The Summoner’s Tale. A Variorum Edition of the Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, Vol. 2 ed. by John F. Plummer III (review)

REVIEWS JOHN F.PLUMMER III, ed.The Summoner's Tale. A Variorum Edition ofthe Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, Vol. 2, The Canterbury Tales, Part 7. Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press, 199 5. Pp. xxviii, 242.$47.50. John Plummer's very welcome and useful contribution to the emerging Variorum enterprise offers Chaucerians an encouraging perspective on the relationship of scholarship to literary reception. While many of Chaucer's well-admired tales have enjoyed their acclaim with or with­ out the informing apparatus ofmodern scholarship, The Summoner's Tale, as this Variorum edition suggests, owes a larger portion of its received admiration to relatively recent research.As Plummer observes, the un­ comfortable ambivalence that the tale has generated in readers because ofits sordidness and triviality on the one hand and its narrative artistry on the other has been "assuaged ...by the discovery in recent years that The Summoner's Prologue and Tale is saturated with allusions to contem­ porary theological-political issues" (p. 3). The concentration of such material-given all the more emphasis in a variorum format-has prompted an increasingly favorable and more sophisticated reception for The Summoner's Tale. Plummer's survey of the criticism attests espe­ cially to a growing appreciation for Chaucer's purposeful fusions of the sacred and the sordid, for his marshalling of realistic detail toward deft characterization, and for intricate thematic dynamics that override the scurrility of the surface narrative.Of course, some Chaucerians remain reluctant in their appreciation; and generally, Plummer concludes, "those who have seen The Summoner's Prologue and Tale as particularly ap­ propriate to the Summoner as narrator have found least in it to praise, while those who have seen it as sophisticated have either tacitly or ex­ plicitly assigned its artistry to Chaucer" (p.31). Plummer's survey of the criticism includes some predictable points of focus: sources and analogues (including a fascinating tour of procto­ scatological iconography), the relationship ofthe tale to other tales, the appropriateness of tale to teller, and the like.Other focuses are more eclectically chosen to represent the criticism on its own terms.Among the most valuable segments are those on irony, social issues, authorial intention (serious or comic), and Chaucer's attitude toward exegesis. One obvious shortcoming is the paltry five-line discussion of the date of The Summoner's Tale. The date, Professor Plummer notes, "has not been the object of serious study" (p.16), and that situation will not be 289 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER improved upon by this edition. Here, surely, the editor ought to step forward, if only to offer a foundation for further study. With the exceptions cited above, the editor's own assessments of the criticism are exceedingly rare. Plummer presents the spectrum of criti­ cal approaches in persistently neutral terms. Readers may find them­ selves ambivalent about such a strategy. On the one hand, a variorum edition should reflect a high level of objectivity; on the other hand, of course, many variorum readers look to the editor as an authority in a privileged position to indicate, if only in passing, the most significant strengths and weaknesses of the scholarship. Overall, however, the edi­ tor has aptly selected his materials to represent accurately the range of published criticism and to serve efficiently the needs of scholarly readers. As might be expected, the textual commentary summarizes some of the more salient features of the manuscript tradition, focusing on the ten base manuscripts selected for the Variorum project, with careful and cautious attention to the more comprehensive work of Manly and Rickert. Perhaps the most significant issue of the manuscript tradition is the evidence that the Ellesmere MS, after sharing an exemplar with Hengwrt, shifts at about line 1991, roughly halfway through the tale, to a new exemplar. (Ellesmere contains three times as many unique vari­ ants as Hengwrt in the last half of the tale.) Plummer's carefully weighed reassessment of the problem ends disappointingly, however, when he leaves the issue as one that "needs to be addressed in another forum" (p. 68). What better forum, one might ask, than the Variorum to press toward some conclusions on this subject, especially since the...