Chaucer Books

Christopher Wright is notable today because he was, in 1976, the year this volume first appeared, one of the few expert commentators to list the fugitive Lady at the Virginals as an authentic Vermeer. Although most art historians for much of the first half of the twentieth century had also placed this work in Vermeer's canon, few did so after the infamous Han van Meegeren Vermeer forgeries were brought to light after 1948; the painting seemed too sodden for Vermeer's atmospheric conjuries. But after considerable forensis analysis, and a marvelous cleaning and restoration, the painting has recently been authenticated as an autograph Vermeer, seemingly validating Wright's artistic sensibility. However, the weight of Wright's scholarship in this second edition suggests that sensibility remains generally far off the mark.

Wright's Vermeer is rife with too many bad reproductions, casually sloppy errors, and outright loopy attributions. The book merits two stars because of a good cover portrayal of The Girl with a Pearl Earring, a helpful Catalog of Vermeer Paintings, which lists the provenance, literature, and exhibition history of each work, and a brief commentary about and a so-so reproduction of A Lady at the Virginals, the first contemporary book on Vermeer to do so. Otherwise, there is little to applaud and much to condemn.

Take, for example, Wright's off the wall suggestion that Vermeer actually painted over an original Hendrich ter Brugghen work, Athenais Banished by Her Husband, in order, early in his career, to pass the painting off as his own. Moreover, based upon the the risky premise that a painting called St. Praxedis was by Vermeer, Wright blithely but ridiculously maintains that two other religiously-themed works, Christ Healing the Blind Man and The Magdelene at the Foot of the Cross, belong to Vermeer. No matter that new (in 1999) information about Vermeer's early work, Diana and her Companions, has essentially disqualified St. Praxedis from being attributed to Vermeer. No matter virtually no stylistic links exist between Vermeer's other early work, Christ in the House of Mary and Martha, one of only two paintings with an expressly religious theme in Vermeer's oeuvre, and the paintings cited by Wright. It is as if Wright needed to confirm his thesis that the young Vermeer was a devote of Italianate art and artistic influences, while also infused with religious ferver--and manufactured evidence in support of this thesis. No other serious Vermeer scholar has ever published such errant nonsense.

Then consider just a few of the author's many outright gaffes. He states that, although Vermeer was born in 1632, the artist registered as a painter in the Delft Guild at the age of twenty-three in 1653; in actuality, Vermeer had just turned twenty-one. Wright also describes the beautiful curtain draped over the foreground of Vermeer's signature works, The Art of Painting, as appearing "only in his last pictures." In fact, Vermeer used the device very dramatically in one of his early paintings, Girl Reading a Letter by an Open Window, which Wright himself took pains to point out.

Those who want genuinely responsible scholarship about Johannes Vermeer should consult Walter Liedtke's magisterial 200l Vermeer and the Delft School; Arthur Wheelock's 1995 Vermeer and the Art of Painting; and John Michael Montias' formidable Vermeer and His Milieu. For those who want more information about the St. Praxedis misattribution, read Liedtke's A View of Delft: Vermeer and His Contemporaries.

This is advertised and unabriged. What I received was Volume three of what may be a complete version, but it was not advertised as one of a series by any means. In addition, I was very sorry that it was recorded in modern english rather than the original middle english. If I had known, I would not have ordered and am pursuing a refund.

Not a complete version.. only has SOME of the tales. I didnt realize that when I bought it!

The typeface used on the Kindle edition of this book is miniscule, cannot be increased, and is nearly unreadable.

You've got to hand it to David Carlson, he certainly does not understate his claims. From start to finish, this book doesn't pretend to be anything less than a tendentious invective against Chaucer and those who crowned him the father of English poetry. Carlson's basic argument runs something along the lines of:

Major premiss) Feudalism brought nothing but woe into the world;
Minor premiss) Chaucer was an "official of the repressive apparatus of state";
Ergo) Chaucer's public career was pure evil.

Major premiss) Human beings exist only as political entities whose cultural productions are governed by the vested interests of their class;
Minor premiss #1) Chaucer was a member of the nascent bourgeoisie, an "estate" that fawned on the aristocracy and dreaded a revolt by the downtrodden peasants;
Minor premiss #2) See previous conclusion;
Ergo) "The end product of Chaucer's literary labors ... was the articulation of hegemony" (64).

Major premiss) In the absence of intra-textual criteria for determining the artistic worth of poetry, our literary canon is shaped by the ideology of the powers that be;
Minor premiss) See previous conclusion;
Ergo) Chaucer's status as a canonical poet is due to his being "a useful poet, rather than a good one, because he could serve" (65).

Major premiss) We Marxists now control the Groves of Academe and train future English teachers, curriculum planners, book reviewers, and anthology editors;
Minor premiss) We Marxists do not, or should not, like Chaucer;
Ergo) For the time being, it's all right to teach Chaucer to students with keen critical insights and independent thinking, just as long as they unanimously come to despise him. When the future generation of parents sends their children to our colleges, they will no longer want us to expose the tender souls to such retrograde sentimental drivel.

Okay, I realize I'm being carried away here. To sum up an entire book (though a slim one) in four syllogisms is admittedly reductive, especially when for rhetorical effect I fail to distinguish between explicit and implicit assumptions; consider, however, the description of a course taught at Prof. Carlson's own university (simply google "CHAUCER AND THE POETICS OF PRINCE-PLEASING"). As often happens, a controversial study quickly becomes dogmatic: though the course syllabus may have included articles reflecting various "minority" opinions -- who knows, perhaps even a Marxist vindication of Chaucer -- the conclusions that the students are expected to reach are spelled out loud and clear from the very beginning.

Fortunately for lovers of Chaucer, this particular pamphlet is so riddled with contradictions that it is bound to be discredited sooner or later. Chief among which is the author's placing of dissent above all other values, even when each dissenting party strives to achieve goals that other dissenting parties would have shrunk from with horror: the Pardoner (whom Carlson takes to be "queer") does not share the Wife of Bath's "feminist" concerns (quite on the contrary!), nor does she share his, and so neither pilgrim seems to object to the ridiculing of the other; the heterodox Lollards were probably pretty orthodox in their attitude to those who were not heterosexual males; and the Peasant Revolt of 1381 did away with a good many Fleming who were living in England, in what was clearly not an act of tolerance (Chaucer refers to this incident in the Nun's Priest's Tale and is somehow more appalled by its murderous nature than he is by the destruction of his patron's property). The height of absurdity is reached when, on p. 62, Chaucer is condemned for depicting an actual pilgrimage, which Carlson argues was more of a leisure-class affair than an expression of Christian piety; then, a Lollard "attack on pilgrimage" is quoted with approval claiming that the true pilgrimage is the soul's inner journey towards God; lastly, on pp. 63-64, when Chaucer's Parson makes the exact same point, he is deemed to speak in the service of the authoritarian Church! Can Chaucer never win? Will whatever party he sides with forever be in the wrong, and whatever party he does not represent sympathetically enough forever be in the right?

Be not mistaken, I do not advocate a blind worship of Chaucer or of the literary tradition that he fathered, and certainly not of the value-system in which he was rooted. Political criticism has convinced us that our cultural heritage has slanted vast segments of society, thereby contributing to their oppression and persecution. Yet an awareness of such issues should encourage us, not to reject, but to embrace the Great Books of the past, since by taking responsibility for their faults we are free to appreciate their subtleties and perhaps find that the worldview they evoke is more complex than we were prepared to believe. It is still debatable whether Chaucer's work articulates a single dominant ideology; that, on the other hand, Carlson's study shows him to be nothing less than a brazen ideologue -- the perfect specimen of his own theories -- is rather more convincing.

Those who favor prophet-of-doom-like tirades, agitprop masked as critical theory, the social-realist pulp fiction of the former USSR, or the social-surrealist pulp fiction of today, are bound to be disappointed in Chaucer; yet those who are willing to read between the lines may notice that he has other means to criticize the crooked ways of his world, in addition to delighting his readers with some top-quality verse. Let us enjoy the fruit of Chaucer's finer moments and cast aside the chaff of his occasional prejudices.

Do not pay to download this article. Why, with the wealth of material on Ovid, would anyone charge for this review? Or worse, pay for it, as I did. The review skims through various versions of Metamorphosis without any compelling points to make, giving no sense of the argument of the book. This article does not even mention Ted Hughes, who is named in the title. The review spends one paragraph on the 18th c. and makes only superficial comments about Shakesepeare. You would do better to buy the book than buy this review. Had the review been free, I would have been much more charitable. But not for $5.95.