Shorter Notices
Geoffrey Chaucer of England. By Marchette Chute. (Robert Hale. 'Ns.)
Om knowledge of the details of Chaucer's life being so defective and his poetry being' so sparing of autobiographical detail, such a book as this must rely chiefly upon hypo- thesis. But any reconstruction of Chaucer's life should be based in the first place on a scholar's appreciation of the fourteenth- century viewpoint. Miss Chute's sympathies are, however, so plainly with her own day ; she is so patently in search of features in her subject that will make him look like a preco- cious modern rather than a man of his time, that the essential Chaucer entirely escapes her. Her attitude to " Troilus and Criseyde " is typical. Chaucer, as she sees it, took over from Boccaccio a tale in which the heroine was a light woman who moved easily from one lover to another. He fell in love with Criseyde, however, as he wrote, and made her a woman of fine qualities. Yet he could . not alter the ending of the tale ; it was too well known. " If he had been willing to resign himself to the situation," says Miss
hute, " he could easily have motivated "seyde's unfaithfulness." Instead he lost all art for the work, and cobbled the story up as best he could by attributing her weakness to the stars, in whose influence, as a prema- ture modern, he probably did not believe. Anyone comparing Miss Chute's reading with Nevill Coghill's in his Poet Chaucer will see how inadequate a pleasant and enlight- ened attitude to history is as a substitute for real understanding. Her book is unimpeach- able so far as the bare facts are concerned ; its background is so thoroughly filled in that the story will be quite clear to readers with- out knowledge of the period. It is for them, no doubt, that it has been written. If they are content to treat it as a historical novel,
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