From Pearl to Gawain: Forme to Fynisment by Robert J. Blanch and Julian N. Wasserman (review)

REVIEWS is his ability to explain various approaches and their conclusions in "jargon-free" language (p. viii). Readers looking for bibliographical ref­ erences will not be disappointed here or throughout the volume. After Beidler's introduction are more general introductions to the critical methodologies provided by Ross C. Murfin as part ofthe series; then essays devoted to the Prologue and Tale follow. There are a few spots of redundancy here, but particularly given the audience the volume is attempting to reach, the reinforcement will likely be welcomed. Readers ofChaucer scholarship will recognize the names Lee Patterson, Laurie Finke, Louise 0. Fradenburg, H. Marshall Leicester, Jr., and Elaine Tuttle Hansen. Clearly each has contributed to Chaucer scholar­ ship in the last decade, and in many cases, they have shaped the future ofChaucer studies. Thus, introducing students to these scholars is in it­ selfan important activity. The essays are original, rather than excerpted from longer works by the same authors. The essays were written for stu­ dents, yet they maintain scholarly rigor. Skillful instructors will be able to demonstrate to their students the similarities and differences in Patterson's New Historicist and Finke's Marxist essays. The same ac­ tivity could be done with Fradenburg's psychoanalytical, Leicester's de­ constructionist, and Hansen's feminist essays. More advanced readers of Chaucer will find new insights into the Prologue and Tale as well. Whether Beidler's volume is used in a literature survey, an introduc­ tion to literary criticism course, or a Chaucer course, it will prove a valu­ able addition. DANIEL F. PIGG University of Tennessee at Martin ROBERTJ. BLANCH andJuLIAN N. WASSERMAN. From Pearl to Gawain: Forme to Fynisment. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1995. Pp. 207. $39.95. Robert J. Blanch andJulian N. Wasserman are well known for their publications on the Gawain-poet. From Pearl to Gawain develops their earlier interests (in medieval law and semiotics) and also pursues some new themes, such as the iconography ofhands in the text and the man­ uscript illuminations, and the ways in which the poet positions himself as narrator through the use ofpersonal pronouns. As the authors point 225 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER out in the introduction, previous criticism on the Gawain-poet has tended to treat the poet's works in isolation. Thus, there are many books solely devoted to Gawain or Pearl, and still more books that discuss all four poems in separate chapters; but we have no detailed study of the common ground that is covered by all four poems and that reveals them, so obviously, to be the oeuvre of a single author. From Pearl to Gawain aims to fill this gap, and it exemplifies both the possibilities and the pitfalls of a holistic approach to the Gawain-poet. Blanch and Wasserman succeed in establishing interesting connec­ tions between the four poems, and in catching some of the peculiar turns of the poet's mind. One chapter, for example, draws attention to the poet's interest in hands, an interest so strong that he can hardly mention God without also imagining the divine "hondes" that make and unmake creation. Another chapter makes interesting comparisons between the poet's legalistic preoccupation with contracts in Gawain and the "covenants" made between God and man in Patience and Cleanness. The argument leads neatly to the best chapter of the book, on the subject of miracles, those moments in which the ordinary laws of nature, the covenants of kynde, are briefly suspended. While many other critics have arrived at the idea that all of the Gawain-poet's works deal with sudden encounters between a strange order of nature (divine, heav­ enly, or supernatural) and the world ofour ordinary experience, Blanch and Wasserman take this observation as a point of departure for some mutually illuminating analyses of passages from all four poems, spiced with pertinent comments on the nature of miracles by Augustine and Aquinas. As in all other chapters, references to secondary works are plentiful, although the provision of comparative material from primary sources is less generous, and rather limited in range by a marked pref­ erence for the Doctors of the Church. While vindicating some of their claims...