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REVIEWS Far more problematic is Delany's proposition that she may hang alterna­ tive readings on Chaucer's naked texts primarily on the basis of the fact that they are not impossible interpretations. Many of Delany's most pro­ vocatively original observations are also, therefore, her most controversial assertions. For example, Delany reads "Dido" as the double entendre "Die­ do!" (p. 144). Since the plausibility ofher putative puns is contextual (and cumulatively reinforcing), such an individual suggestion cannot validly be challenged as an isolated item. But Delany would dismiss the interpretive controversy itself. Along with the "sincerity fallacy ," she throws off the burden of proof (p. 72n). I allow myself, however, to remain personally unconvinced by several of Delany's suggestions, including the identity of Bernard (pp. 52-53), the priority of the G Prologue on the basis of "another unverifiable subjective hypothesis" (p. 135), the atypically restrictive significance attached to the daisy as "the true saint" of the Legend (p. 115), calling Alceste a suicide (p. 112), and the significance attached to a scribal confusion of Admetus (sc. Almetus) and Alcestis (p. 112). But my most fundamental disagreement with Delany pertains to her outright rejection of the proposition that "a dedication to Queen Anne, or the possibility ofa female readership, or any other considerations of audience, need affect my (or any other) interpreta­ tion" (p. 238) though Delany herself had appealed to the decorum of a presumed courtly production to explain the Legends lack of "outright sca­ tology" (p. 140). In all particulars Delany's provocative readings may be vulnerable to rebuttal. But as a whole, however, it successfully mandates a radical, new, and remarkably positive reappraisal of Chaucer's Legend of Good Women. WILLIAM A. QuINN University of Arkansas JANETTE DILLON. Geoffrey Chaucer. Writers in Their Time Series. New York: St. Martin's, 1993. Pp. x, 212. $39.95. The St. Martin's Writers in Their Time series is designed to show that literary works are "historically and socially grounded, and that any method of study that ignores this is partial and impoverished" (flyleaf). In her introduction to Geoffrey Chaucer, Janette Dillon sets forth her own goal 195 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER with admirable directness: "The aim of this book is to enable the reader with little or no prior knowledge of medieval history to read the works of Chaucer in a historical context" (p. ix). Geoffrey Chaucer contains seven chapters. In the first chapter, "Chaucer's Life and Times," Dillon gives a sketch of Chaucer's life-his birth, educa­ tion, appointments, travels, marriage, death-and of the most important political and historical events ofhis time: the Black Death of1349-50, the death ofEdward and the accession ofRichard in 1377, the Great Schism of 1378, the English Rising of 1381. The second chapter, "Literary Produc­ tion and Audience," will be of more immediate interest to Chaucerians. Dillon reminds us about the methods ofproducticJO in a time when literacy was limited, when there were no copyright laws, and when, even though English was the dominant language in England, it was considered a less sophisticated medium for written texts than either Latin or French. Stu­ dents need to know that most manuscripls of fourteenth-century literary works were copied in "bookshops," that many of the "books" of the time were anthologies of works that had little or no generic relationship to one another--a Chaucerian fabliau might be bound with a toothache remedy and a homily--and that these works would often have been read aloud to members of the household. In her third chapter, "Four Estates," Dillon discusses the four large groupings offolk most often represented in medieval literature: those who worked for the church, those who fought in the wars, those who labored, and women. She groups the four in opposing groups of two, knights and peasants in one section, clerics and women in the other. In the fourth chapter, "Continental England," Dillon accumulates an impressive body of evidence that Chaucer's England was involved politically, economically, and artistically with the Continent. She concludes the chapter with an extended reading of The Parliament ofFowls as a Continental rather than an insular English work. One might...

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