A Companion To Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. - Review - book review

A COMPANION TO CHAUCER'S THE CANTERBURY TALES by Margaret Hallissy. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1995. xiv + 333 pages. $49.95.

Aimed primarily at undergraduates and general readers seeking a "do-it-yourself course" on Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, this study guide is "intended for the first-time reader," and "assumes no previous experience with Chaucer's work and no background in medieval studies." Indeed, in part Hallissy writes in response to the new audience of literary novices presumably created by The Western Canon (1994), Harold Bloom's controversial best seller. Bloom not only includes Chaucer as one of his 26 great writers, but also places him second in importance only to Shakespeare, a ranking perhaps partly responsible for the increasing number of paperback translations of The Canterbury Tales. If Hallissy's ideal audience exists, then this is the ideal introductory guide.

Admittedly, Hallissy joins a crowded field. There are several introductory companions, including Piero Boitani and Jill Mann's The Cambridge Chaucer Companion; Helen Cooper's Oxford Guides to Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales; Rob Pope's How to Study Chaucer, and Muriel Bowden's A Reader's Guide to Geoffrey Chaucer. Distinctively, however, Hallissy writes primarily and successfully for readers with no prior knowledge of Chaucer or the Middle Ages. In "Chaucer's World," her opening chapter, Hallissy provides an abbreviated account of Chaucer's social position and official duties while also succinctly explaining some "commonplaces of medieval thought." These include the belief in an afterlife, a divinely ordained hierarchy, the power of Fortune, and the moral function of literature--those crucial assumptions Chaucer's readers held that may seem alien or irrelevant to a modern reader. With similar clarity, Hallissy's second chapter, "Chaucer's Language," explains the linguistic effects of the Norman Conquest and Chaucer's use of languages as a social register. I have one reservation here: although Hallissy seems to assume that her intended readers may approach Chaucer in the original, she provides little recommendation of how to learn Middle English. Language is, in fact, the most daunting aspect of The Canterbury Tales; therefore, a brief outline of Middle English grammar, or advice on how to use translations effectively, would be highly useful--particularly in a book that seeks to make Chaucer more wholly inviting to modern readers.

Hallissy's chapter on the General Prologue ably explains Thomas a Becket's fatal struggle with Henry II and how his martyrdom turned Canterbury Cathedral into a popular point of pilgrimage. It also discusses the socioeconomic function of the three estates--"those who work, those who fight, those who pray"--and rightly stresses Chaucer's use of clothing as a signifier of degree. Hallissy then treats each of the pilgrims individually and carefully, explaining the frequent--and significant--gap between a pilgrim's estat and his or her behavior and appearance. Here, however, a more thorough explication of the crucial first 18 lines is needed, and the important function of Chaucer's narrative persona in creating rhetorical irony should be emphasized. For instance, in the portrait of the Prioress, Hallissy explains the inconsistency between what was expected of medieval nuns and the Prioress's behavior: "In presenting a character who conforms to the stereotype of the courtly lady ... Chaucer calls our attention to the moral ambiguity surrounding a person whose appearance and behavior fit her more for secular life than for religious life." But the point should also be made that the narrator admires the Prioress and praises her table manners and her tender heart. The condemnation is implied only through incongruity; she may be the perfect courtly lady, but her "affectation of courtly cheer" is as grotesque in a nun as her broad forehead is unlikely in a romance heroine.

To a Chaucerian, Hallissy's explications of the individual tales will likely seem too reliant on plot summaries. However, as those who teach Chaucer know, first-time readers frequently have difficulty with basic narrative mechanics. Chaucerians also know that secondary material on The Canterbury Tales is overwhelming. To her credit, Hallissy is able not only to summarize the narrative structure of each tale, but also, simultaneously, to interweave into her commentaries generic and thematic considerations that illuminate key aspects of medieval thought. Additionally, each of her analyses is supported by a short annotated bibliography that cites critical works of seminal importance. In a separate appendix, Hallissy explains the dynamic role of the links in the structure of the Tales; in another, she abbreviates summaries of the less popular tales (Cook, Squire, Sir Thopas, Melibeus, Monk, Parson). Hallissy's goal is to "situate Chaucer in his time, in hope of clarifying what the responses of his first audience might have been." She achieves this objective admirably. This guide is accessible and jargon-free, a useful and stimulating introduction to Chaucer's text.