Elizabeth I: Two Poems, A Speech, and Boethius

Now here's a lady who needs no introduction: Elizabeth I (1533-1603), crowned in 1558 and ruling till her death, six months shy of her 70th birthday. While a fuller timeline may be found here, I'll put down some important dates:

1533: Henry VIII marries Anne Boleyn, is excommunicated, tells the pope to bugger off, Elizabeth born on Sept. 7.
1535: Thomas More whacked.
1536: Anne Boleyn whacked, Elizabeth declared illegitimate.
1547: Henry VIII shuffles off this mortal coil, Edward VI crowned.
1553: Edward VI cashes in his chips, Lady Jane Grey declared queen then deposed, Mary I crowned.
1554: Lady Jane Grey gets whacked, Mary I marries Phillip II.
1555: Mary I starts burning Protestants, becomes figure of urban legend.
1558: Mary I buys the farm, Elizabeth I crowned, despite being legally a bastard. (This is a sensitive point.)
1585: Roanoke Colony established, promptly lost.
1587: Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, gets whacked.
1588: The Armada threatens then sinks, Dudley breaths his last.
1592-3: Plague in London, Elizabeth I leaves and translates Boethius.
1601: Essex Revolt starts and gets shut down.
1603: Elizabeth I joins the choir invisible, James I crowned.

Now, onto the lit:

"The Doubt of Future Foes" -- ca. 1567. A short poem composed (according to the Norton notes) in response to Elizabeth I's concerns regarding Mary Stuart, who came to England in 1567 seeking refuge from rebellious subjects. Mary's alliance with the anti-English Catholic Church and her general unruliness, aptness for conspiracy, and polarizing reputation posed a threat to Protestant England and Elizabeth I's throne. The persona worries about future dangers to the realm, noting unquiet conditions among its subjects and the presence of ambitious and seditious persons eager to topple the current regime. However, she is confident that the "daughter of debate" (Mary) will be unable to achieve the power she seeks, for the realm has been secured by previous rulers -- probably a reference to Henry VIII and Edward VI's Protestant policies. Instead, the "rusty sword", long undrawn, will behead any such traitors and enemies of the state and crown. The poem is composed in "poulter's measure": couplets in which the first line is 12 syllables, and the second 14.

"On Monsieur's Departure" -- ca. 1582. The occasion of this poem is usually said to be the breaking off of marriage negotiations between Elizabeth I and Francois, French duke of Anjou, whom she dubbed her "frog". She is said to have had a genuine affection for the little fellow, even if she hadn't intended to follow through on the agreement. The poem seems to be a sort of consolation, declaring that she is not free to love as she will, since she is compelled by many contrary motives and duties. These contradictions seem to frustrate her, and in the end she desires the resolution of either a happy life with love or a forgetful death without it.

"Speech to the Troops at Tilbury" -- August 18, 1588. Elizabeth I delivered this speech wearing a silver breastplate over her white dress, while awaiting the landing of the Duke of Parma's invasion force. The Though the Armada had already been routed at that point, and was drifting aimlessly in the North Atlantic, the land army in the Netherlands remained a threat. The Earl of Leicester had mustered 4000 troops to meet any enemies attempting to reach London via the mouth of the Thames; then Elizabeth I arrived to bolster morale. Her speech is stirring, promising to risk her own life, and lead her people into battle as "your general, judge, and rewarder". The famous line "I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king" shows the balance Elizabeth always maintained between her personal and political identities, in this case affirming that her political identity -- her "heart and stomach" -- is the stronger and more essential of the two. Just as she, a "weak and feeble woman" could overcome through a majestic and noble heart, so the English, comparatively weaker than their Spanish foe, could also obtain a victory through their loyalty and bravery.

Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy -- 1593. While London was essentially shut down due to the plague, Elizabeth I headed off to Windsor Castle to wait it out. In the meantime, she whiled away the odd moment by translating Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy. For the most part, this translation is unremarkable -- the EETS editor describes it as "indifferent", "tolerably exact", and "generally very literal" (xi, x) -- but I find a few things notable.

First, as a monarch, Elizabeth I is one who rides the Wheel; as a 60-year-old childless woman, she could well perceive that the Wheel would soon turn. Given England's delicate position in European politics, her own delicate position as an aging and heirless queen, and the immediate physical hardship of the plague, Elizabeth I's interest in Boethius probably passed beyond mere academic interest.

Second, though the translation is generally clunky and literal, and mistakes abound, there are some mistakes that may be more meaningful. For instance, in a meter of Book Three, Elizabeth I renders four times an indicative as an imperative. Perhaps this is just a strange series of mistakes, but I think it more plausible that she either (a) changes the mood to suit her verse form, or (b) instinctively favors a regal commanding tone over Boethius's dispassionate recital of truisms. Another example is in a meter of Book Four, in which Elizabeth I renders the Latin word corusas "southeast wind", instead of its proper definition, "northwest wind". Again, this is an odd change and hard to view as a mistake: corus only means "northeast wind" and doesn't resemble the term for a southeast wind in the least. However, the theme of the meter itself may indicate a reason for the alteration: the meter is about temporal events, whose causes are unknown, generating unreasoning fear in humans. Five years before, the threat of invasion loomed over England, and the queen herself awaited the invaders near the port of Tilbury, wondering along with her subjects whether the southeast wind would bring with it across the channel barges full of enemy troops, while those same unpredictable winds and waves might at that same moment cast the Armada anywhere along Britain's coast.

Third, this translation, in its very production, served as a testament to the remarkable capacities of the queen, even in her own time. Accompanying the manuscript of Elizabeth I's "Englishing" of Boethius, are three documents,

three separate sheets of letter paper, with label of contents at back, [containing] three accounts of the date of the translations, the year of Her Majesty's reign when it was made, and the time which it occupied in making. These accounts have probably been written by different persons at different times, for all three vary a little in their statements as to the miraculously short space of time in which Elizabeth I performed the work, this varying between twenty-four and twenty-seven hours. (viii)

These accounts include meticulous calculations, counting the days she took for the project, then tracking her time spent in each day translating. This feat would be almost beyond belief, were it not for the fact that Elizabeth I used a secretary for most of the prose, and only wrote the meters in her own hand (xi). Nor is it known whether the numerous corrections, many done by Elizabeth I herself, were part of the time counted in these tabulations. Nonetheless, what we see is (I think) the makings of a royal "miracle story": an anecdote, backed by documentation, meant to render the queen superhuman in the mind of the hearer.

Huzzah!

The Big Fifteen are now complete! Now to work on my vast backlog of Middle English primary works. Shudder.

Dullness and the Fifteenth Century (David Lawton)

Lawton's article sheds light on the "dullness" of Chaucer's successors: both the apparent commonplace nature of their material and their own self-confessed ignorance or inability. In fact, dullness is a “guise”, a rhetorical pose:

The guise of dullness in the English fifteenth century, then, has many strands, and it is probably a mistake to examine any of them in isolation. On the immediate social level, it is almost always disingenuous, often implicated with problematic sociopolitical intervention; on the moral level, toward which it frequently drives, it is both decorous and philosophical, a concealed act of Boethian knowledge staking out ethical and theological ground. (770)

The poet sets himself up as an “Everyman”, disavowing special status, and even identity, as a poet. He suffers with everyone else in the world, and offers the “consolation of philosophy” to his fellow man. By conforming his own suffering to that of a Boethian model, the poet confirms its meaningfulness: “it is true because of, not in spite of, its conformity to a cultural pattern” (773).

More potently, Lawton suggests that poets used the pose of dullness and the presentation of traditional matter to address specific contemporary concerns with subtly. Specifically, in 1412 there was disagreement between Henry IV and Prince Henry over policy. Hoccleve (in his Regiment) seems to take the prince’s side: even in his commonplace advice that a king should “remain close to his people”, he cites as examples Edward III and John of Gaunt, but not Henry IV, because he “was accessible only to a narrow circle of advisors” (777). Thus the particular advice given, even if otherwise thoroughly traditional, and the particular exempla chosen may in fact indicate a narrow contemporary application. The broader principle is this: while many critics have taken the “dull and commonplace” 15^th century poetry as little beyond the recital of traditional maxims, this view strips the poetry from its context, which (Lawton argues) the poetry engages sharply, albeit obliquely.

A related issue is the strong emphasis in much “Chaucerian poetry” (Chaucer himself, but also Lydgate, Gower, and Hoccleve) on the value of peace and the pointless waste of war, anchored firmly in the contemporary context of repeatedly renewed conflict with France. This leads Lawton to a connection with the Boethian themes of “dull” poetry: “[I]t seems to me that the de casibus genre is directed to princes as kind of revenge on war, an assignation of ill repute: a divine revenge, with the full poet acting as moral agent” (782). Lydgate in particular does not shy away from exempla in his Fall of Princes that could have uncomfortably close resemblances in current political situations, reminding his own princes of how imminent the wheel’s turning may be.

After these points, Lawton presents an objection: “[I]f public writing of the sort I have described was a courageous and hard-hitting as I have claimed, how can it have been at the same time so popular, so socially acceptable and so safe?” (789). He gives three responses: first, that the “dull” poet can say what a wise man cannot, like a medieval fool; second, that Boethian themes of fortune and fall were common throughout the culture, and especially fascinating to those in power who rode the wheel; third, that kings are dependent on poets for the extension and celebration of their own reputation: “The Renaissance poet confers fame in return for attention to his moral lessons: the exchange is mutually satisfactory” (791).

Chaucerian Polity (David Wallace)

This book felt remarkably familiar, then I realized where I’d met the topics discuss before: Strohm’s Social Chaucer and Patterson’s Chaucer and the Subject of History. But before dropping these dogs in the pit together, I’ll synopsize a bit!

This is a big, tenacious book: it flushes out some basic concepts then chases them up every tree it can. But this, I think, is the heart of it: the contrast between hierarchical and associational forms of social structure, and the differences those structures make in the production of individual social subjects.

The historical tableaux in which Chaucer witnessed these two models (in extreme modes) pitted against one another was Italy. Chaucer visited two cities: Florence (1373) to negotiate trade agreements as wool customs controller, and Milan (1378) to negotiate for the military assistance of mercenary general Sir John Hawkwood. According to Wallace, “[i]n visiting Florence and Lombardy [Milan], Chaucer was exposed to the most crucial material and ideological conflict of the Italian Trecento: the conflict between republican libertas and dynastic despotism” (1). This conflict was poetic as well as political, and Chaucer knew it: “Chaucer […] read and interpreted the works of Dante, Boccaccio, and Petrarch within (and as a part of) this framework: Dante and Boccaccio he associated with Florentine polity, and Petrarch with Lombardy” (1).

The Republic of Florence was a beautiful city, dominated by the arts and trade. Its officials were elected, but the shortness of their terms of office and the strictures on their rule ensured that most of the power lay in the hands of the professional civil servants. Their historic aristocrats, the magnates, were not permitted to hold political office: they were seen as greedy and power-hungry, and therefore liable to destabilize the republic. Instead, officials were drawn from the ranks of merchants and craftsman. The Duchy of Milan, on the other hand, was not a beautiful city: it was instead big, dirty, productive (many ironworks), and dominated by the buildings of the government. The ruler, the Visconti, ruled absolutely and arbitrarily, for instance in his imposition of a unified Northern European Gothic style of architecture on the city and other cities under his rule.

Wallace argues that Chaucer saw correspondences between his own England and both Milan and Florence. The influence of guilds and burghers in London seemed a step in the direction of Florentine egalitarianism, while Richard II’s attempts to wrest control from the merchants and cement it in his own bureaucratic state were like the opening fanfare of Lombard despotism.

Chaucer’s interest in associational polity may be seen in the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, in which he describes the mutually agreed-upon felaweshipe of a vocationally diverse group of pilgrims. The possibility of such a felaweshipe lies in the familiarity of guild polity to English subjects of all walks of life. While many guilds were centered on trade, others were open to anyone. Guilds offered a model of society based on voluntary association for mutual profit; the Canterbury pilgrims embody such a society. This felaweshipe also resembles the band of Florentine travelers in Boccaccio’s Decameron.

There’s a lot more besides, but I’d like to return to my first point: the comparison of Strohm, Patterson, and Wallace. Patterson identifies Chaucer as a man between classes, yet fitting truly in none: the ultimate outsider, he is socially positioned to view the received ideologies with skepticism and forge instead his own. Strohm, on the other hand, sees Chaucer not as socially unmoored, but as a typical member of a new middle class, whose lack of a clear ideology permits it a freedom of mobility and self-invention. Wallace casts further afield, locating Chaucer not only in an English social context, but also an international context: individualism, freedom, and social mobility are Florentine ideals. As Wallace puts it, Chaucer “balanc[es] allegiances to associational and hierarchical structures in the attempt to form a new form of authorial identity” (216). Chaucer is not revolting against a monolithic social structure, nor merely representing a new class in a single hierarchy, but instead radically aware of the options of polity, both actually in Italy and potentially in England. The associational and anti-tyrannical themes of his poetry can be seen as an attempt to throw his own meager weight into the struggle, understanding the possibility of a “Boethian ending” (216).

Thomas More: Two Poems & Utopia

First, a bit about More's life, nicked from Wikipedia:

Saint Thomas More (7 February 1478–6 July 1535) was an English lawyer, author, and statesman who in his lifetime gained a reputation as a leading Renaissance humanist scholar, and occupied many public offices, including Lord Chancellor (1529–1532), in which capacity he had a number of people burned at the stake for heresy. [...] He was beheaded in 1535 when he refused to sign the Act of Supremacy that declared King Henry VIII Supreme Head of the Church of England.

Some more interesting bits:

Born in Milk Street, London, Thomas More was the eldest son of Sir John More, a successful lawyer who served as a judge in the King's Bench court. More was educated at St Anthony's School and was later a page in the service of John Morton, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who declared that young Thomas would become a "marvellous man". Thomas attended the University of Oxford for two years as a member of Canterbury Hall (subsequently absorbed by Christ Church), where he studied Latin and logic. He then returned to London, where he studied law with his father and was admitted to Lincoln's Inn in 1496. In 1501 More became a barrister.

To his father's great displeasure, More seriously contemplated abandoning his legal career in order to become a monk. For about four years he lodged at the London Charterhouse and he also considered joining the Franciscan order. Perhaps because he judged himself incapable of celibacy, More finally decided to marry in 1505, but for the rest of his life he continued to observe many ascetical practices, including self-punishment: he wore a hair shirt every day and occasionally engaged in flagellation.

Also married twice (first wife died), and had four children and a step-daughter; he gave his daughters an education in the classics.

Of the works I read, one was written in his youth ("Pageant Verses"), one as a young London barrister ("A Rueful Lament"), and one in his early career as a civil servant (Utopia).

"Pageant Verses" -- The description in his 1557 Works is as follows:

Mr. Thomas More in his youth devised in his father's house in London, a goodly hanging of fine painted cloth with nine pageants, and verses over every of those pageants, which verses expressed and declared what the images in those pageants represented. And also in those pageants were painted the things that the verses over them did in effect declare.

What follows is a sequential description of the "pageants" with their appended verses: Childhood, Manhood, Venus and Cupid (romance), Age, Death, Fame, Time, Eternity, and the Poet. The symbolism of the "pageants" is fairly plain: while the Child spins a top alone, the Man, on horseback, looms over the Child, signifying the succession or dominance of the latter stage over the former -- and this pattern is repeated with each picture, portraying its subject as triumphing over the previous subject, till at last Eternity triumphs over all. The final image shows the Poet; his accompanying verse (in Latin) declare that the "pageants" are symbols of what is true about human life and the world: that all life and all temporal goods pass, and what remains is the eternal love of God -- therefore, do not trust what is temporary but seek everlasting life from God.

"A Rueful Lament" -- The occasion of this poem was the death of Queen Elizabeth, wife of Henry VII and mother of Henry VIII, who "died in childbed in February in the year of our lord 1503". While some themes are typical for a memorial poem of this period -- the enumeration of the deceased's virtues and accomplishments, farewells to the survivors, appeals to God for mercy -- the poem also adopts a Boethian tone, lamenting the deceptive vanity of worldly goods, which are no security against death. Also, More uses, albeit briefly, the ubi sunt motif:

Where are our castles, now where are our Towers?
Goodly Richmond son art thou gone from me,
At Westminster that costly work of yours,
Mine own dear lord now shall I never see.

Such things bring a sigh of contentment to a good Anglo-Saxonist's heart.

Utopia -- More's most famous work, Utopia is the eponymous founder of the "utopian" genre of literature: philosophical narratives which explore social issues (law, economics, civics, politics, etc.) through the detailed description of an imagined "ideal" country. (Not necessarily the author's notion of a perfect society, but one built around some consistent rational or moral principle, as a thought experiment.) The Wikipedia description is as follows:

Utopia, in full On the Best State of a Republic and on the New Island of Utopia (Latin: Dē Optimo Rēpūblicae Statu dēque Nova Insula Ūtopia), is a 1516 book by Sir Saint Thomas More.

The book, written in Latin, is a frame narrative primarily depicting a fictional island society and its religious, social and political customs. The name of the place is derived from the Greek words ou (οὐ), "not", and topos (τόπος), "place", with the topographical suffix -eia (-εία), hence Outopeia (Οὐτοπεία; Latinized as Utopia), “no-place land.” It also contains a pun, however, because “Utopia” could also be the Latinization of Εὐτοπεία eutopeía, “good-place land,” which uses the Greek prefix ευ eu, “good,” instead of οὐ. One interpretation holds that this suggests that while Utopia might be some sort of perfected society, it is ultimately unreachable. Despite modern connotations of the word "utopia," it is widely accepted that the society More describes in this work was not actually his own "perfect society." Rather he wished to use the contrast between the imaginary land's unusual political ideas and the chaotic politics of his own day as a platform from which to discuss social issues in Europe.

For a review of Utopia, I suggest this study guide from the Cambridge UP, which I found at the Thomas More Studies site. For myself, I will limit myself to a few observations:

* The society of Utopia, as described by the narrator Raphael Hythloday, seems initially to positive, but then the details of Utopian policy undercut the initial sunny view. For instance, Utopians are free to travel wherever they like -- so long as they receive a passport from their civil authorities, including destination and time of return, and work their allotted time in whatever town they happen to be in. They are given the use of an ox cart for travel -- but unless women are in the company, the unspoken expectation is that they will forgo the cart and walk. If anyone goes to another city without permission, he is first reprimanded, then enslaved for repeat offenses. But certainly one may travel freely in one's own city's territory -- if one has the permission of one's father and wife, and makes sure to work his allotted hours. But why would anyone want to leave the city? They're all alike.

* Similar observations can be made about Utopian war. The Utopians hate war and love peace -- except when threatened, or their friends are threatened, or their friends are harmed. They try to avoid the awful human cost of war -- at least for themselves, which is why they hire the savage and merciless Zapoletes to fight for them. (But really they're trying to do the world a favor by slowly annihilating the Zapoletes through combat casualties.) They never loot the cities they conquer, having no desire for wealth -- except that the conquered peoples are forced to pay off the monetary expenditures of the Utopians in hiring their mercenary armies. They are courageous, honorable, and well-trained in chivalry, but attempt to overcome their enemies by stirring up sedition within the enemy nation and putting a price of their leaders' heads.

So, good times.

The Premature Reformation (Anne Hudson)

Hudson's Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History traces the origin and development of the Lollard movement; her reliance on the Lollards' own writings permits her to assemble a different, fuller account than had previously been accepted.

Earlier Lollard histories treated the Lollards as a disorganized, short-lived movement, only indirectly connected to John Wyclif and often more politically than theologically motivated; after Oldcastle's rebellion was suppressed, the Lollards scattered and ceased to be a significant feature of English popular religion.

Hudson disputes this view. Instead, she traces a clear line of intellectual descent from Wyclif to Tyndale, the pre-schism Tudor Protestant. Wyclif and his Oxford disciples presented a coherent ideology of ecclesiastical and political reform, and laid the groundwork for the educational program that would make that reform possible. The Lollards embraced that ideology and spread it through their book-centered community of "schools" in private homes. While there was a certain amount of drift in emphases as the popular movement attenuated farther from its academic roots, the Lollards of the 1500s still upheld distinctively Wycliffite beliefs, injecting into early English Protestantism elements not found in the Lutheran movement of the continent. For this reason, Hudson uses Lollard and Wycliffite as interchangeable terms -- heretofore an unacceptable practice.

For Wyclif and his followers, sola Scriptura was axiomatic, though later Lollards differed on the degree of its application: some thought extra-biblical tradition merely inessential, while others forbade it entirely. The preaching and study of the Bible, often manifesting in copious memorization, was essential. Other distinctive doctrines were rejections of orthodoxy (i.e. Papist), notably the necessity of confession with a priest and christening, the literal presence in transubstantiation, the selling of pardons and indulgences, the veneration of images, and the piety of pilgrimages. The Wycliffites also rejected the authority of the pope and denounced the endowment of churches and monasteries: the priests of God ought rather to live in holy poverty on the alms of their parishioners or else by the labor of their hands. Relative to secular government, Wyclif called upon the king to divest the church of its lands and riches, and stated that earthly rulers had the duty to punish churchmen (even the pope) for immorality. However, the Lollards also took a dim view of war as a means of accomplishing good: while accepting certain military actions in the Old Testament as valid, almost any offensive military action was considered unjustified.

In addition to this historical survey, based on analysis of Wycliffite documents, Hudson also offers an analysis of contemporary responses to Lollard ideas, as recorded in literature. Chaucer, while not a Wycliffite himself, has sympathy with a characteristically Lollard notion: that priests should be models of virtue for their flocks. Moreover, he surrounds his model priest, the Parson, with suggestions of Lollardy. While the "Parson's Tale" cements the Parson's orthodoxy (it is a confessional manual), that Chaucer indicates the degree to which reformist ideas and practice had become identified with heresy. Similarly, Piers Plowman advocates many Wycliffite reform positions (ecclesiastical divestment, for one) though remains firmly orthodox on important matters such as communion and confession. PP's audience, however, incorporated the poem into their own language of reform, and as their positions were marked as heretical, the poem too became less orthodox. Gower underwent a similar transformation, as his Vox Clamantis is sharply critical of church practices, while the prologue to his Confessio Amantis castigates the Lollards even in their knowledge of the Bible.

Narrative, Authority, and Power (Larry Scanlon)

Exempla are, for most readers, the dullest sort of medieval literature: micro-narratives existing to reinforce what was already a foregone conclusion long before their introduction into the discussion. Scanlon, however, thinks they demand closer inspection.

First, he argues that the exemplum was not merely a narrative that reinforces the principles of a static authority, but instead an instrument of authority in the creation of itself and the enacting of the principles that support it. While authority claims to derive its standing from the past, it is the present holders of authority who assert their connection to that past and articulate the ways it legitimates them in the present. (Gramsci’s hegemony figures in here.) The exemplum, with its simultaneous appeal to historical moment and timeless meaning, was an effective tool for the Church to position itself as authoritative in the minds of the non-clerical classes of the laity.

Next, Scanlon examines two types of exempla: the sermon exemplum and the “public” exemplum (his term). The sermon exemplum is primarily a means of situating the Church’s authority in relationship to the lay commons. The exemplum was seen as an effective way to communicate truth to the “vulgar”: a sermon exemplum was always “talking down”. The public exemplum, on the other hand, attempts to position the Church as an influence over the king. This may be seen especially in the Fürstenspiegel (mirror of princes) and de causibus (fall of princes) traditions, which remind kings of the temporal and capricious nature of their own power.

Finally, Scanlon argues that the secular “Chaucerian tradition” (embodied by Chaucer, Gower, Lydgate, and Hoccleve) appropriated the sermon and public exempla as a means of diluting and relocating Church authority with the laity and the locus of lay power, the king: “it reclaims the monarch as the source of lay political authority” (138).

Chaucer and the Subject of History (Lee Patterson)

Patterson’s Chaucerian critical history in Negotiating the Past was vitally concerned with preserving the individuality and agency of the subject; the book seems to be an enlargement on that theme, specially applied to Chaucer. A single quotation will suffice to encapsulate Patterson’s “big picture”:

When we try to define [Chaucer’s] social identity, to specify the community within which he can be securely located and from which he derived his sense of social self-definition, we find that every assertion requires a qualification. He is the son of a rich merchant, but one educated in noble households; a king’s squire, but one who fulfilled the duties of a clerical administrator; a modest servant of the Crown, but one who numbered among his friends some of the king’s closest associates. To specify his social identity with precision and confidence seems impossible. For what the evidence reveals is a Chaucer on the boundary between distinctive social formations. Not bourgeois, not noble, not clerical, he nonetheless participates in all three of the communities. Surely this sense of marginality, of participating in various groupings but being fully absorbed by none, is related to the sense of subjectivity, the sense of selfhood that stands apart from all community, that we recognize throughout his writing and especially in the Canterbury Tales. (39).

Though arguably hyperbolic in its details, Patterson’s portrait of Chaucer is a vivid depiction of a man whose marginality serves (in essence) as a place to stand and apply a world-moving lever. (Of course, Strohm would disagree strongly with this position -- the Antisocial Chaucer? -- and probably did.) He then presents his readings of several of Chaucer’s works built on this conceptual frame: that absorption in and alienation from social identity are the critical factors in the generation of subjectivity, both in the case of those who’ve accepted their social role (the Knight) and those who have not (the Wife of Bath). For my purposes, I shall treat of the Knight only.

Patterson describes the Knight as “a man whose social ideology precludes self-consciousness” (40). He also lived in a time when his own role was destabilizing: “There is considerable evidence to suggest that in the late fourteenth century chivalric identity was beginning to be seen as inadequate even to the governing class” (178). Knights became less essential to warfare, and so needed to justify their existence, with the result that chivalry became its own end. Thus the Knight’s tale focuses not on a military campaign but on a quarrel between knights: a matter of honor. Yet, as Patterson illustrates through the historic legal battle between Scropes and Grosvenor, the honor that drives Palamon and Arcite to destruction is the same honor that Theseus (and the Knight) uphold as the heart of chivalry. The failure of Palamon, Arcite, and Theseus to “self-consciously” examine their social ideology destroyed them, a problem the Knight fails to register, lacking self-consciousness himself. (Aers’s reflexivity?)

The Book Named the Governor (Thomas Elyot)

A bit on Elyot's life from Wikipedia:

Sir Thomas Elyot (c. 1490 – March 26, 1546), was an English diplomat and scholar. [...] In 1531 he produced The Boke named the Governour, dedicated to King Henry VIII. The work advanced him in the king's favour, and later that year he received instructions to proceed to the court of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, to try to persuade him to take a more favourable view of Henry's proposed divorce from Catherine of Aragon. With this was combined another commission, on which one of the king's agents, Stephen Vaughan, was already engaged. He was, if possible, to apprehend William Tyndale.

The Boke is a manual in the instruction of young nobles, especially princes, to prepare them for governance. It was widely admired as a book of political and moral philosophy. I find it (mostly) dull.

Some observations:

* Elyot's argument for social hierarchy seems based in two notions. First, qualities within nature are distributed variably (strength, beauty, and usefulness among plants, for example) by the purpose of God; therefore, those entities with the greatest degree and diversity of excellencies ought to be valued the highest. Understanding is the chief quality of humanity; therefore, those who are most understanding ought to be held in highest esteem. Second, each sort of craftsman is suited to his own art and aims for excellence within that sphere; conversely, an excellent craftsman may be hopelessly incompetent outside of his sphere, yet no less worthy in his own right. Therefore, those who ought to govern are those best trained in the craft of governance: justice, foreign relations, and martial endeavors. The problem: the first argument calls not for an aristocracy, but an oligarchy of philosophers, while the second leads to a professional bureaucracy. Also, the notion of "understanding" shifts between the arguments: first it is merely the rational faculty, but later becomes expertise in the theory and praxis of a craft. In other words, an excellent blacksmith might meet the criteria of the first argument, but not the second, while a cunning general might not rank first in understanding, yet surpass the wise blacksmith on the battlefield. So, is the governor the wisest man in his society, or merely the best trained in the arts of governance? Elyot's defense of hereditary nobility isn't going well...

* Make sure an infant noble has a healthy nurse: it builds character. ("But not an Irish nurse!" Hush, Spenser.)

* The noble youth's education in the fine arts is primarily pragmatic. Music is acceptable in youths of ability, but they must only play in private, for their own relaxation: Achilles is held up as an example, calming his rage with a private harp session. (A noble who performs music in public reduces his estimation in the eyes of his subjects, being merely an entertainer.) Similarly, sculpture and painting are acceptable only in their utility: a noble trained in sculpture may better design and improve siege engines, while one that paints may better draft maps of enemy territory or plans of fortifications, or illustrate principles of geometry or astronomy. Portraiture has a more interesting use, however...

* This is way cool. A painting noble youth may, in reading of some exemplary person in ages past, be "inflamed to the imitation of vertue":

he forth with taketh his penne or pensill, and with a graue and substanciall studie, gatherynge to him all the partes of imagination, endeuoureth him selfe to expresse liuely, and (as I mought say) actually, in portrayture, nat only the faict or affaire, but also the sondry affections of euery personage in the historie recited, whiche, mought in any wise appiere or be perceiued in their visage, countenance or gesture...

* Learning how to swim is "right profitable in exstreme daunger of warres". Also longbows are a great form of exercise and (incidentally) great in a fight. Yeah, Tom's all about the wars.

* Elyot's top seven things a governor ought to consider when raised to office, preferably in a room alone by himself:

1. All honor proceeds from God, and if He deigns to take it away, no earthy means will suffice to keep or regain it.
2. Office is not only honor and wealth gained, but also great care and burden.
3. The greater the office, the greater the care it will take to fill, and the less time available for personal pursuits.
4. All the costly jewels and garments of office were fashioned by commoners, and to be overcome by them is to be bested in virtue by mere craftsmen.
5. Don't view your subjects as cattle or tools for your own personal convenience; instead, secure your reputation with genuine virtue, not fear.
6. Governors are set up on high and seen by all, even their private lives. Set an example for the people, because a governor's subject will be like him.
7. Crap, I lost count. Make that six things. Oh, look! Here's a poem!

* A governor should possess the quality of majesty: a dignity of appearance, speech, and motion which arouses reverent admiration and awe in the subject. It should not be fierceness, which only arouses fear, but instead honorable sobriety and gravity, coupled with temperance and courtesy.

* Clothing should be suited to the time: modest ordinarily, but suitably magnificent for occasions of state. Similarly, ornament and decoration in the governor's home ought to turn the viewer's mind to wisdom and virtue: paintings of instructive fables and histories, prominently placed maxims and mottoes suitable for contemplation.

* Nobility originated with the general consensus that certain folk, living among equals, were more virtues or more profitable to the common good than were others. These folk became known as "gentlemen". Their children, following their virtuous example, were called "well-born". This pattern repeating through successive generations, the family comes to be called excellent or "noble". Therefore, the longer a noble family continues in virtue and right governance, the more properly noble they shall be esteemed.

* "[T]here is no doctrine, be it eyther diuine or humaine, that is nat eyther all expressed in historie or at the leste mixte with historie." This statement, made in the defense of the study of history generally, leads to a fascinating discussion of Holy Writ, in which Elyot asks what "may be saide to haue no parte of historie"? His answer: nothing. Most books of the OT, and the Gospels and Acts in the NT, are obviously history; but even the prophets, psalms, and epistles are themselves anchored in a contemporary historical context and refer to past history. While some critics I've read denigrate many Christian (especially Protestant) writers for "dehistoricizing" scripture, Thomas Elyot seems intent on historicizing it, viewing it as writing that originated in a time and place, an origin which continues to be important in understand what was written. Way cool.

John Donne's Poetry: The Miscellany

“Air and Angels” -- Thomistic angel theology combined with Neo-platonist notions of love for ideal vs. concrete objects. Donne describes the woman as an embodiment of his desire: necessarily embodied, else his love could never be offered to its object. The manner of her embodiment is as the embodiment of angels, who coalesce substantial bodies from the air to appear before sensible physical creatures. Here's the twist: the woman isn't an embodiment of his desire in her physical form, but in her love for him. The analogy runs thus: as angel is to air, so his love is to hers. His love is embodied in her love as an angel is embodied in air, and so returned to him. Is it therefore self-love, and woman's love only reciprocal?

“The Apparition” -- If you don't love me (i.e. put out), I'll die, and then I'll haunt you! But I won't tell you what I'll say, because you might change your cruel ways and dodge my vengeance. Especially vivid is the behavior of her imagined future lover, who ignores her "stir" and "pinch" and pretends to be asleep, and "in false sleep... shrink[s]", thinking she just want more sex. (Of course she has a future lover: she's a "feigned vestal", and her protestations of chastity are just meanness.)

“The Bait” -- Hooray! Donne tweaks Marlowe's "Passionate Shepherd", and posits a passionate angler who invites his love to "prove" the "pleasures" of "golden sands", "crystal brooks", "silken lines", and "silver hooks" (1-4). (Of course, all of these are merely metaphors, except maybe the silken line.) In fact, he's not interested in fishing -- "let others freeze with angling reeds" (17) -- but in getting her in the water. She needn't be shy, because she "darkenest" both sun and moon. (Why? 'Cause she's nekkid, that's why, with pasty white Renaissance maiden skin. Congratulations, Donne: you made the first "blinded by the white" joke I know of.) He needn't fish anyway, since her sexiness will draw the fish to her anyway -- "thou thyself art thine own bait" (26) -- just as it draws him. Rawr.

“Break of Day” -- This is a lover's complaint of the "stay in the bed, don't leave me" variety. The argument: since we didn't go to bed because of night (i.e. for sleep), why leave the bed because of day? We came to bed for love, so we can stay in it for love. Besides, the light won't talk; and if it could would only say that (1) I like it here, and (2) I prize "my heart and honour" so that I won't leave the man who has it. (Yes, that's "honor" in the "she had sex with him" sense, and, yes, the persona is a chick: it's a genre convention, apparently. Puzzled me for a bit, too.) And why would you leave -- business? A busy man is the worst kind of lover: he's practically an adulterer. (Divided time and attention?)

“The Ecstasy” -- The short version: our souls are communing beautifully, but we still need these bodies to get it on! "Love's mysteries in the soul do grow,/But yet the body is his book" (71-2). Also, just as the sublunar world is the arena in which the heavenly intelligences manifest their ethereal impulses, so to do souls ("we are the intelligences") manifest their thoughts through the actions of the body ("our sphere").

“Elegy 19: To His Mistress Going to Bed” -- Serious hotness, full of naughty puns. The best part: when he refers to his mistress as "My America!" Very little needs to actually be written about this one: it's practically unforgettable.

“The Flea” -- Any Renaissance scholar who can't wing a discussion of "The Flea" is not worth the name.

“The Funeral” -- Along with "The Relic", one of two poems about a ring of hair the persona received from some woman (Magdalene something or other) who otherwise would not put out. Anyway, he claims that future generations can revive him by stringing her hairs through his tissues to replace his nerves: odd medieval medicine, I suppose.

“Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward” -- Love this one. But, like "To His Mistress...", one I remember so well, I'll not comment on it.

“The Good Morrow” -- The lovers are a microcosm!

“A Hymn to God the Father” -- Got this one memorized.

“The Indifferent” -- I'll do anyone but a chick that wants commitment.

“Love's Alchemy” -- Bah, women.
“The Relic”
“Song”
“The Sun Rising”
“The Undertaking”
“A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning”
“A Valediction: Of Weeping”

Writing and Rebellion (Steven Justice)

This is actually interesting: Justice begins with the presentation of five short texts from Henry Knighton’s chronicle account of the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt--three addresses labeled as “speeches” and two as “letters”. However, all are in an epistolary form. The difference? The first three are attributed to commons (Jack Milner, Jack Carter, and Jack Trueman) while the last two are attributed to John Ball, a cleric co-conspirator. Justice’s explanation: that Knighton could not conceive of peasant literacy, and so assumed that Milner, Carter, and Trueman’s messages were oral, not written.

This is, in Justice’s opinion, evidence of a blindspot in Knighton’s conventional ideology--a blindspot that leads him to reveal a truth he would have been loath to accept: a literate culture among the commons. (That Langland did accept peasant literacy is evidenced, Justice claims, by his post-revolt revisions.) Written culture was, ostensibly, the realm of nobles and (especially) clerks. However, commons understood the power of writing, even if not all could actually read and write fluently. They experienced the control of themselves and their property that legal documents embodied, and they recognized the authority latent in royal decrees. For this reason they attacked the existing regime by destroying tax rolls and land records, and echoed decretive language in their letters (“Jak trewman doth yow to understande…”).

However, this literacy centered in legal and executive documents made them ill-equipped as readers to cope with theological discourse and poetry, which do not issue a summons to action. Two cases in point: Wyclif’s denouncement of clerical wealth, an appeal for the king to divest the church of its lands, was taken as authorization for direct action, while Langland’s similar discussion of what ought to be in the church and society became marching orders to right the wrongs. Justice identifies this tendency to move from speculation to execution with John Ball in particular, but the literature peasantry generally as well.

Chaucer's Sexual Poetics (Carolyn Dinshaw)

Sigh. Here we go...

Starting with Chaucer’s rebuke to his scribe, Adam, for sullying his ms. through “rape”, Dinshaw sets up a grand allegory that informs the rest of her book (shades of Robertson!). The text is a female body, which readers rape when they “read like men”, appropriating the text for their own purposes, imposing totalizing meanings on the text without regard for the text’s own desires (sliding ambiguities and possibilities). However, a man may read as a man without reading like a man (and so raping the text). Chaucer is said to do this well, in that he both produces texts open to multiple readings and depicts female characters with a mindfulness to those characters’ own desires (Criseyde and the Wife of Bath, in particular). In contrast, prominent critics like Robertson and Donaldson read T&C like men by imposing on it a totalizing meaning that eliminates ambiguity, just as Troilus and Pandarus read like men by reading Criseyde as nothing but an opportunistic whore. Imposing man-reading on stories of women is stultifying (see Legend of Good Women). The Wife of Bath, on the other hand, is a female character who is aware of how men read, and so appropriates man-reading, both in approach and substance, for her own ends: her tale depicts an imagined world in which patriarchy is not so much replaced as widened, to make room for the respect and affirmation of the feminine will. Oh, and the Pardoner reads like a eunuch, or something.

Not much of a fan of Dinshaw, because she really pushes the whole “Geoffrey Chaucer is a rapist” thing far beyond the evidence: characterizing the historical debate over the enigmatic legal document as all too tangled and inconclusive to pursue at length, she nonetheless states that “a sexual incident involving Cecilia and Chaucer does seem to have taken place” (11). O RLY? Even the Riverside Chaucer--hardly the most extensive treatment of this problem--presents a strong enough case to negate her statement: while Cecilia released Chaucer of all responsibility for the raptus, another person involved in the case, John Grove, though similarly released by Cecilia, actually paid her money, apparently in settlement. This would seem to indicate that the primary responsibility for the incident--whatever it was--lay not with Chaucer but with Grove. Dinshaw knew this--she consulted the Riverside Chaucer--but she does not mention it. She apparently seems intent on linking Chaucer with rape, for no reason other than to lend her allegory a historicist sexiness. Bah.

Chaucer, Langland, and the Creative Imagination (David Aers)

Keane’s review in MLR sums up this book’s thesis well:

[B]oth poets [i.e. Langland and Chaucer] are ‘creative’ in a special sense. That is, that although they may set out to examine the world in which they live and its problems in the light of accepted conventional ideas, the very integrity of their creative genius forces on them a picture which is truer to fact, so that they reflect more or less faithfully the strains which were being felt in the social and religious structures of their day and the changes which were taking place. (424)

Aers’ Langland seeks to learn two things: what is the truth, and how does one live rightly (“Dowel”)? In his many allegorical dream excursions, he meets many representatives of the standard answers his culture offers for these questions; they contradict one another and (more importantly) the social reality Langland’s candid imagination perceives. As a result, Langland sets out finally from the church, “search[ing] for the lost Plowman and the Grace he may mediate to the present world” (37).

A Quibble: he presents the account in Passus VI of the laborer (“Wastour”) who refuses to work and the inability of the knight to render him tractable. The term “Wastour” is treated as an ideologically loaded label--society defines this recalcitrant worker as a wastrel. However, Aers’ Langland perceives a social discontent among the peasantry that may justify the “wastour”: they want a bigger stake in their own production (VI.307-11). Therefore, “wastour” is really just a perceptive peasant who sees the “violence inherent in the system” and goes on strike. Only one problem: Passus VI.307-11 describes the time of plenty after an abundant harvest, comparing the peasants’ former contentment with beans and greens to their current decadent enjoyment. They are not asking for better food and not getting it: they are enjoying the fruits of their labors, and that is the point.

Regarding Chaucer, Aers discusses a faculty he calls “reflexivity” or “reflexive imagination”: “reflexive imagination grasps the way human beings constitute the world, the way they are agents in creating ideologies, dogmas and all that is known, not merely passive recipients of reality and impersonal verities” (81-2). Aers’ first example of reflexivity in Chaucer is the Wife of Bath’s “Prologue”, in which she proceeds to situate anti-feminist clerical dogma in social and historical contexts. Men write these things about women: celibate old men, burning with the envy of sterile age. She then offers her own readings of familiar texts, using her own experience as support: she overtly and self-consciously practices the same approach the clerics use (albeit covertly and probably unconsciously), because that is only option human readers have.

By contrast, Aers’ Troilus is an unreflexive reader: “Troilus still cannot see the primary role of his own culture and social organization in creating the present tragedy, and so he perceives Criseyde’s actions in a very different perspective from the one open to Chaucer’s readers,” who presumably understand the cruel social mechanisms that trapped Criseyde into a situation she would not have chosen (138).

Yeah, okay. Reflexivity I’ll buy.

Christ's Body (Sarah Beckwith)

Beckwith’s project is to “[examine] the image of ‘Christ’s body’ as a symbol shaping and shaped by the social vision of the religious culture of the late Middle Ages in England” (2). She is not interested in theology, but in “cultural anthropology”--what “cultural work” does Christ’s body accomplish in social hierarchy and social interaction? If there are any questions about her perspective on the religious angle, consider an epigraph to the first chapter:

Pure spirit is pure lie.—Friedrich Nietzsche

Huh. But let’s carry on, shall we?

Chapter one seeks to demystify medieval mysticism. While earlier modern studies of mystic texts tended to accept them practically at face value, according them the transcendence the purport to represent, Beckwith argues that this reception is itself profoundly historically conditioned. With modernity came a rejection of established hierarchies--religious, political, philosophical--that left a corresponding emptiness, and mysticism--universal, non-rational, non-dogmatic, immediate, and personal--seemed an authentic replacement for the discarded shells. This embrace of mysticism had the concomitant result of the ahistoricizing of mystical texts, for social and temporal context are meaningless to timeless, universal communication.

This attempt to recover the lost sacred led scholars of mysticism to value the via negativa over the via positiva. The negative way (The Cloud of Unknowing) attempts to realize oneness with God through spiritual contemplation of the absolute divine, which is beyond all sense perception, analogy, symbol, or imagining. The positive way (Margery Kempe, the Franciscans) sought unity with Christ through contemplation and imitation of His bodily corporeality--imagining Christ’s passion, or identifying one’s bodily suffering with Christ’s suffering. This “sensible and personal” way of mysticism has been seen as “feminine” and inferior to the transcendent (and “masculine”) negative way. This bias has led scholars of mysticism to devalue a form of spirituality that was in fact more pervasive in the Middle Ages. Beckwith wants to correct these tendencies and bring the mystics back down to earth where they belong.

Then Beckwith gets down to business. Her claim is simple enough:

[T]he body, and the symbol of Christ’s body in particular, is actually a basic metaphor for pre-modern theorizing about the social order, one nuanced through the specific articulations of that metaphor to consider the urgent question of who was included in that social order and on what terms. (27)

Obviously we can (and Beckwith does) turn to biblical language about the unity of Christians within the body of Christ, which is His church (1 Cor. 12). But also the Eucharist was the body of Christ, literally present among believers in the Mass. This is dramatized in the Corpus Christi procession, in which the whole citizenry (Christ’s corporate body) marches through town behind a monstrance carrying a consecrated host (Christ’s sacramental body). Lollardy figures in here: their views on the Mass threatened the boundaries and conditions of the social order.

At this point Beckwith brings in the positive way of mysticism, referencing the many devotional manuals (often with Franciscan sources) that taught contemplation of Christ’s bodily suffering. Through imaginatively identifying with Christ’s bodily suffering, the contemplative could be united to Christ spiritually. Christ’s wounds were imagined as portals into the Christ’s body: dove cotes, honeycomb, birth canals. This new route into the body was a threat to the sacral norm embodied in the Corpus Christi procession. And this is why Margery Kempe so peeved the churchmen of her day: by virtue of her identification with Christ, manifest in her weeping and pangs and declared in her many visions, Margery Kempe claimed a kind and a degree of unity with Christ’s body unthinkable outside of the institutional norms of the church.

Rhetoric, Hermenteutics, and Translation in the Middle Ages (Rita Copeland)

Copeland's project is to situate the medieval approach to translation within the contested disciplinary territory between rhetoric and grammar. In Rome, translation was considered a rhetorical act: an appropriation that replaces the source through re-expression and re-contextualization. (She quotes Cicero, who claims to translate like an orator, not like an interpreter.) As oratorical Rome faded into textual post-Roman Europe, grammar (the textual discipline) embraced the more freewheeling approach of the rhetoric.

However, at the same time, this approach to translation is opposed by the theories of translation proposed by theologians for application to Holy Writ. I think she's mistaken to make much of Augustine -- he was sadly misguided, and Jerome took him to task about it -- but her points about Jerome are well put. First, Jerome seeks a "literal, word for word" translation of scripture, because he places a divine significance not only in the meaning of the words, but also in the particular diction and syntax of the text. Because a "loose" translation would disarray this divine organization, it is not appropriate. However, for secular texts, Jerome preferred a "loose, meaning for meaning" translation, since the importance lies in the ideas, not in the specific textual array conveying the ideas.

This latter view came to dominate medieval notions of translation. However, Copeland distinguishes between two medieval forms of translation: "primary" and "secondary". Primary translation's stated purpose is to provide a faithful rendition of the original into the vernacular; however, the translation in fact serves to displace the original, often by encoding contextualized interpretations of the text into the translation. Medieval translations of Boethius are often of this sort. Secondary translation takes the act of translation as an opportunity for art and "invention", relocating the authority in the text from the source to the translating poet (Chaucer's Legend of Good Women is her example).

Frankly, I found this book dull, dull, dull.

Negotiating the Past (Lee Patterson)

The subtitle (The Historical Understanding of Medieval Literature) sums up Patterson's project, even in its ambiguity. In this book, Patterson is concerned with both the role of history in medieval literature studies and the understand of history put forth in the literature itself: these are its two main projects.

The first project -- analysis of the scholarly handling of literature in relation to history -- is itself handled within a historical narrative of the development of Chaucerian studies. He begins his scholarly retrospective with the revival of medieval studies in the late 1700s/early 1800s. This "medievalism" was driven by conservative nationalistic politics, a rejection of the chaos of modernity in favor of the stable hierarchies of a nostalgically idealized Middle Ages. On the other hand, medievalists like Ruskin and Morris saw in the Middle Ages a time of authentic and natural individualism, later corrupted by the classically sophisticated Renaissance and the depersonalizing Industrial Revolution. This latter Romantic view was congenial to "the methods of German scientific historicism and liberal values," which rejected the absolutist conservative right and the egalitarian revolutionary left in favor of a system that valued individual liberty above all (12). While the Middle Ages was conceived of as a time of defined social structures, the medieval writers were not seen as constrained by those structures, and so were independent individuals commenting out of a universal, unconstrained humanity. The view held "historical context and transhistorical humanism" in tension -- a tension broken by the late 19th century historicist Chaucerians (14). The historicists viewed historical context as controlling: "causes" of literary features were sought in the historical settings, providing "objective" (and self-evident) insight into a work. In reaction to this stultifying, "scientific" reading of literature, New Criticism arose, insisting that literature must instead be read ahistorically and acontextually, relying instead on literary form: "reading a work on its own terms". This was a humanist endeavor, seeking meaning in the universal verities of human nature, and the sovereignty of individual identity and choice. In reaction to New Criticism came D.W. Robertson's Augustinian exegetical approach: for Robertson, the New Critics are hopelessly mired in the newfangled individualism of modernity, and so misconstrue their subject. Instead of treating works as autonomous worlds of meaning, all medieval literature must be read as depicting a single system of values through a single system of symbols (caritas uber alles!). The individual is not seen as independent of the cultural system, but instead a fully integrated part of it.

At this point, medieval studies crash into the recognition of subjectivity that is postmodernism. The inescapability of historical context by the individual is the main issue. Patterson cites Marxist criticism as an approach that embraces the truth of this notion. In fact, the Marxist approach lauds itself for embracing the totality of history, both advancements and the suffering caused along the way. This view of the totality (synchronically and diachronically) enables the critic to see beyond the obscuring fragmentation of oppressive systems, to perceive the truth and the need for revolution. Patterson sees this as a weakness critically: texts become an occasion for the critic's reaffirmation of the totality he already believes, confirming it positively or negatively (through "suppression"). In opposition to this, Patterson sets the Foucaldian New Historicists. These critics view society as a self-regulating mechanism of Power, that subverts and contains any effort to defy the order, undercutting individual resistance: "New Historicism discloses a world strangely drained of dynamism, in which every effort to enact change issues in a reaffirmation of the status quo" (63). This makes Patterson grumpy: where's the room for change in this scenario, or real individuals with meaningful agency? What Patterson suggests (albeit nebulously) as a replacement is a kind of historically-aware individualism that recognizes its own paradoxical nature: "In attempting to understand the past, we inevitably enter into elaborate and endless negotiations, struggles between desire and knowledge that can never be granted closure... Whatever individualism we seek to sustain must, to be sure, insist upon its own historicity" (72-3, 74). Yes, there are determinative factors in history that shape individuals, and, yes, individuals rise above such hegemony and speak in resistance to it. (And that's just the way it is, because otherwise life would be unthinkable for Lee Patterson.)

Patterson's discussion of the Kane-Donaldson Piers Plowman is, to him, a fine example of scholars accepting both the historical situatedness of themselves and their object of study (through rigorous engagement with the texts), while asserting the agency of themselves and Langland (through rational textual criticism and editing). Good on them.

* The rest of the book I found dull: a 15th century reading of Troilus and Criseyde (it's all about love! Thanks, medieval D.W.), the influence of the Aeneid's pessimistic view of history's role in the present as it affects Chretien de Troyes, and a reading of the AMA (kings die! it's sad! feel sorry for the king -- and submit).