Life in Words: Essays on Chaucer, the Gawain-Poet, and Malory by Jill Mann (review)

Book Reviews Jill Mann. Life in Words: Essays on Chaucer, the Gawain-Poet, and Malory. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014. ISBN 978-1-4426-4865-4. Pp. 359. $75.00. Life in Words collects 15 essays concerning the titular authors that Jill Mann produced between 1980 and 2009. The majority of these works, some of which have been very influential in medieval studies, originally appeared in readily available edited collections and journals, but gathering them into a single volume is highly valuable to medieval scholars. In addition, one lecture, ‘‘The Narrative of Distance, the Distance of Narrative in Malory’s Morte Darthur,’’ had previously circulated only as a pamphlet. Mann notes in the book’s preface that the title has a double meaning: both ‘‘that ‘‘words have a life of their own, which can be explored for its significance’’ and that ‘‘human life is lived in words, and ‘‘that experience is continually filling them with new depths of meaning’’ (viii). Mann’s focus in most of the book’s essays is key words that the subject authors use to create patterns of meaning within their works. In pursuing this aim, Mann considers both the medieval meanings of her chosen key terms and the ways in which Chaucer, the Gawain-poet, and Malory make the terms their own. Life in Words is structured both by subject author and by work. Thus, the first half of the book groups the Chaucer essays, beginning with those that deal with Troilus and Criseyde, followed by those about The Canterbury Tales. The first Troilus and Criseyde essay, ‘‘Troilus’s Swoon,’’ discusses the term and concept of ‘‘proces’’ in the growth of the text’s central love affair (7). Mann claims that love between Troilus and Criseyde grows naturally via a negotiation of sovereignty and submission between the two. Criseyde yields to Troilus, not voluntarily after Pandarus throws him into her bed, but through a process that started long before. In contrast, she voluntarily yields to Diomede as a sign that she has cast off her past self. The second essay, ‘‘Shakespeare and Chaucer: ‘What is Criseyde Worth?’’’ asserts that Chaucer’s Criseyde is a more fully developed character than Shakespeare’s Cressida. Mann claims that Chaucer invests Criseyde’s character with a great deal of discernable interiority; in contrast, Shakespeare’s Cressida is a bland character whose value is determined by the men around her rather than by her own actions. Finally, ‘‘Chance and Destiny in Troilus and Criseyde and The Knight’s Tale’’ concludes the Troilus and Criseyde portion of the text and begins the Canterbury Tales portion by discussing the roles of destiny, chance, and free will in Christianity & Literature 2015, Vol. 65(1) 108–128 ! The Author(s) 2015 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/ journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0148333115601791 cal.sagepub.com Chaucer’s texts. Mann claims that Chaucer expanded Boccaccio’s single staged episode of Criseyde seeing Troilus through a window into two episodes, one accidental , one staged, in order to ‘‘reveal human efforts as negligible when weighed against the role of chance’’ (44). Mann uses Chaucer’s Boece to explicate his probable views on destiny, chance, and free will, and then demonstrates that Chaucer’s readers are in the position to see patterns that the characters themselves cannot see. What appears to be chance, in both Troilus and Criseyde and The Knight’s Tale, is all part of a larger divine plan. Mann’s continued analysis of The Canterbury Tales in the next essay, ‘‘Chaucerian Themes and Style in The Franklin’s Tale,’’ addresses time and change as features of human life. She claims that Dorigen and Arveragus represent an everyman couple and that their experiences with grief, the changes that occur over time, and the necessity of patience in relationships should be read as common to humanity. The following essay, ‘‘Anger and ‘Glosynge’ in the Canterbury Tales,’’ appears to take a new tack, beginning by discussing the dual medieval meaning of glossing—which can mean either drawing meaning from or falsely interpreting a text—and the connection of false interpretation to anger, for both are forms of denying reality. However, the focus...