Chaucerian Realism by Robert Myles (review)

REVIEWS Edwards explores the contexts of Osbern Bokenham's Legendys of Hooly Wummen through a codicological analysis of BL MS Arundel 327. Thomas G. Duncan reopens the difficult question of the meter of Middle English lyrics, with an analysis of "Mirie it is" and "Lord thou clepedest me," arguing that the formal constraint on these lyrics was principally syllabic. In a very characteristic "Introductory Address," Dr. Doyle himself sur­ veys the progress ofmanuscript studies and suggests work that needs to be done. As with everything he writes, this is briefand packed with a range of information that will be valuable to all those working with manuscripts. It is a fitting opener for this fine volume. THORLAC TURVILLE-PETRE University of Nottingham ROBERT MYLES. Chaucerian Realism. Chaucer Studies, vol. 20. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1994. Pp. 153. $53.00. Robert Myles's study of Chaucerian realism has two main aims. In the first phase ofhis study, Myles seeks to correct faulty accounts ofChaucer's philo­ sophical sympathies; indeed, he begins his study with this contra: "Con­ trary to much current opinion, Chaucer is a realist in many senses" (p. 1). Here, Myles challenges the recent tendency to see Chaucer as a nominalist, and instead argues that the poet was a realist in his metaphysics and epis­ temology as well as in his understanding of language and psychology. Myles's project extends beyond this corrective phase, however, to a positive statement about how realism informs Chaucer's poetry. Like his predeces­ sors, who have used "Chaucerian" to describe the poet's approach to trag­ edy, irony, belief, and theatricality, Myles argues that realism is essential to Chaucer's craft. In particular, he claims that realism provides Chaucer with a basis for his portrayal of characters and their intentions. In the preliminary stage of his study, in which he locates Chaucer in a realist rather than a nominalist tradition, Myles is generally persuasive and informative. He begins by suggesting that those who have associated Chaucer with nominalism have frequently done so by employing an over­ simplified definition ofrealism. Most notably, they have equated realism in general with a more specific strand ofthe tradition, Cratylic realism, which holds that "there is a natural, real relationship between a word and a 257 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER thing-that somehow the essence ofa chair is reflected or contained in the sound ofthe word 'chair'" (p, 2), But, as Myles points out, realist thinkers as diverse as Socrates, Augustine, Boethius, and Dante saw the relationship between word and thing as conventional. Consequently, Chaucer's exam­ ination ofthe relationship between word and deed in such places as The General Prologue to T he Canterbury Tales, the proem to book 2 ofTroilus and Criseyde, and the lyric poem "Lak: ofStedfastnesse" does not serve to classify him as an antirealist. Moreover, Myles suggests, critics who have placed Chaucer among the nominalists have mistakenly equated nominalism with "post-Saussurian language theory" (p. 14). This assertion leads Myles to a critique ofthe "major misunderstandings" often scholars who have sought to explain Chaucer's poetry in nominalist terms, beginning with Robert Jordan's Chaucer's Poetics and the Modern Reader (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987) and including Russell Peck's influential article, "Chaucer and the Nominalist Questions" (Speculum 53 (1978}: 745-60), as well as studies by John Gardner, P. B. Taylor, and Rodney Delasanta. While Myles is concerned with all aspects ofChaucer's realism, he pays particular attention to the ethical dimension of the poet's philosophical allegiances. For Chaucer, as for most thinkers ofthe Middle Ages, "the will is the ethical center ofthe speech act" (p. 27). In support ofhis portrait of Chaucer as an ethical realist, Myles provides an extended survey ofmedi­ eval and modern theories ofintentionality. Here, Myles finds a high degree of consistency between medieval thinkers, such as Boethius and Duns Scotus, and modern ones, such as Paul Ricoeur and John Searle, in seeing linguistic utterances as intentional mental acts. It is against this extended tradition ofthinking about intentionality that Myles places Chaucer's fre­ quent probing of the "entente" and "entencioun" of his characters; like both ancient and modern thinkers, Chaucer is interested in...