“The Sins of Madame Eglentyne” and Other Essays on Chaucer by Richard Rex (review)

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER RICHARD REX. "The Sins of Madame Eglentyne" and Other Essays on Chaucer. Newark: University of Delaware Press; London: Associated University Presses, 1995. Pp. 201. $35.00. The title of this book suggests that the nine essays it contains are not all necessarily concerned with Chaucer's Prioress, whose character and narrative are so problematic in any discussion of The Canterbury Tales. In fact, however, virtually all the essays deal with problems raised by her description in the General Prologue and the tale she tells. The brief second essay, "Chaucer's Censured Ballads," does not, but both the equally brief fifth chapter, "'Grey' Eyes and the Medieval Ideal of Feminine Beauty," and the longer and more important leadoff essay, "Chaucer and the Jews," are, if indirectly, clearly focused on Madame Eglentyne. The other chapter headings specifically point to questions about her: "Pastiche as Irony in the Prioress's Prologue and Tale," "Wild Horses, Justice, and Charity in the Prioress's Tale," "Why the Prioress's Gauds Are Green," "Why the Prioress Sings through Her Nose," "Madame Eglentyne and the Bankside Brothels," and, in last place, the title essay, "The Sins of Madame Eglentyne." As the acknowledgments page reveals, of these nine essays four ap­ pear in revised form from publication as journal papers, the leadoffessay included. Thus over half the textual material appears for the first time. The Works Cited section is rich, comprising well over 500 primary and secondary items, of which no less than thirty are unpublished disserta­ tions. All in all, within the relatively brief compass of a 200-page book Rex makes available a comprehensive archive on that eternally am­ biguous figure, Chaucer's Prioress, and on the problematic of anti­ Semitism on her part and, by extension, on Chaucer's. That is not all there is to say about Madame Eglentyne, ofcourse, and Rex covers most of the other questions raised by her depiction and her narration-her presumed vanity, her physical appearance, her manner of singing, her beads-and all this with very little overlapping. His presentation in this series of studies emphasizes the widely held interpretation of the Prioress as one of Chaucer's most complex creations. This presentation accords with and even extends the disparaging school of Prioress criticism. His work sustains the older attitudes of, for instance, Schoeck, Bronson, Donaldson, Robertson, and others, is more or less against Ridley's attempt at a balanced view, and decidedly runs counter to that defensive and even favorable school of Prioress criticism 292 REVIEWS represented by Madeleva, Lowes, Coghill, Brewer, and, in an extreme way, by Coulton, whose judgment it was that "Chaucer loved the Prioress."1 Few if any of these old-fashioned views are dealt with, and wisely so. It is, however, somewhat surprising to find a fair number of omissions that in fact focus in an important way on the crucial question of why and how Chaucer makes her deal so harshly with the Jews who live in her pungently described ghetto. In discussing this question, Rex naturally refers to the origins of the Prioress's bigotry, namely the ritual murder blood libel that Schoeck dealt with so vigorously. Rex could, perhaps, have pointed out with equal vigor that in the Prioress the poet has depicted a woman of no mean sagacity, who takes care in her narrative not to ascribe to the Jews the motiveless blood lust typically found in such legends and which were specifically forbidden by papal rulings. This latter point was em­ phasized by Edward Synan in his classic work The Popes and theJews in the Middle Ages (New York: Macmillan, 1965), one of the rather sur­ prising omissions from the Works Cited in this book.2 The problem here is that Madame Eglentyne had other analogues to follow, hardly less anti-Semitic in purport but somewhat more merciful in resolution. Mirk's Festial is a case in point. This contemporary work is mentioned in the Works Cited, but notJohn Bromyard's Summapraedicantium. Rex seems to have depended on Owst's highly selective extracts from that contemporary work,3 but had he consulted the original text, even in the defective Venice 1586...