Geoffrey Chaucer: A New Introduction by David Wallace (review)

David Wallace's Geoffrey Chaucer: A New Introduction lives up to its name in inviting its readers to look anew at Chaucer, seeing in him not the founding father of English letters but "the poet of an unfinished Englishness" (142). Wallace shows how Chaucer's Middle English absorbs influences ranging from scientific treatises to "urban noise" (44) to become a capacious and flexible poetic medium. The experimental quality of Chaucer's language is, Wallace proposes, a reason why his works are enjoying a far-reaching appeal now, in a world where English has become dominant. Wallace's dual focus on language and global reception makes his book a thought-provoking read that not only introduces its audience to Chaucer's writings but also demonstrates their present-day significance and vitality.

The introductory chapter, "Beginnings," covers both theoretical and contextual ground. It opens with a discussion of audience and persona, concepts Wallace presents as integral to Chaucer's art and to current criticism of it. The chapter then shifts, via Terry Eagleton's description of Chaucer as a "class traitor" (10), to an overview of the poet's life and times. The thesis here is that Chaucer was "first and foremost a European" (12), a claim that Wallace, of all Chaucerians, is ideally suited to expound and defend. He first makes a compelling and admirably condensed case for Chaucer's continental focus, and then vindicates the cosmopolitanism of the Middle Ages more broadly. The chapter ends with a section on war as the dark underside of the interconnected medieval world.

Insightful references to Chaucer's writings are sprinkled throughout the introductory chapter, but more developed readings begin in the second, "Schoolrooms, Science, Female Intuition." This is one of two thematic chapters that bracket a more or less chronological tour of Chaucer's writings in the book's middle three chapters. This structure is complex but effective, as it allows Wallace to trace both Chaucer's recurrent engagement with certain topics and his trajectory of development as a poet.

The second chapter examines Chaucer's interest in ways of knowing. After a brief overview of Scholasticism and exegesis, Wallace describes Chaucer's scientific expertise and his readiness to make fun of it; The House of Fame, for instance, is "perched somewhere between science and farce" (33). The chapter then pivots to the relationship between women and Latinate intellectual culture, introducing the Wife of Bath as "a tissue of … anti-feminist texts" (36) and then, in the space of a few pages, examining gendered presentations of knowledge in The Nun's Priest's Tale, The Second Nun's Tale, The Merchant's Tale, Troilus and Criseyde, and The House of Fame, with references to As You Like It and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight along the way. This section is typical of the book as a whole in the expert way in which it charts a path through Chaucer's writings while referencing other medieval poems and later works of English literature. The chapter concludes with the claim that, for Chaucer, "women are different" (42) in a specifically epistemological sense. Readers who are familiar with Chaucer criticism will appreciate this chapter's illuminating perspective on his treatment of gender.

The third chapter, "A Life in Poetry," begins the chronological section of the book. Living in a world where "'English poetry' was a contradiction in terms," Chaucer "aspires to" this label in his early works (43). The chapter examines how this aspiration leads Chaucer to learn from French models and then Italian ones, though Wallace cautions that French and Italian do not represent fully distinct creative phases. The core of the chapter discusses Machaut alongside The Book of the Duchess and Dante alongside The House of Fame. The conclusion focuses on The Parliament of Fowls as a case study in Chaucer's response to Italian metrics, which Wallace describes as a "liberatory" influence that may have led Chaucer to invent rhyme royal (57).

Rhyme royal provides a transition...