Temporal Circumstances: Form and History in the Canterbury Tales

283 Pages·2006·35.14 MB·English

by  Lee Patterson (auth.)

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TEMPORAL CIRCUMSTANCES
FORM AND HISTORY IN THE
CANTERBURY TALES
Lee Patterson
palgrave
macmillan
* TEMPORAL CIRCUMSTANCES
© Lee Patterson, 2006.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2006 978-1-4039-7481-5
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any
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quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
First published in 2006 by
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ISBN 978-1-349-73736-9 ISBN 978-1-137-08451-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-137-08451-4
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Patterson, Lee.
Temporal circumstances: form and history in the Canterbury tales I
Lee Patterson.
p. cm.-(The New Middle Ages)
Includes bibliographical references and (p. ) index.
ISBN 978-1-349-73736-9 (alk. paper)
1. Chaucer, Geoffrey, d. 140O-Criticism and interpretation-History.
2. Chaucer, Geoffrey, d. 1400 Canterbury tales. 3. Tales, Medieval
History and criticism. 4. Christian pilgrims and pilgrimages in literature.
I. Title. II. Series: New Middle Ages (Palgrave Macmillan (Firm))
PR1924.P332006
821'.1-dc22 2006042959
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: December 2006
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS
Priface viii
Introduction: Historicism and Postmodemity 1
1. Putting the Wife in Her Place: The Place of Philology 19
2. Putting the Wife in Her Place: The Place of History 37
3. Freedom and Necessity: The Example of the Clerk's Tale 51
4. Chaucer's Pardoner on the Couch: Psyche and Clio in
Medieval Literary Studies 67
5. "What Man Artow?": Authorial Self-Definition in the
Tale of Sir Thopas and the Tale of MeI i bee 97
6. "The Living Witnesses of Our Redemption": Martyrdom
and Imitation in the Prioress's Tale 129
7. Perpetual Motion: Alchemy and the Technology of the Self 159
Notes 177
Index 267
PREFACE
T
he chapters in this book originally appeared as '''What Man Artow?':
Authorial Self-Definition in the Tale if Sir Thopas and the Tale if Melibee,"
Studies in the Age if Chaucer 11 (1989), 117-76; "Perpetual Motion: Alchemy and
the Technology of the Self," Studies in the Age cifChaucer 15 (1993), 25-57; Putting
the Wife in Her Place, The Matthews Lectures (London: Birkbeck College, 1996);
"'Witnesses of Our Redemption:' Jewish Martyrdom and Christian Sacrifice in
Chaucer's Prioress's Tale," Journal if Medieval and Early Modern Studies 30 (2001),
507-60; "Chaucer's Pardoner on the Couch: Psyche and Clio in Medieval Literary
Studies," Speculum 76 (2001), 638-80; "Freedom and Necessity: The Example of
Chaucer's Clerk's Tale," Minrlful Spirits in LAte Medieval Literature: Essays in Honor if
Elizabeth Kirk, ed. Bonnie Wheeler (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). I am
grateful to the various publishers for permission to reprint them here.
lowe many debts to many colleagues and friends for advice and support in the
course of writing the various chapters of this book. I would like to thank especially
Jerry McGann, Leo Braudy, Anne Middleton, David Aers, Ralph Hanna, Ivan
Marcus, Traugott Lawler, and Stanley Fish for their friendship and their intellec
tual comradeship; chapters 1 and 2 would not have been written without the
encouragement of Isobel Armstrong and Tom Healey of Birkbeck College,
University of London; chapter 4 would never have seen the light of day were it not
for Rick Emmerson, editor extraordinaire; and my University of Toronto col
leagues and friends-David Blostein, Andy Silber, John Baird, Sandy Johnston,
Chaviva Hosek, Robin Jackson, and Brain Merrillees, and many, many others
supported me during the early years of my career when I needed it most. I would
especially like to thank Annabel Patterson for generously sharing with me her
remarkable editorial skills and for her patient forbearance with a cranky author.
INTRODUCTION
HISTORICISM AND POSTMODERNITY
W
hat path leads to a career teaching and studying medieval literature? Mine
was devious. In 1963, I was awarded a one-year Woodrow Wilson
Fellowship, which required me to attend graduate school at a university other than
where I had been an undergraduate, which was Yale-and Yale at its New Critical
prime. At the time I wanted, like all good New Critics, to be a modernist, so I
chose what I thought was the appropriate university. Regardless offield, all Ph.D.
candidates were required to take a year of Anglo-Saxon. After a term of language
study, the class turned to the literature, including Beowulf. I found the poetry fasci
nating, but the professor-a learned scholar and kind man-was a philologist to his
finger tips, a true "word man." Every time an idea would crawl out on the table,
he would brush it away with a certain impatience. Rather than being dismayed,
I responded to this behavior with low cunning. If, I thought, someone so uninter
ested in literature could become a full professor at a distinguished university, then
obviously medieval literature was the field to cultivate. Armed with this shame
lessly careerist plan, I returned to Yale to complete my degree. I immediately asked
Talbot Donaldson if it were possible at this relatively late stage-in those days
graduate school took four years or else-to switch fields and become a medieval
ist. Donaldson looked at me with the genial disdain for which he was famous, and
asked: "Can you tie your tie?"1 But I remonstrated: what about all those things I
was supposed to know? All those languages, all that paleography, all that history?
The reply was: "Just know a little bit about everything-you'll pick up the rest as
you go along." This was in fact excellent advice, and graduate students still need to
realize that they are not supposed to know everything before they even begin their
careers. But they are certainly supposed to know more than I did. Since
Donaldson's mission was to rescue medieval literature from medievalists, I was not
taught the disciplinary tools of the trade-despite the fact that Donaldson's own
philology was impeccable, his historicism detailed and sophisticated, his paleogra
phy superb, and his textual criticism magisterial. On the contrary, it was
Donaldson's edition of Chaucer's Poetry: An Anthology for the Modem Reader, with its
apparently effortlessly established text and its deceptively slight commentary, that I
knew-without knowing that it was a product of profound scholarship and a
deeply intelligent critical mind.2