Chaucer and the Energy of Creation: The Design and the Organization of the `Canterbury Tales'.

Chaucer and the Energy of Creation: The Design and the Organization of the `Canterbury Tales'. By Edward I. Condren. Gainesville, Tallahassee, and Tampa: University Press of Florida. 1999. viii + 295 pp. $49.95.

Edward Condren's study of the structure of The Canterbury Tales is sound in principle, but produces convincing results only in respect of Fragment I. Here he demonstrates a pattern of `increasing degradation' (p. 25) supported by suggestive evidence of numerical composition binding the four tales in a manner much like that brilliantly exploited in Sir Thopas. This demonstration is reinforced by a perceptive discussion of justice in the Knight's Tale in relation to the personal fortunes and moral worth of Palamon and Arcite (pp. 30-31), combined with a subtle use of heraldic detail to show that the two are `not merely similar, but actually identical' (p. 33). But it is hard to see such clarity of structure in The Canterbury Tales as a whole, and the diagrammatic representations of that structure scattered throughout the book prompt bewilderment more often than ready assent. The effect of a large-scale comparison with Dante's Commedia (in part and in whole) reminds us rather of the contrast between a finished and an unfinished work of art. Virgil's exposition of love in Purgatorio, XVII is undoubtedly at the centre of the Commedia, but it is far from evident that the Merchant's Tale is similarly at the centre of Chaucer's great work. Indeed, there is a lack of proportion, morally and imaginatively, in the correspondence proposed between January and Dante personaggio. The fact that Dante is a source of poetic inspiration for Chaucer leads one to question imprecise analogies of this kind, and also to hesitate before describing specific allusions to Dante (even in the mouth of the Franklin) as `flowery excesses' (p. 156).

The main theoretical objection to this study lies in its imputed primacy of teller to tale, and especially to the over-enthusiastic reception of the Donaldsonian view of the Narrator (privileged by capitalization). Characters are seen not merely as the instruments of Chaucer's art, but as poets in their own right. Thus the Knight has `crafted' his `long tale' (p. 50), Arveragus is the creation of a `Franklin creator' (p. 163) and the `rioters' of `their Pardoner-creator' (p. 183). Moreover, the notion of a fallible narrator is pressed to extreme lengths. The Merchant intends `to tell one kind of tale', but `unwittingly tells another', while the Squire and the Franklin `are beyond their depth' (p. 125). The Prioress `fails to comprehend either the horror or the meaning of her own story' (p. 219), and Harry Bailly `has missed the main point of Melibee' (p. 229). Even the Clerk, that great student of Aristotle, in his own telling `perhaps [...] does not understand the revisions Chaucer made to Petrarch's version' (p. 124). Above all our Narrator himself is a man of `wide-eyed credulity' (p. 185) and the `least knowledgeable' (p. 190) of them all. The Canterbury pilgrims must rank as the dimmest group ever to set foot on the road from Southwark.

Such judgements of the characters of Chaucer's fiction are inherently suspect. Agreement with the Narrator on the part of the reader is `cause for concern' (p. 28) only if we persist in regarding him as a dull, un-English man, incapable of irony. The description of the Knight as `an efficient overachiever in the field' (p. 3) owes more to Terry Jones than to an understanding of medieval chivalry. The Franklin is not a `showoff' (p. 152) and neither, by extension, is Arveragus (p. 163). There is no reason to suppose that an expert womanizer like January approaches the physical consummation of marriage with `growing apprehension' (p. 141) nor that there is a necessary incompatibility between the Pardoner's youth and his `thinning hair' (p. 185).

Unfortunately Condren lacks a true historical sense of the period at which Chaucer is writing. The `theological or philosophical understanding of marriage' would not have been thought irrelevant to its `earthly success' (p. 144), and there are no circumstances in which `a pilgrimage to Canterbury might not have been needed' (p. 165). Above all the relativistic stance by which it is claimed that the audience of The Canterbury Tales is not obliged `to choose one view of reality over another' (p. 2) stands in need of justification, especially in the light of the Clerk's pronounced Aristotelianism. Condren's own approach seems best suited to the performances of the Wife of Bath and the Pardoner which are simultaneously addressed to different audiences. But the claim that the Pardoner is not himself avaricious (p. 197) strains credulity.

GERALD MORGAN
TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN