texts of the Tales, and take a respectful attitude toward the poet's intentions, in keeping with the goals of the institute (pp. xx-xxi). The volume is carefully edited, with a largely appreciative foreword by Derek Pearsall, an explanatory preface by the editors, and a common reference list and index for all the essays. These features make the volume easy to use and suit it for what I take to be one of its major purposes: to stimulate the thinking of teachers ofChaucer. The thematic thread that runs through the collection is that of strife among the pilgrims, a focus broad enough to accommodate many interests and approaches. Some contributors write about rivalries between Chaucer's characters, as does Bruce Kent Cowgill in his attempt to show the usually 124 REVIEWS undifferentiated Aleyn andJohn in The Reeve's Tale to be in fact rivals in their unfolding narrative. Some take the pilgrims' conflicts as conflicts between ideas, as do Frederick B.Jonassen'salignmentofthe Host with the values and perspectives of the body and the Parson with those of the spirit (and the Pardoner a naysayer to both), and Susan K. Hagen's assertion that the Wife of Bath's call to reject male authority is doomed by critics who accept the priority of logic over rhetoric (a position I find too dismissive of Alison's considerable gifts for a "male" style of hermeneutics and debate). Jay Ruud places ideas in contest, discussing the rich patina of scriptural allusion in The Summoner's Tale and arguing that the focus ofthe tale is on the spirit (and its perversion by FriarJohn in the tale) rather than on anger. Two essays are good examples ofclose formalist readings, and both reveal much about their subjects. William F Woods explores The Knight's Tale as an elaborate pattern of compositional effects. His "Up and Down, To and Fro" is about the way narrative elements in themselves quite inconsequen­ tialcan be seen to add upto a vision ofnaturalcycles, social hierarchies, and spiritual aspirations. Charles Owen provides a meticulous examination of the metrical, figural, andsyntacticpatterns in thefalcon'scomplaint in The Squire's Tale, and the emotional effects they produce, demonstrating the subtle complexity of a passage often among those "forgotten" in critical accounts of Chaucer's style and vision. Susanna Greer Fein is also a very close reader. She draws together the Reeve's cynical lines on aging in his prologue with the narrative trajectory of his tale and his competition with the Miller through the medieval trope of the Wheel oflife. The trope and the attitudes that explain its ubiquity are persuasively discussed and cleverly linked to the mill wheel that superin­ tends the Reeve's story. Her argument locates Chaucer subtly but firmly within a familiar iconic...