Chaucer’s Biblical Poetics by Lawrence Besserman (review)

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER LAWRENCE BESSERMAN. Chaucer's Biblical Poetics. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995. Pp. xi, 338. $39.95 cloth, $17.95 paper. As long as "folk digne of reverence" such as Brewer, Fisher, and Pearsall remain as firmly on their pillars as did those famous chaps in Chaucer's elaborate Palace of Beryl, "that shoon ful brighter than a glas" (HF 1289), the task of recent critics might seem to be largely one of refer­ ence. Nevertheless, for several decades Chaucerians steeped in medieval culture and possessing individually a considerable knowledge of the Bi­ ble have sought out Chaucer's biblical references with the enthusiasm of closet inquisitors. They would be unsurprised by Besserman's main contention: that there exists an obsessive relationship between Chaucer and the Bible. When it seems that the last drop has been drained from "the well of English undefiled," with such eloquent results that even our colleagues who may be "liberal, humanist atheists" have been forced to pay atten­ tion, here is Besserman, cogent, lively, verbose, pedantic, and rhetorical, telling us first of all of the ingenious ways in which God's word was impressed upon the lettered and the unlettered in the fourteenth cen­ tury and then demonstrating the various devices whereby the Bible was absorbed and regurgitated in Chaucer's text. As Besserman reminds us, Chaucer was writing at a time when the Bible was presumed to be the absolute authority on questions of human endeavor, both religious and secular. Bibles in pocket-book form were popular and circulated widely. Whole quires were ripped stealthily from chained Bibles in churches. In Chaucer and the Bible (1988) Besserman provided a bibliographical survey and a review essay on the study of Chaucer's uses of the Bible and an index of the pervasive biblical diction, imagery, and themes in Chaucer's works. In the preface to his latest work, Besserman makes clear at the beginning his central argument: that "Chaucer's biblically suffused poetry reflects his response both to long-standing medieval tru­ isms about the preeminence of biblical authority and to the late medi­ eval and specifically English problematization of those truisms." He adds that "Chaucer's innovative uses of the Bible and the concomitant delight that he evinces in his poetic responses to the 'literariness' of biblical narratives are aspects of his art that have not been generally acknowl­ edged or adequately explored" (p. 3). While one might not agree with this contention, one may neverthe­ less appreciate Besserman's contribution to the discussion of Chaucer's shaping of late-medieval biblical poetics. Besserman states that "think454 REVIEWS ing about Chaucer's biblically suffused writing in relation to that of his European and English contemporaries highlights the importance of bib­ lical poetics as a common if hitherto undervalued element in various domains of Ricardian culture" (p. 4). He examines Chaucer's appropria­ tion of the Bible for secular purposes under various headings: "The Bible and Late Medieval Literary Culture," "The Bible as Book, Metaphor, and Model for Secular Literature," "Biblical Translation, Quotation, and Paraphrase," "Partial or Oblique Quotations and Allusions." Some ex­ amples in the last section might be defined by Chauncey Wood as "quarks," in that they "can explain sometimes what might otherwise not make much sense." The remaining chapters discuss "Biblical Glossing and Poetic Mean­ ing," and '"Figura' and the Making of Vernacular Poetry," where Besser­ man discusses Chaucer's placing of "figura" in two ways: by using ex­ plicit biblical or exegetical motifs and, secondly, by examining the figural interpretations of characters and motifs proposed by critics. This survey focuses on "four of Chaucer's early dream visions, the Book ofthe Duchess, the House ofFame, the Parliament ofFowls, and the Legend ofGood Women[,] and on two of the Canterbury Tales, the Nun's Priest's Tale and the Pardoner's Tale." In his conclusion, Besserman considers Chaucer's biblical poetics in relation to the early tradition that saw Chaucer as the "Father of English Poetry," looking forward to the Reformation, and as the "Father of Modern Standard English" (p. 6). While some of us might claim that as a result of Besserman's concen­ tration...