Chaucer’s England: Literature in Historical Context ed. by Barbara Hanawalt (review)

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER brought up to date- this book possesses a straightforward clarity and a lack ofpretense that lends its own kind ofluster and authority to a useful study. DOLORES WARWICK FRESE University of Notre Dame BARBARA HANAWALT, ed. Chaucer's England: Literature in Historical Context. Medieval Studies at Minnesota, vol. 4. Minneapolis: Univer­ sity of Minnesota Press, 1992. Pp. xxii, 240. $39.95 cloth; $16.95 paper. In this entertaining and valuable volume Barbara Hanawalt gathers essays by five distinguished scholars whose work clearly belongs to the most traditional side of the discipline we know as "history," with essays by five distinguished scholars whose concerns are those conventionally classified as "literature and culture" or "cultural studies." After the editor's introduc­ tion, the book isorganizedin three parts: "The Political Context," "London as a Literary Setting," and "Literature of the Countryside." Part 1 opens with an essay by Michael Bennett, "The Court ofRichard II and the Promotion of Literature." Bennett wants to persuade his readers that Richard II and his court should beconsideredas a majorcause, perhaps the first cause, in "the sudden scaling of the heights of vernacular elo­ quence." In pursuing this ambition, Bennett adds no new empirical evi­ dence. He seems driven by an assumption that something called "as­ surance" in the poetry of Chaucer, Gower, and the Gawain-poet "could only come from the highest sponsorship," by which he means not the one whom Milton recorded as visiting his slumbers nightly to govern his song but Richard II and his court. The evidence for such "sponsorship" is lacking, however. Bennett himself acknowledges the "lack of documenta­ tion ofthe king's patronage to Chaucer in his capacity as a poet," while he also notes that any "evidence for a connection between the court ofRichard II and the Gawain-poet is highly circumstantial," but this "problem" does not deter him from his quest. Thenext essayis Paul Strohm's "Saving the Appearances: Chaucer'sPurse and the Fabrication ofthe Lancastrian Claim." This is a fascinating study of the "Lancastrian propaganda machine" at work. It examines the processes through which Henry's claims to the throne were forged in 1399-1400. 210 REVIEWS Strohm brings out "the eccentric and contradictory nature" of Henry's claims, showing how these contradictions emerged and how they were handled in image and narrative. He sets The Complaint ofChaucer to His Purse in this "generative matrix," demonstrating how the poet's "fresh and conceptually energetic fabrication" produces a thoroughly distinctive de­ fense of Henry. In this perspective we come to see the "exchange-value of Chaucer's poem" and understand why Henry sought "to enlist litterateurs in his dynastic cause." After this comes Nigel Saul's essay on "Chaucer and Gentility." A substantial part of the essay is on the concept of gentility in the Middle Ages. It maintains contradictory arguments. On the one hand, Saul claims that for "over half a millennium" gentility was universally defined in the "qualitative" way found in the passages he extracts from three poems by Chaucer. There is, therefore, no question ofsignificantculturalchange. On the other hand, Saul claims that "the character of the old aristocratic ethic was being re-defined" in the later Middle Ages in ways that made lineage and pedigree "no longer so important" and led to the legitimization of "rank and social position" by "possession of 'virtue'." Furthermore, Saul asserts that such culturalchanges were "not entirelydivorced" from changes in "contemporary reality." Saul appears not to notice the contradictions here. Saul's essay also includes a discussion of "gentility" in Chaucer's Gentilesse, The Wife ofBath's Tale and The Franklin's Prologue and Tale. Saul finds that Chaucer's work "evinces little interest in the world of the market" (texts such as The Shipman's Tale, The Cook's Tale, The Wzfe of Bath's Prologue, and The Canon's Yeoman's Prologue and Tale are not mentioned), while his ethical discourse, "derived largely from classical antique and Christian sources," assesses gentility "in qualitative terms" those that had informed Europe for "over half a millennium" before Chaucer. Nevertheless, in a reproduction of the contradiction remarked above, Chaucer is also said to reflect changes in the...