Given the recent surge of interest in ethical criticism, it is somewhat surprising that we have not seen more studies devoted to the implications of medieval exempla, texts that attempt to shape or dictate the behaviors of their readers. Thus Elizabeth Allen's book is a timely one that, along with J. Allen Mitchell's Ethics and Exemplary Narrative in Chaucer and Gower (D.S. Brewer, 2004), argues for moral action as inherent in the process of coming to an interpretation of an exemplary story, not merely the interpretation itself. These two books complement rather than duplicate each other; whereas Mitchell focuses his study on an in-depth exploration of Confessio Amantis and The Canterbury Tales, Allen explores exemplarity in a range of texts, pairing a fourteenth- century text with either one of its sources or a later response to that text (or sometimes both, as with medieval versions of Livy's story of Virgina) to show how "[m]edieval exemplary literature does not simply demand obedience but inquires into its own social benefit, examines its own poetic indeterminacy, and argues for its audiences' moral freedom" (26).
As her title suggests, Elizabeth Allen takes as her subject the intersection between fictional ("false") narratives and the moral truths they express. This in itself is not a novel approach, but Allen is particularly interested in the ways in which exemplary texts render abstract concepts such as "virtue" and "vice" concrete, and in the instability of such narratives resulting from their reliance upon their audiences' moral freedom to derive the general truth from one set of particular circumstances and apply it to others. Although exemplary narratives attempt to guide their audiences into alignment with their moral or didactic objectives, they are also capable of fostering the very resistance that undermines those objectives.
The first chapter, which serves as the book's introduction, provides a thorough yet succinct overview of how the function and efficacy of exemplarity in medieval narrative has been understood by modern critics. Allen's contribution to this ongoing conversation is her questioning of those diachronic studies that argue for a progressive move from what they see as the univocal and authoritative exempla of the medieval period to the Renaissance preference for ambivalence and resistance. In fact, Allen argues, it is perhaps more accurate to describe "the early modern 'crisis' of exemplarity as the flare-up of a chronic condition" (10), rather than a break with the medieval period. Interestingly, while Allen doesn't point this out explicitly, it so happens that the later authors she discusses are those who seek to rein in the interpretive excess of their source materials.
Allen uses two texts in the introduction to establish her methodology, and she chooses her examples well. Her explication of the story of Rychere in Robert Mannyng's Handling Synne is especially lucid in its illustration of how exemplary texts derive conceptual truth from concrete actions, and the Griselda story provides an excellent instance of readerly initiative at work, on a variety of levels: in Petrarch's account of the reader who remained unmoved because he has found the story too incredulous, in the Clerk's own affective responses, and in Harry Bailey's blithe rejection of the Clerk's explicitly stated moral in favor of his own literal reading of the tale as a fable of domestic obedience.
Unfortunately, Allen's detailed and insightful analysis in the first chapter is not always matched in Chapter Two, nearly the first half of which consists largely of unsubstantiated assertions that left this reader more frustrated than intrigued. This chapter is the weakest, suffering from awkward organization that distances Allen's assertions from the evidence she provides to illustrate them. By the middle of the chapter, however, Allen gets down to business and digs deeply into the texts at hand: in this case, the fourteenth-century Middle English translation of The Book of the Knight of the Tower and William Caxton's fifteenth-century print edition. Though Allen points out that many conduct books do not rely on illustrative narratives for exemplary affect, she shows how conduct books and more conventionally exemplary narratives share a similar anxiety concerning the obedience of their audiences. The Knight's explicit moralizing both reinscribes his authority and challenges it by implying that there are other ways of reading, other interpretations that might yield very different "truths" than those he wishes his audience to take away.
In order to be effective, exemplary narratives must be affective; that is, they must engage their readers' emotions and draw them into the narrative, providing a vicarious experience through which readers may become part of virtuous or sinful actions so as to understand and then imitate or shun those actions. Thus, to teach his daughters right and virtuous conduct, the Knight must expose them to and imaginatively engage them in the behaviors he wishes them to avoid. This carries obvious risks; as Allen shows, stories such as that of Perrot Lenart's sacrilegious fornication on a church altar raise the idea of erotic pleasure at the same time that they affirm the sinful nature of such behavior. It is precisely because of the danger of getting caught up in the particulars of a story that some medieval critics such as John Wyclif objected so heartily to the teaching of moral truths through exempla, as Allen reminds us.
Allen convincingly argues that medieval readers were not only aware of the potential for alternative readings of exemplary texts; they also took advantage of this potential to reshape such texts so as to foreground one or more variant interpretations embedded within them. The ways in which exemplary narratives attempt to elicit certain affective responses and suppress others, and medieval authors' recognition of this process, is illustrated particularly well in her examination of the very different audience reactions called forth by Gower's, Chaucer's, and Lydgate's reformulations of the story of Virginia's death at the hands of her father in Livy's Ab urbe condita. Her discussion spans the next two chapters, with the first devoted to Livy's and Gower's accounts and the second to those of Chaucer and Lydgate.
In contrast to Livy's absolute endorsement of Virginius' virtue, Gower and Chaucer call into question the moral truth of the story by returning our attention to the dependent relationship between civic good and familial bonds, a relationship that Livy's account elides. Responding to both Gower's and Chaucer's radical interrogation, Lydgate advocates narrative transparency to reimpose moral order over the tale. These two chapters provide some of the best illustration of one of Allen's central question in her book: the degree to which "examples depict general doctrine as finally subject to particular circumstances" (7). She accomplishes this through a close analysis of both historical context and the implications of genre.
Though a relatively minor quibble, I found it distracting that throughout these two chapters Allen continually refers to Virginia's exemplarity, when in fact her analysis suggests that the exemplary force of the story lies in her father's conduct instead. Virginia can only be considered exemplary in "The Physician's Tale," where she at least exhibits a modicum of agency in first her resistance and then her submission to her father's demands. Virginia functions more as an emblem (a term Allen employs but seems to conflate with exemplum), a symbol of the purity Virginius preserves through her death.
Chapter Five examines one fifteenth-century reader's response to the moral ambiguity in Chaucer's Pardoner's Tale, as evidenced in the apocryphal Interlude and Tale of Beryn found in the Northumberland manuscript of the Canterbury Tales. The Interlude in particular, Allen argues, attempts to stabilize the Pardoner's meaning by depriving his character and tale of any moral ambiguity and limiting his hypocrisy to material greed. Reshaping the Pardoner in this way reveals the Beryn-author's concern that exemplary narratives provide clear moral direction for their audiences. The ordering of the Northumberland manuscript, as well as the editorial emendations, also relieves the strain of interpretation. This takes the burden of judgment off the audience and places it within the narrative itself.
The final chapter concludes the book with an assessment of Robert Henryson's response to the indeterminacy of Chaucer's characterization of Criseyde. In his Testament of Cresseid, Henryson takes Chaucer's unstable character and transforms her into an exemplary icon that can be held within the reader's memory and remain accessible for reimagining within the particular, contingent circumstances of a reader's life. While Henryson shares Lydgate's discomfort with Chaucer's ambivalence, unlike Lydgate and the Beryn-author he doesn't remove the burden of moral judgment from the reader.
Though at times uneven in its execution, Allen's book has much to offer those interested in exemplarity and medieval ethics, demonstrating to satisfaction that "[m]edieval exemplary texts do not evince a simple faith in timeless truths or quiet orthodoxies, but engage in vigorous debate about the exemplary mode as a way of linking moral and aesthetic meaning" (157).