Writing, Rewriting, and Disrupting the Anglo-Saxon Past in Chaucer's "Man of Law's Tale."

Author/Editor
Smith, Kathleen.

Title
Writing, Rewriting, and Disrupting the Anglo-Saxon Past in Chaucer's "Man of Law's Tale."

Published
Smith, Kathleen. "Writing, Rewriting, and Disrupting the Anglo-Saxon Past in Chaucer's Man of Law's Tale." In Jay Paul Gates and Brian O'Camb, eds. Remembering the Medieval Present: Generative Uses of England's Pre-Conquest Past, 10th to 15th Centuries (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2019), pp. 195-214

Review
Smith offers an analysis of the "fourteenth-century historical imaginary" as it works itself out in the versions of the "Custance legend" (195)--primarily Chaucer's, but she also acknowledges those of John Gower and Nicholas Trevet, largely as counterpoints to Chaucer. Smith suggests that the narrator's various interjections foregrounding questions of history and tale transmission may represent "real sites of debate about belief and the role of literary narrative in belief about the past" (197). Hence her shift to an overview of the tale's representation of the "Anglo-Saxon" past, with quick examinations of Trevet's and Gower's versions before contrasting them to Chaucer's. Without directly engaging with the complex critical history of the supposition, she invokes the idea of the CA being commissioned by Richard II--drawing the conclusion that whether we believe the story or not, it suggests the significance of early historical material to English identity, "a bok for Engelondes sake" (199). She suggests that "early history was tied undeniably to the present" for Gower (200), before briefly discussing late fourteenth-century uses of early English figures like Edward the Confessor (and presumably Custance) to frame a national self-image, grounded in an England prior to the Hundred Years' War. Drawing on language from Chaucer's "Complaint to His Purse" as an approach to the historical contextualization of English kingship, Smith then argues that the use of Custance in the "Man of Law's Tale" similarly sets up an ideal justifying power "by right of her lineage and by right of her virtue and merit" (202). Here she addresses Gower and Chaucer together in their relationships with Richard II and Henry IV who, she presumes, had similar interests in early English history. Her focus then returns to consider the Man of Law's interjections more specifically. She suggests an important difference between Chaucer's and Gower's versions of the story. Gower and Trevet both "offer plausible explanations" for the points the Man of Law questions: e.g., the believability of details (like why Custance wasn't murdered at her wedding in Syria) (203). This, Smith argues, positions the "Man of Law's Tale" as overtly rhetorical in its adaptation of its sources, which in turn allows Chaucer to push his reader toward a particular model of reading. In Chaucer's hands, Custance thus becomes "an interpretive tool" (205), as well as a narrative character. Ultimately, then, Gower serves largely as a foil for Chaucer in this reading. Smith works throughout the article with the fanciful idea of Chaucer performing the tale "even to his friend Gower" (197) somewhat invoking the old idea of a conflict between the poets around this tale without necessarily engaging with it in depth. This occasionally leads to fanciful moments: "If we then imagine Gower as a target audience in a highly self-conscious tale, parts of it then must be read in the spirit of a literary romp" (208-9). Certainly her various points along the way make more sense than not, but one cannot help but have the feeling that Smith is reading into Gower and Chaucer's relationship in a way that may not be fully grounded. Her sense of Chaucer's motivations in his adaptation of Gower can be very conjectural. [RAL. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 41.1]

Date
2019

Gower Subjects
Confessio Amantis
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations