A Preface to Chaucer: Studies in Medieval Perspectives

Rating:
Summary: The Right Thing In Mind
Review: Oddly enough, after reading 100 pages or so of a book entitled "Preface to Chaucer," I found myself deeply and spiritually moved. I'm trying to come to terms with that . . .

Robertson argues that Chaucer intended his works as particularly subtle allegories, realistic not because they create convincingly-individual characters but because they accurately depict the way abstract virtues, vices, and attributes would be enfleshed in the people of his day. Avaricious extortion would look like the Summoner; an inconstant vocation would resemble the Monk. Chaucer's characterizations are not psychological (Robertson describes psychological analysis as post-Christian) but moral. Chaucer also tells stories not for drama's sake but for the sake of ideas and conceptual reality. He requested from his audience the same kind of exegetical sophistication that Romanesque and Gothic art and the Bible demanded.

Other strengths of the book: a thorough analysis of how medieval thought in hierarchies differs from modern dialectical thought (medieval conflicts of any kind--physical or ideological--always involve a higher and a lower party), and explanation of Chaucer's humor.

Our artistic tastes have changed a great deal since then; this is why Robertson argues from the eleventh century forward in his analysis, not from the twentieth century backward. He identifies many errors scholars of his day compile in their efforts to enjoy Chaucer filtered through post-Romantic sensibilities. I can testify that said errors have only increased in the interim between Robertson's book and the present day. If Robertson's contention is true, and if authorial intent matters, most of the current "Case Study in Contemporary Criticism" from Bedford Press on the Wife of Bath (for instance) is useless. I thought I knew "the Wife of Bath" fairly well until I read Robertson. Feminist, psychoanalytic (this in particular), new historicist, Marxist, and deconstructionist criticism simply do not apply in the medieval paradigm, since Chaucer's purposes do not align with theirs.

The silliness Robertson diagnoses in contemporary interpretations of Chaucer is symptomatic of the change in artistic sensibility. The medieval paradigm believed the Divine impinges upon all things. Medievals could not stop at mere contemplation of the beautiful if they cared about their souls. They had to move consciously and exegetically forward to contemplate the Source of beauty. A worldview founded on God and a worldview founded on humanity have difficulty speaking to each other.