Over the past couple of years, I've presented on an array of topics not devoted to "things Crusades-related" in hopes of figuring out what my next project should be. I love my current work on the Crusades, but I have a feeling that by the time this book project is completed I'll be itching for the chance to branch out into newness. For a time, I thought about writing a book on the poetics of grief in Late Middle English literature. Presenting on Pearl last year at Kalamazoo, however, made me rather aware (as I expressed in a related blog post) that I'm not ready to sit for that long with such a potentially depressing topic. As a result, I went back to the drawing board and have been there for quite a while. But working on my current NCS paper on agential Ice in The House of Fame (and revisiting my paper on books as animate objects in Chaucer's works) has renewed my curiosity about the ways in which Chaucer positions and prioritizes various objects in his works — and how he gives them varying degrees of power. While I'm far from fully committed yet, I'm leaning more and more towards diving into this topic in earnest in hopes of producing a larger project that maps out and explores Chaucer's agential objects.
For now, I'll share the paper that got me started along this path (only two years late!):
“Chaucer
and the Animated Book”
In the Squire’s Tale, a stranger from
Arabye visits the (intensely fictionalized) court of Chinnghis Khan, and
presents the Mongol ruler with a series of mirabilia. One of them, a ring,
allows the wearer to understand the language of birds. In turn, the brass horse
will take its rider anywhere in the world with a turn of a key. These objects,
in short, allow their owners to encounter, read, and translate the world around
them in entirely new ways. In this respect, they reminded me (as I revisited
them a little while back) of books in all of their animating properties.
This paper explores how we might
consider books as animate objects in Chaucer’s literary worlds — as kindred of
the animate and animating mirabilia of The
Squire’s Tale. Unlike the brass horse or the ring, books are objects that
can, in fact, speak in some way — they have the capacity, as Chaucer reveals so
persistently, not only to transport but to inspire visions in even the most
selective or haphazard of readers. In
this way, books as objects have greater animating properties than the fabled
brass horse. A turn of a switch might allow the mechanical beast to transport a
rider around the world, but — as Chaucer seems to argue — the turn of a page can
produce even more fruitful journeys. For the sake of time, I will limit my
discussion largely to Chaucer’s dream vision poetry, though my hope is that we
can discuss other appearances of books as objects in Chaucer’s poetry later on.
Dream vision poetry consistently relies
on the trope of a narrator falling asleep and “waking” in a dreamscape, where
an extended, often didactic, vision ensues. But as Larry Benson and others have
observed, Chaucer seems to have invented the convention of the dreamer falling
asleep on a book prior to experiencing his dream vision. This image — of the
sleeping reader and his book — persists in Chaucer’s poetry, and suggests a
certain consistency in his approach to books as objects.
In The
Book of the Duchess, both the book and the act of reading offer an escape
for the insomnia-addled narrator — an opportunity to “rede and drive the night
away” (49). The book that the narrator selects for his nightly reading is
Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and the tale of
Ceyx and Alcyone attracts him the most. He refers to it, in fact, as a “wondyr
thinge” (61), and he relays a version of the story that halts abruptly before
the lovers’ metamorphosis and reunion. As Helen Phillips and others have argued,
by omitting the metamorphosis altogether, the story of Alcyone’s dream more
ably parallels the dream vision experienced by the narrator later in the poem. Alcyone,
through this omission, becomes a clearer counterpart to the Black Knight, and
the story itself focuses (as does the conversation between the narrator and the
knight) on the inevitable transience of earthly joy (Phillips 35).
While it is clear that Chaucer may have
intended to create this kind of parallel structure, the ties between the book
and the dream are utterly lost on the narrator. He stresses at the beginning
and end of the poem the impossibility of interpreting the dream. According to his preface, not even Macrobius
or the biblical Joseph could riddle a meaning out of it, and as a result the
narrator unceremoniously ends the poem by stating “This was my sweven: now hit
ys doon,” refusing to offer any potential commentary or insight into what his
dream might mean (1334). Moreover, the narrator only focuses on the theme of
sleep and dreaming in the Alcyone narrative, stating how he desperately wishes
Juno or Morpheus would grant him the kind of sleep they gave to Alcyone. These
instances could suggest that the narrator is either so fixated on his insomnia
that he can’t help but focus on this aspect of the text, but they could also
suggest that his reading practices are somewhat haphazard. The narrator finds
his wish for sleep fulfilled and immediately falls asleep on the book he had
been reading. From this point onwards, the intricate dream vision unfolds and
it pulls aspects of the Ovidian narrative — the themes of grief and loss
overlooked by the narrator — into its landscape. Books, at least in the world
of this dream vision poem, can still transport and inspire the mind of even a haphazard
or overly selective reader.
The
Parliament of Foules treats
books in a similar fashion. Here, we are
presented with a narrator who reads a book in order to learn “a certain thing”
about love (20). His book of choice: The Dream
of Scipio. Like the narrator of The
Book of the Duchess, this narrator is also rewarded for his efforts with an
elaborate dream vision. And here, as in Book
of the Duchess, certain aspects and themes from the book the narrator reads
eke their way into the dream itself and are subject to imaginative repurposing;
Scipio himself appears to the dreamer at the beginning of the vision, and the importance
of common profit in The Dream of Scipio
reappears in the later portion of the bird’s debate.
The first section of Parliament, however, contains a passage on the importance of books
that sheds additional light on how these particular objects are configured and
how they function in Chaucerian dream visions. The narrator tells us that
Of usage – what for lust and what
for lore –
On bokes rede I ofte, as I you
tolde.
But wherefore that I speke al this?
Nat yore
Agon it happede me for to beholde
Upon a bok, was write with lettres
olde,
And thereupon, a certeyn thing to
lerne,
The longe day ful faste I redde and
yerne.
For out of olde feldes,
as men seyth,
Cometh al this newe corn
form yer to yere,
And out of olde bokes,
in good feyth,
Cometh al this new
science that men lere.
But now to purpose as of
this matere:
To rede forth hit gan me
so delite
That al that day me
thoughte but a lyte. (15-28)
This
description of the book and of the reading process conveys — in ways more
elaborate than that seen in The Book of
the Duchess — the idea of the book as an object capable of transporting a
reader. Books, in this configuration, are objects filled with knowledge. They
produce a distracting amount of delight in readers — so much so that readers
can find themselves absorbed for an entire day in their contents. The narrator
stresses that these objects, moreover, do not lose their capacity to delight
because of their age; he elevate the status and appeal of older and dustier
tomes, using the analogy of the field to strengthen his case. Books in this
configuration produce delight and visionary inspiration, but they also are imbued
with creative powers. More than mere repositories of “old” wisdom, they are the
direct inspirers of “newe sciences” — new ideas — as well. I think it highly
significant that the narrators in the poems mentioned thus far place their
emphasis on books rather than the authors who write them. To be sure, authors
are mentioned briefly by name, but the book as material object consistently
holds the foreground. Animating properties are thus placed squarely in the
realm of the inanimate.
In contrast to these two dream
visions, The House of Fame does not describe
a narrator falling asleep on a book. It
does, however, have much to say within the actual dream vision about the
inspirational power of books to inspire. The narrator of the poem, for
instance, encounters an ekphrastic version of Virgil’s Aeneid, and he immediately focuses on the portion of the narrative
involving Aeneus and Dido. He
unequivocally takes Dido’s side, criticizing Aeneus at length for treating her
so poorly. This episode from Virgil, moreover, reminds the narrator of a host
of men who have similarly mistreated their women. These men do not appear
directly in Virgil’s story, and as a result, his encounter with this
pictographic Aeneid mirrors the narrators’
encounters with physical books described in the other dream visions. Here, as
elsewhere, the book is presented as an object that inspires the reader without
keeping him bound entirely to its matter. The narrator also repeatedly stresses that it
is “the book” that “tellis” (or speaks), even though Jove — through the Eagle —
is said to look fondly on the narrator for his diligent work as an author. The reader owes his inspiration and his
translocation largely to this object, but he is also capable of misreading,
misunderstanding, or simply selecting only the portions of the text that are of
interest to him or seem applicable; he is also capable of spring–boarding into
related thoughts or visions that are only obliquely related to the contents of
the book itself. It is here, then, that
a kind of tension emerges, because creative power seems to be transferred to
both the reader and the book. At the
same time, it is also possible, I think, to see the reader’s freedom as an
indicator that the book has realized its animating potential.
Out of all of Chaucer’s dream visions,
the Legend of Good Women provides the lengthiest homage to books, one that directly
addresses their capacities as animated objects.
The passage is a bit long, but I’m going to read it in its entirety
since it ties in so directly with what I’ve already discussed:
Than mote we to bokes that we fynde,
Thurgh
whiche that olde thinges ben in mynde,
And to the doctrine of these olde
wyse,
Yeve credence, in every skylful
wise,
That tellen of these olde appreved
stories
Of holynesse, of regnes, of
victories,
Of love, of hate, of other sondry
thynges,
Of whiche I may no maken rehersynges
And yf that olde bokes were aweye,
Yloren were of remembraunce the
keye.
Wel ought us thane honouren and
believe
These bokes, there we han noon other
preve.
And as for me, though
that I konne but lyte
On bokes for to rede I me delyte,
And to hem yive I feyth and ful
credence,
And in myn herte have hem in
reverence
So hertely, that ther is game noon
That fro my bokes maketh me to goon,
Save, certeynly, whan that the month
of May
Is comen, and that here the foules
synge,
And that the floures gynnen for to
sprynge,
Farewel my bok and my devocion! (17-39)
Despite
his capricious admission at the close of this passage, the narrator repeatedly urges
for “credence” to be given to these books, for them to be upheld as authorities
in their own right, because they are the only way for readers in his day to
access ancient wisdom (this line of thinking echoes what the narrator of Parliament of Foules observes so briefly
about old books). They are, in other words, the sole remaining repositories of
important knowledge.
He argues that books should be revered
specifically because of the voices of authority contained therein. This seems,
at least a first, to put the power back into the authors’ hands. However, just
as in Parliament of Foules, no
authors are mentioned in these lines, which suggests the disembodied nature of
authority contained within the books in question. The focus, as a result,
remains squarely on the material object. Books, then, are presented as access
points and portals to an older time and to writers and thinkers who have long
since passed.
Eventually, the narrator encounters the
God of Love, who calls him a foe because of his actions as an author; his
“translacyoun” has turned potential lovers away from their devotion to him .
What is particularly compelling in this diatribe against the narrator is the
way in which books are conceptualized.
The god of Love announces, for instance, “Yis, God wot, sixty bokys olde
and newe hast thou thyself, alle fulle of storyis grete” (273-74), which is an
impressively large collection for any private owner in the late fourteenth
century. This line suggests the importance of books as tactile objects and the
importance and significance of collecting them. The god proceeds in subsequent
lines to cite authors directly, asking the narrator “what seith Valerye, Titus,
Claudyan? / What seith Jerome agayns Jovynyan?” (280-81), questions that do
momentarily reintroduce the author as a figure of great significance. However,
the authority of the writer is brought directly into question several lines
later, when Alceste comes to the Chaucer-narrator’s defense; she argues that he
is so used to composing books that he “takyth non hed of what matere he take”
and “nyste what he seyde” (343, 345). Chaucer is cast here as an innocent, but
rather incompetent and passive author/translator, so involved in the process of
creating and/or translating that he neglects to examine his own material. His
books, however, are acknowledged directly by the god of Love (and indirectly by
Alceste) as potentially harmful to the god’s cause because of their ability to
sway their readers. Here, as elsewhere, then, poem prioritizes books
over their authors as objects responsible for an important, and potentially
subversive, kind of transportation.
What this configuration of books
suggests is that as soon as the author cuts the cord on a literary work, it is
no longer solely his own; it becomes an object capable of inspiring a reader on
his or her own terms, a notion that the narrator of Troilus and Criseyde openly admits in the epilogue:
Go, litel book, go litel myn
tragedie,
There god thy maker yet, er that he
dye,
So sende might to make in some
comedie!
But litel book, no making thou n’envye,
But subgit be to alle poesye;
And kis the steppes, where-as thou
seest pace
Virgile, Ovyde, Lucan, and Stace.
And for ther is so greet diversitee
In English and in writing of our
tonge,
So preye I God that noon miswryte
thee,
Ne thee mismetre for defaute of
tonge.
And red wherso thou be, or elles
songe,
That thou be understonde I God
biseche! (Book V, lines 1786-98)
Chaucer,
or the Chaucer narrator, speaks directly to his book in this passage, talking
to it as if it has a sentience all its own. Here, as in The Legend of Good Women, he muses on the matter of authority. One
the one hand, he admits that the book is now out of his control even though he
authored it. But he affirms the significance of authors by citing names of
great writers from the past (as the narrators do in each of Chaucer’s dream
vision poems). Nevertheless, he ends his envoy to his creation by voicing his
anxieties about how it will be treated (and potentially mistreated) by readers.
Once again, then, Chaucer positions the book as an object that, while responsible
for the connectivity between author and reader, is ultimately in neither his
nor his readers’ control.
To draw upon what Karl Steel observed in
his paper given on Tuesday, this representation of books certainly forces us to
remember that, as he put it, we cannot relegate the matter of intentionality
solely to humans; inanimate object are indeed “forceful entities.” But unlike many inanimate objects studied
across the animate ecologies panels at this conference, books are man-made
objects, and they have a different kind of animate capacity as a result. They
may well be compendiums of wisdom, but they are also, ultimately
springboards. They are animating
objects, but they do not command the perfect attention of their readers, no
more than an author can control the way in which his or her work is understood;
it is no surprise then, that the matter of misreading comes up consistently and
in a variety of ways throughout Chaucer’s works.
In this way, books contain animating
properties that are both powerful but finite. On the one hand, the process of
reading a book results in the dream visions, but the fact remains that the
reader isn’t bound to the written text he has just encountered. This has made
me begin to wonder whether we might be able to understand Chaucer’s — or the
Chaucer narrators’ — somewhat persistent anxiety over being misread through an
understanding of books as finitely animate objects, as objects made by an
author but no longer in that person’s control once they are completed, an idea
that in many ways evokes modern theoretical patterns of thought, especially
Barthe’s “death of the author” and the related realm of reader-response theory.
The figure of Pandarus reflects this idea
of authorial anxiety, and also evokes the animating properties of books, and
I’ll close this paper by briefly examining how his presence in Troilus aligns with the representation
of books in the works I’ve previously discussed. Throughout Troilus, Pandarus acts (as Carolyn Dinshaw
has argued) as a poet creating a text, and — I would offer — as a poet inspired
by texts like the romances of which he seems to be so fond. In Book III,
Pandarus — after having tossed Troilus into bed with Criseyde — curls up by the
fire and pretends to read. To quote the text directly, he “took a light and
fond his countenance / as for to look upon an old romance” (979-80). These lines,
like the passages about reading in the dream visions, reveal the animating
properties of books. Here, the lovers
become objects of Pandarus “play,” and they are positioned as characters in a
romance twice over as a result. Pandarus in turn, can be understood in this
scene as either reading a book (a romance) or as watching the lovers as if they
are characters in a romance. If we
follow the second interpretation, the lover’s bed becomes a book, one that
reflects the creative (and potentially procreative) desires and aims of its
author while also remaining simultaneously beyond the creator’s control and
domain. Pandarus, like the authors of the books encountered in the dream vision
poems, only has but so much control over the very story he seeks to create.
Similarly, books only come about through the work of human hands, but once that
work is finished the book itself becomes object with animating and creative
properties all its own.
A book might seem, as the Chaucer
plaintively suggests at the end of Troilus, at the mercy of its readers, but it
never loses its capacity to animate and enliven. Readers and books, in this configuration,
require each other for animation. Chaucer consistently exposes their animating
circuitry with regularity, suggesting his persistent engagement with the idea
of books as objects, with the notion that the seemingly inanimate book can, in
fact, continue to develop and possess animating properties long after an author
takes “a light.”
Bibliography
- Amtower, Laurel. Engaging Words: The Culture of Reading in the Later Middle Ages. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2000.
- Benson, Larry D., ed. The Riverside Chaucer. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 1987.
- Phillips, Helen and Nick Havely, eds. Chaucer’s Dream Poetry. London: Longman, 1997.
