Volume 24, Number 7 · April 28, 1977
The Temptations of Chaucer
By Gabriel Josipovici
The Life and Times of Chaucer
by John Gardner
Knopf, 328 pp., $12.50
The Poetry of Chaucer
by John Gardner
Southern Illinois University Press, 408 pp., $15.00
The Strumpet Muse: Art and Morals in Chaucer's Poetry
by Alfred David
Indiana University Press, 352 pp., $15.00
The Idea of The Canterbury Tales
by Donald R. Howard
University of California Press, 403 pp., $15.00
England in the Age of Chaucer
by William Woods
Stein and Day, 230 pp., $10.00
Chaucer: Sources and Backgrounds
edited by Robert P. Miller
Oxford University Press, 500 pp., $7.00 (paper)
It takes a great poet to write poetry as bad as this. In twelve lines Chaucer has already succeeded in making us lose all further interest in the deeds of his hero. No wonder Harry Bailly, the Host of the Tabard Inn, who has accompanied the pilgrims on their way to Canterbury and taken it upon himself to act as master of ceremonies, interrupts him with: 'Namoore of this, for Goddes dignitee…. Myn eres aken of thy drasty speche.' The question for us is: How are we to take it? Why is it spoken? Is it merely a parody of second-rate romances or is such parody, as in Cervantes, only the symptom of a larger unease? Once we open ourselves to such questions others come pouring in: Who is speaking this? The pilgrim Chaucer? The poet? (But who is the poet?) Where is it spoken? On the road to Canterbury? In our heads? Then? Now?
Review, 5805 words
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