Chaucer's Pardoner's Prologue and Tale: An Annotated Bibliography, 1900-1995 (review)

Short Notices 299 The introduction, though short, is of high interest for its succinct tracing of changes in the definition of the word 'fabliau'. Short and Pearcy find that fabliau humour has as its basis logic, and this is their criterion for inclusion or exclusion of candidates for their collection. The editors justify the existence of this small anthology byfirstreferring to 'linguistic heritage', then to the question of what constitutes a fabliau, from the eighteenth-century edition of Legrand d'Aussy to the latest 'Recueil complef ofW . N o o m e n and N. van den Boogaard, and, finally, to a desire to demonstrate what contribution the Anglo-Norman corpus made to the genre as a whole. Maxwell J. Walkley University of Sydney Sutton, Marilyn, ed., Chaucer's Pardoner's Prologue and Tale: An Annotated Bibliography, 1900-1995 (The Chaucer Bibliographies), Toronto, University ofToronto Press, 2000; cloth; pp. liii, 445; R R P US$95.00; ISBN 0802047440. In 1940, G. G. Sedgewick, reviewing commentary on 'The Pardoner's Tale', observed that 'research and criticism and interpretation have been busy with the noble ecclesiasf; 60 years later, the busy-ness goes on apace, with well over 1,000 items published up to 1995. M u c h of this discussion is sharp and full of interest, as Marilyn Sutton says, treating a figure w h o disturbs, fascinates, but also compels responses that reveal as much about his audience as him. So it always was, from the moment of the Host's retort; the Tale seems to have been admired by its first audience, while thefifteenth-centuryresponse, according to Strohm, was to write out the discordant and disreputable, or to ignore the tale altogether. Sutton's Bibliography performs its necessary, referential task, but also reveals the extraordinary range of issues that have interested critical readers: drunkenness, irony, satire, voice, homodiegetic and heterodiegetic narratives, eunuchry, homosexuality, the plague, post-plague playfulness, animal symbolism, number symbolism, rhetoric, sermon practice, liturgy, institutional context, the 'paradox of art', 'theological despair', transubstantiation, speech act theory, theatricality, masochism, banana-skins (yes), the 'hegemonic discourse ofidentity', and so on. The Bibliography also shows critical discussion turning to dissension, often in reviews Sutton usefully includes, allowing us to mark the shifting patterns of critical fashion. If Vance finds Benson's criticism outdated, that speaks of a 300 Short Notices late twentieth-century obsession with theory; in the most recent critical turn, the Pardoner's much discussed homosexuality is in question again, but, prompted by queer theory, the critic drives the question to radically new conclusions. After sections devoted to editions and bibliographical materials, criticism on the Pardoner is presented according to two chronologies: dates ofpublication, within sequences determined by the Pardoner's several appearances in the 'General Prologue' and the tales. This necessarily complicated arrangement makes for a certain clumsiness and repetition, but Sutton does a fair job of articulating her categories one to another. O n the other hand, her bibliographical practice sometimes buckles surprisingly under pressure to get the book into print. Numbering fails from time to time: so 516 is followed by 516a, and 516b, not 517; this might not matter, but the Index refers under 'Sexuality' to an absent 516c. Item 994 simply reads 'Item canceled'. The Index, crucial to the success of such a volume, is usefully detailed, but often feels cumbersome and again it is not always correct. The survey is comprehensive, but there are omissions: so, the Hieatts' 1964 edition of The Canterbury Tales is described, but not their 1961 illustrated, bowdlerised children's edition. A n d it is regrettable that 'Analogues' could not stretch to m o d e m instances like the film 'Shallow Grave'. Bibliographies, however accurate and informative, necessarily suffer from their own obsolesence, which suggests that the true future of these retrospective publications, as the General Editor recognises, lies not in print but electronic text, where the past becomes an ever reviewed, renewable, present. In the meantime, there is much help to be had from Sutton's Bibliography of scholarship and criticism on Chaucer's Pardoner, and not a little pleasure. Roger Nicholson Department ofEnglish University of Auckland Tread gold, Warren, A Concise History...