These "Letters to the Editor" appear in the TLS of July 23, 2021
It is indisputable that Chaucer was charged with “raptus” and that one of the meanings of the term (but not its only one) is “rape”. The question of his guilt is far less clear. The body of scholarship, both inculpatory and exculpatory, is extensive. But ultimately the issue remains unresolvable in any conclusive way. More widely, does the charge itself mean that the possibility, and only the possibility, that a writer had, or might have had, an unpleasant personal life mean that his works should not be studied?
Should “me too” become “you too”? The writers in the Chaucer Review ask “whether the time has come for feminists to move past Chaucer, to demand a new object of study less burdened by moral insufficiency.” The grounds of “moral insufficiency” are never defined and are not demonstrated. These “feminist scholars” are not trying “to deal with Chaucer in new and important and – yes – difficult ways”, as Tom Bailey asserts. (He never explains what these “ways” are.) Their explicit aim is to expunge him from both canon and curriculum. Just like the University of Leicester. Different forms of political correctness create improbable bedfellows
A. S. G. Edwards
Enfield
I am the medievalist who resigned from the editorial board of the Chaucer Review in protest against the prefatory statements made by the two guest editors of Issue no 54.3 (2019), on “new feminist approaches to Chaucer”. I have as good a claim to the title of feminist as these two editors, as is shown not only by my published works but also by the fact that the permanent editors of the Review dedicated a subsequent issue in this feminist series (55.4, in 2020) to me and Carolyn P. Collette, as “feminist scholars who ave done so much to shape the study of Chaucer and direct its future”.
The issue here is not feminism; it is literary criticism. The guest editors declare flatly that “Chaucer does not share our beliefs, we know. His historical persona, his ill-hidden prejudices, drift to the surface again and again within his works. He is a rapist, a racist, an anti-Semite; he speaks for a world in which the privileges of the male, the Christian, the wealthy, and the white are perceived to be an inalienable aspect of human existence”. This is not “quiet questioning”, as Tom Bailey puts it, but self-righteous assertion, which dictates to the reader what she is supposed to find in Chaucer before she turns the first page. And of course she will not so much find it as bring it there. To approach Chaucer with this mind-set is to substitute a grotesque caricature for the humane values that distinguish him from many other writers of his time, and that students, in my experience, are quite capable of appreciating.
One wonders whether the guest editors (or Tom Bailey) have actually read Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women, in which he opens his retelling of the rape of Philomel with passionate questioning of God – why did he allow the birth of the rapist Tereus, whose mere existence pollutes the world and the minds of all who read his story, even the mind of God himself? As for Chaucer’s alleged rape (about which there cannot be absolute certainty), his sensitivity to the paramount need for female consent, as well as the wide range of meanings covered by the word “raptus”, are evident, for example, when Troilus refuses Pandarus’s urging that he should “ravysshe” Criseyde, because, says Troilus, “ravysshyng of women” caused the present sufferings of Troy; so he insists he will not “ravysshe hire” – that is, elope with her – unless she wishes him to (but of course she prefers her own plan). I also cannot refrain from quoting Hector’s superbly dignified response to the Greek envoys who request the exchange of Criseyde for the Trojan captive Antenor: “‘Syres, she nys no prisonere,’ he seyde; / ‘I not [do not know] on yow who that this charge leyde, / But, on my part, ye may eftsone hem telle, / We usen here no wommen for to selle’”.
Of course, these matters deserve fuller discussion, which my published work on Chaucer has tried to provide. But the final issue with the guest editors’ manifesto is that they wish to close down discussion, to “move past Chaucer”, and “demand a new object of study less burdened by the weight of moral insufficiency”. To those of us who deeply admire and love Chaucer, the charge of “moral insufficiency” rebounds on its makers.
Jill Mann
Cambridge
For all his problems I love Chaucer. I read him in Middle English, and enjoy it -- you get better at understanding as you go along, and after a while you realize you're reading nearly as fast as you read modern English. It's just good stories. I do not think Chaucer was an evil man or a brute. I think modern readers, even college students, own enough insight to understand that maybe he did bad things, stupid things. So have we all. We try to learn. We keep learning. We keep reading. When I left the academe I could read again. And the academe is a corporation, a business whose first interest is money. I'd like to overthrow the patriarchy; I'd like to shatter and cast down white supremacy; I want to be bold in my reading and in my actions. Even the heroes in the academe -- there are many, and I was and am honored to learn from them -- cannot overcome the corporate nature of the academe, and its inevitable support of that same murderous, savage, white patriarchy. So read Chaucer as grandly as you can. Read whatever the hell you want. Read Black writers. Read women. Make sure you read stories to children whenever you get the chance. Children need them. I speak as a parent.
Posted by: Eric B. | August 24, 2021 at 10:00 PM