Chaucer and the Late Medieval World by Lillian M. Bisson (review)

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER How does it help to ease up on the "hard-edged alterity of the Middle Ages" (p. 4) if the Middle Ages nonetheless needs to know its place and approach the present with proper humility? We need to do more than identify resemblances between the problematics ofthe past and those of the present; we need to develop reading practices that recognize how the signifiers of the past still inform and produce the present. If The Shock ofMedievalism does not take us as far along this road as we might have hoped, it prepares us well for this work, by allowing us to see that, for the mode ofenjoyment known as medieval studies, not only loss but aggressivity is required; and as a consequence we will know better how to rethink our obsolescence, by realizing how the past itself figures in the ways we disfigure it. L. 0. ARANYE FRADENBURG University of Santa Barbara LILLIAN M. BISSON. Chaucer and the Late Medieval World. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998. Pp. 304. $45.00. This introduction to Chaucer and his world had its genesis in two insti­ tutes on Chaucer for secondary-school teachers sponsored by the Na­ tional Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). In her preface Lillian Bisson calls these experiences "exhausting" and "exhilarating" (p. ix), two states that will be recognized by many: a successful NEH institute is a Platonic ideal of intellectual fellowship. The materials in Chaucer and the Late Medieval World make clear the wide learning, alert curiosity, and tireless dedication that Bisson put into her institutes. If the book cannot equal their achievement, that is only to be expected. As with so many of the best moments in pedagogy, you had to be there. Bisson's study is really about The Canterbury Tales and the late medi­ eval world. Although Troilus and Criseyde, The House ofFame, The Parlia­ ment ofFoules, and The Legend ofGood Women are mentioned, they are not discussed in any detail and are not referred to at all in the concluding section. Moreover, the late medieval world is more prominent than Chaucer's poetry (not to mention other English and Continental poetry, which is hardly mentioned at all), and even it does not come first. Bisson explains that each chapter "is essentially funnel shaped, starting from a 462 REVIEWS discussion of the topic in its seminal phrase, usually the early Christian period" (pp. ix-x). The result of this approach is strongly chronological and has the effect of making Chaucer the representative of progressive historical forces that have culminated in our own time, almost a Whig view of the poet. Bisson's aim is more to provide a "rich cultural context for ap­ proaching The Canterbury Tales" (p. ix) than to analyze its many literary achievements. Even when she talks about Chaucer's poetry rather than his times, her emphasis is less on its art than on its ideas: "the societal contexts Chaucer is exploring" and "the major issues that underlie his work" (p. ix). Bisson's Chaucer does not so much tell stories as ask ques­ tions ("How can society best be governed?" or "What is the value of human love?" [p. viii}), and she assumes his primary purpose is to in­ struct rather than to delight: "This book's governing conviction, how­ ever, is that Chaucer used his poetry-for both himself and for his audi­ ence-as a way of trying to make sense of and to bring order to the confusing, conflicted world in which he lived" (p. x). Chaucer and the Late Medieval World is written in a clear, lively style (without the condescension found in so many introductory works) and has an impressive bibliography of secondary works with only a few obvi­ ous omissions (such as Eamon Duffy's The Stripping ofthe Altars, which may not have yet appeared during the original research). Without many primary materials (except for Chaucer), the bibliography functions as a kind of guide to scholarship on Medieval Cultural Literacy. The book is divided into eleven chapters under five sections. The first section is "The Poet and His World." Chapter 1, entitled "Double Vi­ sion: The Gothic...