Managing Language in Piers Plowman. by Gillian Rudd (review)

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER on The Book of the Duchess, in part no doubt because, as Rooney says, the Gawain-poet gives us "the best known and most fully developed" hunting scenes in Middle English literature. Making careful reference to the poet's models in the hunting manuals and setting his poem in the context of other texts in the alliterative tradition, Rooney is able to provide a good context for reading the hunts in Gawain. Even so, here too the readings seem a bit thin and unsatisfying. She points out, for example, that in part Gawain is working with the narrative "structure of the seduction motif" (p. 186), but she might have gone further into the values and assumptions behind such a motif. Since Gawain, like other alliterative poems, uses the hunt as much for the glory and pleasure of the sport itself, Rooney would have done well to ground her discussion in the context of a chivalric cul­ ture that so valued and ritualized hunting. In short, Rooney had two possible avenues for exploring the hunt in Middle English literature: a poetic consideration that would have focused on figural and metaphoric uses of the hunt, with probably some reference to theoretical work in allegory, metaphor, metonymy, and punning; or a more historical evaluation, especially of the linguistic and cultural kind, that would have examined the hunt as a primarily aristocratic sport, one that developed some distinctive features in England. One or the other of these approaches would have added to our understanding of Middle En­ glish literature and culture-both would have made a substantial contri­ bution. To have done neither is to have lost a real opportunity. SANDRA PIERSON PRIOR Columbia University GILLIAN RUDD. Managing Language in Piers Plowman. Piers Plowman Studies, vol. 9. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1994. Pp. xiv, 246. $63.00. The first paragraph of the introduction gives a concise expression of this book's chief concerns: "Managing Language in Piers Plowman" focuses upon those sections of the poem which explore not only how "words manifestly force the understanding" but also illustrate how the confusion which language can create can be employed to lead mankind towards different appreciations of understanding and away from the 280 REVIEWS desire for "innumerable controversies." In Piers Plowman the quest for salvation provides a framework for Langland's illustration ofhow our reactions to language and knowledge interact to shape, if not actually dictate, the sort of understand­ ing we achieve. (p. ix) Given that focus, Rudd concentrates on passus 8-14 of the B text (the C version is discussed where it differs from B). Rudd's investigation combines interpretive readings of the poem with information drawn from various other medieval texts (favorites are Au­ gustine, Balbus' Catholicon, Henry of Ghent, Robert of Basevorn, and the mystics). Her basic thesis is that Langland employs two fundamentally different but complementary kinds of "discourse": one rational, discursive and "deductive"; the other affective, employing images, parables and fig­ ures, and "emotive." The former Rudd associates with scientia, the latter with sapientia. Neither discourse is in itself capable of adequately expres­ sing the "logos"-the transcendent Referent which is the object of under­ standing and toward which language strives. Langland is acutely aware of these limitations; he engages each discourse so as to glean, and to validate, what it has to offer, at the same time revealing its limits and defects. In a short review one can but sketch the book's development. Part 1 (chapters 1 to 5) sets out the distinction the author would draw between scientia and sapientia, verbum and logos; considers the sources from which teachers might derive authority; presents Reason as the defining human faculty; and argues that Ymaginatif in passus 12 both defends and qualifies its power. Part 2 (chapters 6 to 9) considers the "academic" or scholastic approach to understanding in passus 8-10 and 13 (the Doctor); this mode is useful (Will achieves enough expertise to employ its knowledge and techniques against his own teachers), but at the same time its limitations are revealed (chiefly through criticisms of the teachers implicit in context and their inability to adapt their lessons suitably to Will...