In most urban environments noise permeates our daily existence to such an extent that silence has become a scarce commodity—or even a luxury. During the Middle Ages, one can assume that the opposite was generally true, with silence prevailing largely because of the limited capacity of pre-industrial societies to generate noise. The medieval sonic ecosystem was therefore markedly different from our own and had its own, specific social norms that determined communicative interactions. In this insightful monograph Edwin D. Craun sets out to unravel the social conventions that governed speech and silence in late medieval England, thereby shedding light on our interpretations of silence in Middle English literary texts. To this end Craun examines moral instructional texts—most of them written in Latin—that circulated in England between the mid-thirteenth century and the end of the fifteenth and includes genres as diverse as “treatises on the ethics of speech; collections of exempla for preachers; treatises of advice for rulers and counselors; basic school texts; collections of wise sayings; alphabetized pastoral distinctiones” (5). He uses the key ideas distilled from these texts as a starting point for exploring Middle English literary works and discussing instances of “voluntary silence”—a category that excludes both “the silences of rapt mystics” and those of romance figures who “disguise their identity and cloak their love” (9).
The first chapter examines how maintaining a taciturn demeanor can be useful in certain social situations, a norm that dates back to the popular Disticha Catonis of Roman times that reached late medieval England through two textual channels. One such channel was the works the Italian judge Albertano da Brescia wrote for his son in the mid-thirteenth century, including his De arte loquendi et tacendi and the Liber consolationis et consilii, in which he advocates verbal contention as a means of gaining some personal advantage on both ethical and political levels. The other channel includes moral writings by clerics, such as Arnold of Liège’s Alphabetum narrationum and Roger of Waltham’s Compendium morale de virtutibus, which presented taciturnity as desirable and as a mark of prudence. Failure to observe this rule could result in speech acts perceived as destructive and capable of inciting individual or collective violence. Albertano’s influence, Craun argues, can be found in Caxton’s Book of Good Manners, where he explains how “scylence causeth to haue peas” (21), while clerical injunctions are echoed in mirrors for princes composed by clerics, such as Walter Millemete’s De nobilitatibus, sapientiis, et prudentiis regum.
The moral principles regarding silence discussed in the first chapter provide an interpretive framework for the rest of the book, in which Craun sets out to analyze their influence and use in certain Middle English works. Thus, in chapter 2, Craun engages with Thomas Hoccleve’s Regiment of Princes and identifies prudential taciturnity as an essential virtue to guide Prince Henry during his impending reign and ensure him a lasting good reputation, for “Silence of tongue is the guardian of good fame” (35). In order to avoid the risks of rash decision-making, the future King Henry V should exercise his power with prudence, keeping his emotions in check and resisting the pressures of court life, since “Prudence watches while the tongue sleeps” (37). Silence as a strategy is beneficial because, on the one hand, it allows him to listen to his advisors without having to reveal his decision, thereby avoiding the risk of it becoming known to his enemies; on the other hand, it helps him avoid heated arguments by practicing patience. This emphasis on strategic silences is unique to Hoccleve’s Regiment, Craun contends, since it appears neither in his sources nor in George Ashby’s Active Policy of a Prince, the only other mirror for a Lancastrian prince.
In the following chapter, Craun turns to mala taciturnitas—the form of silence used for spurious and self-interested purposes which, in the opinion of clerical moral writers, represents the greatest sin of the tongue, since “the damage created by withholding speech when needed is greater than that created by breaking silence” (47). John Wyclif adopts this concept to criticize the clergy, whom he accuses of remaining silent owing to their laziness and greed. In his view, clerics who refrain from correcting sinners are committing treason against God, so he redefines this kind of silence as proditoria taciturnitas (treacherous taciturnity). To illustrate the uses of corrupt silences in Middle English literature, Craun turns to the alliterative satire Mum and the Sothsegger and revisits Hoccleve’s Regiment. In the former, the royal adviser Mum keeps King Henry IV in the dark about popular discontent over heavy taxation and allows him to make shameful decisions, thus letting his good reputation suffer: “thou [i.e. Mum] suffris thy souuaryn to shame hymself” (58). In this way, the anonymous poet warns us against public officials who are willing to sacrifice the common good for their own benefit in order to continue enjoying the perks of their office. Hoccleve condemns this same behavior in his Regiment, since evil or deceiving silence on the part of advisors can jeopardize the governance of the country: “A gloser [sycophant, deceiver] also keepith his silence / Often where he his lord seeth him mistake” (51).
Chapter 4 discusses the silence of those who are subjected to oppressive interrogation by religious and civil authorities that threaten them with physical punishment and even death. This type of silent response is motivated not by prudence but by patience, here as a strategy of self-preservation, the most influential formulation of which dates back to Gregory the Great, who in his Homiliae in Evangelia defines it as follows: “‘Patientia vero est aliena mala aequanimiter perpeti [...]’ (Truly patience is to endure evils from others with equanimity [...])” (72), including evils that can take the form of insults, among other things. The fifteenth-century catechetical compendium Disce mori advises a patient attitude toward the angry perpetrator: “if he fele þat þou passe ouere in cilence, he is discomfited or elles by þin example he is amended” (74). And Jesus is the prime example of patient silence, especially when he was interrogated after his arrest. Four pageants in the York cycle figure interrogations in which Jesus is portrayed in such silent, unmoving attitude, whose moral power becomes thus apparent to the plays’ urban audience while also highlighting that legal language is actually used to coerce and oppress when wielded by those in power. Similar silent strategies are shown in The Book of Margery Kempe and The Testimony of William Thorpe.
The following chapter focuses on fearful silence, which people resort to as their only means of protecting themselves in social situations where they are the subject of scrutiny and criticism. It is a kind of coping mechanism in response to the fear of social rejection, even though it deprives them of the benefits of confession when used in a religious context. Hoccleve deploys strategies of fearful silence in his “My Complaint,” where Thomas—the poet’s persona—feels the hostility of his colleagues who suspect that his mental health is deteriorating, and feels safe only if he remains in silence. But as Craun argues, the use of silence in these social situations has limited effectiveness, for it actually becomes a speech act that can be deliberately misinterpreted and taken as an indication that “he is so disordered that he does not dare to speak” (111), thus exacerbating his suffering. Thomas finally decides to break that silence by writing “My Complaint,” thereby taking control of the social discourse about himself, while presenting his story as an empowering example for his readers.
The sixth and final chapter of the book focuses on Piers Plowman, which Craun examines through the lens of a sententia by Guillaume Peyraut that is widely cited in moral texts on silence with wide circulation in late medieval England: “Loquutum esse aliquando penituit, tacere vero numquam” (To have spoken has grieved me sometimes; to keep silent, truly, never; translated by Craun, 123). That silence, when properly channeled, can be beneficial to its practitioner, for as one gathers from medieval moral texts, “silence is an essential part of this extended, demanding social process of learning wisdom” (127). It is precisely Will’s failure to observe silence in the third dream—according to Text C of Piers Plowman—that prevents him from acquiring the knowledge that Reason could have imparted to him. With Imaginatif, his new tutor, Will practices verbal restraint, learns to listen, and abandons the impulsive speech that had kept him from knowledge. It is therefore no coincidence that the aforementioned sententia was included in the revision of the poem in the late 1380s (cf. C 13.225a-b).
Literary scholars are accustomed to dealing with texts and analyzing the active speech acts they contain, but they often fail to notice or simply disregard passive speech acts—as we might call silence in its many forms. Craun focuses specifically on instances of taciturnity in late medieval texts and explores their pragmatic significance in order to gain a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the texts under examination. But this book goes beyond offering new, in-depth readings of a handful of Middle English texts. Craun actually provides us with an invaluable framework for interpreting instances of silence in all their moral and political dimensions that will be of great use to the reader when considering other examples of verbal restraint in late medieval literary works.