Tropologies: Ethics and Invention in England, c. 1350–1600 by Ryan McDermott (review)

Tropology, the often neglected or misunderstood third level of the old four-fold levels of interpretation, makes this reviewer think of teaching a critical theory survey and coming to Dante's illustration of those levels in the Convivio, where he asserts that Jesus brought only three apostles with him when he went to the mount to be transfigured, "whereby morally it may be understood that for the most secret affairs we ought to have few companions." It always seemed silly and reductive to me to derive so folksy and mundane an aphorism from such a dramatic, mythological gospel moment. Surely Dante could have been cleverer. Ryan McDermott senses that "tropology" has not been adequately studied or even comprehended. So he sets out in this heady, expansive, and engaging volume to explore how the moral level of interpretation—not only or exclusively an aspect of Biblical exegesis—actually manifests itself as a central tool of the vernacular writers in the Middle English canon, and specifically Langland and the Patience-Poet. Ultimately, the study expands to the Reformation, examining the evolving fate of the tropological in the Elizabethan Coventry Play and in the last performances of the York Doomsday pageant.

This selection of texts allows him to bridge the perhaps overstated gap between the medieval and the Reformation. Despite a traditional understanding of a shift to an emphasis on the "literal" in Reformation thought, diverse forms of the tropological persist distinctly, driving the entire enterprise of reading, writing, interpreting, and, ultimately, acting ethically in the sixteenth century. The relations between the literal (in both the Bible and in vernacular literature), the Christological, and the eschatological are rich and varied throughout all periods, and "[t]ropology might be thought of as the church's circulatory system: it pushes the blood of the literal sense into action and circulates it through the lungs of the allegorical sense in order to animate and inhabit the body with an anagogical completeness" (p. 12). His approach, writes McDermott strenuously, "demands that we treat works of narrative poetry and drama as powerful theological thought machines in their own right, thereby integrating vernacular literary texts more richly into the history of exegesis and religious reform" (p. 10). Displaying how the complex creative work of tropology animates vernacular medieval literature and even provides a bridge to Reformation religious thought is the great burden, rather intensely pursued and accomplished, of this hefty volume.

Much of the book concerns Piers Plowman, which is appropriate because Piers offers an infinite field of interpretive challenges and exegetical adventures, ranging from the seemingly facile to the excruciatingly complex and impressionistic. While arguing how "late medieval writers of poetry and drama came to see the activity of writing as ethically significant in itself," McDermott avers, "[f]or William Langland. . . . the work of writing Piers Plowman is a work of mercy that constitutes penitential satisfaction for the author. In some cases. . . . tropological invention leads directly into sacramental participation" (p. 47). Readers who want a quick example of McDermott's critical art should turn to page 50 and read "The Allegory of the Cultivation of Scripture." Here, in a sequence dynamic and unparaphrasable, he studies Piers C21.262ff., starting, "Grace gaf Peres a teme," where the imagery of tilling, planting, and harvesting occasions some dizzying interpretive complexities. At his best (as here, concerning the play with "truth" in this sequence), McDermott writes muscular confident prose and enjoys displaying his rhetorical arts with a flourish. At other times, the chapters unfold stolidly, as exposition demands that readers stop and get out Piers Plowman and work through an exposition. McDermott argues that Langland's poetic exegesis compels Will at several points to "slow down and meditate" on elements of his vision to derive ethical meaning, and users of this book will have to do the same to appreciate fully the implications of the argument itself at the...