Gender and Romance in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales by Susan CraneReview by: Phillipa HardmanThe Review of English Studies, New Series, Vol. 47, No. 188 (Nov., 1996), pp. 564-565Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/517942 .

Accessed: 21/12/2014 21:21

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Oxford University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Review ofEnglish Studies.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sun, 21 Dec 2014 21:21:27 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

564 REVIEWS

Gender and Romance in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. By SUSAN CRANE. Pp. viii+234. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. Cloth, ?30; paper, ?11- 95. Susan Crane's thesis is that 'gender is crucial to Geoffrey Chaucer's conception of

romance in the Canterbury Tales' (p. 3). As her examples from medieval sources show, Catherine Morland was by no means the first reader in fiction to assume that 'gentle- men read better books' than the feminine-associated genre of romance. (Incidentally, it seems to me that Pandarus's knowledge of the text described by Criseyde as the 'romaunce ... of Thebes' is better compared to Henry Tilney's enthusiasm for The Mysteries of Udolpho than designated pedantry (p. 10).) But it is not this simple gender- ing of the readership of romance which is really Crane's concern. Proposing that romance is the genre which most fully articulates issues of gender, she seeks to show through comparative consideration of the five Canterbury tales conventionally classed as romances (Knight's, Wife of Bath's, Squire's, Franklin's, and Sir Thopas) and selected French and Middle English romances that Chaucer's abiding interest is in 'how the genre imagines gender' (p. 4).

Drawing upon a range of modern theoretical approaches, Crane explores a series of fundamental issues of gender presented in romance at large and in Chaucer's versions of romance: the normative experience of masculinity and of male-to-male relations; feminine behaviour as masquerade or as mimicry of male-originated paradigms; align- ment between gender difference and social hierarchy; magic as an expression of gender difference (male bookish science against female uncanny mystery); adventure as the site both of heterosexual definition and of challenge to such gendered binary opposition.

This exploration of gender in genre yields many valuable insights: for example, Dorigen's 'rash promise' to Aurelius 'comment[s] on the constrained situation of women in the literature of courtship' and 'reveals that there is no vocabulary of refusal in this generic context' (p. 65); the self-wounded body of the falcon in the Squire's Tale, like that of Herodis in Sir Orfeo, 'communicates more effectively' than speech because of the way romance conceives the female body as 'crucial to her identity' (pp. 73-5); the shape-shifting of the fairy in the Wife of Bath's Tale 'paradoxically figures constancy rather than mobility, an integrity of the self... [made] possible by alienating identity from the transitory body' (p. 91), while the Wife's whole performance serves 'to clarify the inconceivability of feminine authority' and thus 'to make a significant point about the place of gender in the social hierarchy' (p. 131); the parodic feminization of Sir Thopas 'recognizes that male characters do undergo some crossgendering in romances, however firmly it may be suppressed under the sign of an enhanced masculinity' (p. 193); the romance genre promotes 'a version of the feminine' like itself, elusive, mysterious, protean (p. 203).

On the other hand, while attention to textual detail often enriches Crane's obser- vations, it is sometimes strained to make a point. For example, stressing the 'uncanny indeterminacy of the feminine' Crane claims that the metamorphosis of the fairy in the Wife of Bath's Tale is not a full transformation: 'The metaphor for the knight's joy, "his herte bathed in a bath," carries the Wife of Bath's fallen body back on the scene' (p. 156). Similarly, reference to modern theory seems at times to be forced on to romance. For instance, in a discussion of self and social interdependence, Crane adopts Foucault's model of state control inducing self-regulation and claims that Theseus's lists 'might be considered a precursor' of the Panopticon, Foucault's epitome of state surveillance, even though the true purpose of the lists-embodied in the dissimilarity of the architecture-is, as she admits, not to isolate but 'to incorporate [private] rivalry... into the chivalric community' (pp. 32-6). It is interesting that the clearest example of self-regulation in the Knight's Tale occurs before Theseus's regulatory plan, when

RES New Series, Vol. XLVII, No. 188 (1996) ? Oxford University Press 1996

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sun, 21 Dec 2014 21:21:27 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

REVIEWS 565

Arcite voluntarily defers his duel with Palamon so that they may fight according to the laws of chivalry.

The range of the book is somewhat disappointing. Despite drawing attention to the fact that romance is so 'provisional and protean' a genre (p. 8), and its 'generic boundaries so fluid' (p. 203), Crane restricts her discussion to the five usual suspects. There is nothing on Chaucer's other tales that exhibit romance characteristics, such as the Man of Law's and the Clerk's, for example, where the romance of Emare could have made a useful point of contact, nor is there much use of Chaucer's other works to illuminate what may be transgeneric features in the romances discussed. Further, in commenting on Sir Thopas Crane imposes a revealing set of limitations: why should not popes and cardinals figure in romances? Why does 'holy rpotis' not qualify, when the very Thornton credited with 'an awareness of romance as a genre' calls his Infancy narrative the 'romance of Ypokrephum' (p. 9)? Crane quotes John Stevens's summary of the concerns of romance which are largely the concerns of her investigation too, with the notable exception of the last: 'man seeking for God' (p. 56).

Paul Strohm praises the book's 'extraordinary expository clarity' (back cover), and Crane does indeed take pains to outline, summarize, and recapitulate the contents of each chapter, and to provide appropriate brief 'overviews' of genre theory, feminist theory, literary history, and so on. Nevertheless, there remain challenging questions at the heart of the enterprise: if 'the deepest concerns of romance' are to do with masculine self-fashioning (p. 158), why are they embodied in a genre which Crane persuasively argues was perceived not only as low status, but as intrinsically feminine?

University of Reading PHILLIPA HARDMAN

The Towneley Plays. Edited by MARTIN STEVENS and A. C. CAWLEY. Vol. I, Introduc- tion and Text. Pp. 1+436; Vol. II, Notes and Glossary. Pp. vi+437-734. (EETS ss 13 and 14.) Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. ?50. This edition of the Towneley Plays is to be welcomed, for its appearance means that

there are now modern editions of all four of the extant Mystery Cycles in English. Both the editors have many years' experience of the Towneley Plays and this shows in their deep understanding of the problems which face an editor of a text which has so many disparate elements. Unfortunately Professor Cawley whose pioneering work, The Wakefield Pageants in the Towneley Cycle (Manchester, 1958) has been an inspiration for a generation, did not live to see the publication of this important edition. With regard to the text itself, the policy has been largely conservative in accordance with the practice of the Society. A great deal of attention has been paid to layout and to ways of making the text available in a form which allows the reader to be aware of the manuscript. The appearance of the text on the page is uncluttered in line with other recent, comparable editions. From some spot checks I have found the text to be reliable, but there are a few cases where the printed text differs from the original without acknowledgement. (My queries are: trone 1/9; ar 3/388; It 14/175; heraud 14/263; Pilatus (as speech prefix) 20/130, and 140; be 24/218; youre 24/237; must 30/12; wykid 30/121; to kin 30/287; me 30/592.) There is a considerable improvement in respect of the Glossary which has been much extended beyond the limits of the previous EETS edition by G. England and A. W. Pollard (1897).

The contribution of the Wakefield Master is a salient issue of the edition. The editors are slightly less insistent upon the comprehensive nature of his role than Professor Stevens had been earlier in his Four Middle English Mystery Cycles (Princeton, 1987, p. 117). It is certainly difficult to prove his hand in all the plays especially as the concept of 'revision' may be that he accepted what he found at times without alteration. Undoubtedly some plays were composed by him in his own characteristic stanza. It is a

RES New Series, Vol. XLVII, No. 188 (1996) ? Oxford University Press 1996

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sun, 21 Dec 2014 21:21:27 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions