David Wallace (1) (1954–)

I like Geoffrey Chaucer a lot. I usually like Very Short Introductions. But, in this case, I truly wish they had never met.

Of course short introductions have to be short; I don't expect them to go into the nitpicky details of how we know what we know about Chaucer. On the other hand, I don't expect them to make things up, either.

And, yes, this book makes things up. Example: We know that Chaucer had genuine familiarity with (depending on how you count) four or five languages: Middle English, show more French (both Parisian and Anglo-Norman, which by this time were substantially different), Italian, and Latin. The languages that were spoken in his time he clearly learned from people around him, and he was fully fluent (which is one reason he was so often sent on diplomatic missions). It is conjectured that he had somewhat less Latin than the others (mostly because, in instances where he made reference to both French and Latin versions of a work, he tended to lean more on the French). It certainly does not follow, as author Wallace casually claims, that Latin was forced upon him!

Or take this entry in Chaucer's chronology for the year 1386 (p. 120): "MP for Kent. Falls from grace, losing Aldgate dwelling and customs-house position." The bare facts are right -- Chaucer gave up his demanding, dangerous position (he had been robbed twice) and his Aldgate home (which may not have been a place he particularly liked; no one knows the layout, and there is much dispute about whether it was a decent dwelling or just a small, drafty corner). But we know nothing of the reasons, except that these were times of extreme political upheaval. Did he fall from grace -- or did he just decide that he didn't want to run the risk of being associated with either the old or the new regime?

Personally, too, I found the whole chapter "Performance and new Chaucers," which takes up a sixth of the book, to be more an irritant than anything else. Yes, part of Chaucer's legacy is all the uses that his works were put to after his death. Including, e.g., the Scottish Chaucerians who get such short shrift (Robert Henryson is mentioned on one page) as well as all the English incompetents who tried to follow in his footsteps but aren't acknowledged (John Lydgate, whose devotion was as extreme as his talent was lacking, is never mentioned in that chapter). There is too much interpreting of Chaucer via the works of Shakespeare, when the debt is the other way (the true greatness of Chaucer is surely shown by the fact that Shakespeare took two whole plays -- Troilus and Cressida and The Two Noble Kinsmen -- from Chaucer, and both Shakespeare's works are inferior to their sources; can you name any other author who was so good that Shakespeare made his works worse?).

The bottom line is, as someone who knows a lot about Chaucer, and tries not to make assumptions when I don't know the truth, I found this book extremely irritating. Chaucer is important enough to deserve a Very Short Introduction. He's also important enough to deserve a better one. show less