Carl Lindahl

What we have here is a problem in terminology.

This book is highly scholarly, immensely learned, and too short. Too short in a number of ways. First, it assumes far too much on the part of the reader. Yes, anyone likely to read this should be familiar with the Canterbury Tales. But there is a difference between being familiar and having the whole thing, including parallel tales, by-blows, and additions to the text, in one's head. A folklorist should be familiar with the romance of Gamelyn, e.g. (it's considered by some to be related to the Robin Hood legend). But will every student of Chaucer know it? The romance of Gamelyn is preserved in some texts of the Canterbury Tales, but not everyone will have studied it for that reason.

And then there are the ideas we're simply supposed to accept. As an example, author Lindahl states that Chaucer used the Auchinleck Manuscript, a very important collection of Middle English romances. This assumption is weak (if Chaucer knew Auchinleck, why in the world didn't he use Sir Orfeo?) There are other assumptions of this type, which need to be more explicit.

But these are scholarly nitpicks. My problem is deeper: Lindahl treats all compositions as if they were either Official Writings of some sort or else "folk." The impression it gives is of the old Roman distinction between "Plebian" and "Patrician." You're one or the other, and that's all there is to it.

I just plain disagree. The romances -- those very Auchinleck romances that Lindahl refers to, for instance -- shows that there are more than two levels. Something can be for peasants, or for the nobility -- or it can be for the gentry, or for the middle class/yeomanry that was just coming into existence in Chaucer's time. And while a few surviving items (like Gamelyn) may well have been targeted at yeomen-or-lower, much of what Lindahl is calling "folk" seems to fall into the yeomanry-to-gentry range. It is not folk in the sense of oral tradition, which is what "folklore" is supposed to be about.

This does not totally invalidate the book. The minute examination of sources and style of the tales reveals many things about (for instance) the rivalries between fourteenth century trades that I hadn't known. But the terminology really needs work -- and, in the process of doing that work, I suspect the book could be expanded to be much easier to understand and, frankly, much more insightful. As it stands, it feels almost like a collection of notes for the real book we're still awaiting.… (mere)