South Atlantic Modern Language Association

Troilus and Criseyde: The Poem and the Frame by Allen J. FrantzenReview by: James R. SprouseSouth Atlantic Review, Vol. 59, No. 4 (Nov., 1994), pp. 124-126Published by: South Atlantic Modern Language AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3201367 .

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124 Book Reviews

side-by-side format, making it easy to compare the original and the translation. I was also greatly relieved that only the Buddha's Footstone poems were rendered in so-called "reconstructed Old Japanese." I think most readers will prefer standard romanization to representions of lin- guistic theories.

In conclusion, I can only hope that Stanford University Press will bring out a paperback edition of this anthology as soon as possible. The Gem-Glistening Cup is filled with insights that will be of great benefit to the specialist, but, what is even more important, it will make an invaluable contribution as a textbook for students ofJapanese literature.

Jon LaCure, University of Tennessee

O Troilus and Criseyde: The Poem and the Frame. By Allen J. Frantzen. Twayne Masterworks Studies 113. New York: Twayne: 1993. $22.95.

Troilus and Criseyde is a difficult, even baffling, poem for beginning and experienced readers of Chaucer. The simple story concerning for- tunes of love and war in ancient Troy is overlaid with Chaucer's dazzling yet, at times, perturbing use of psychological analysis, punning or obscure diction, and complex syntax. Added to these problems is many readers' inability to empathize filly with the motives, actions, or destinies of each

major character. Multiple readings of the poem may overcome some

interpretational confusion. Scholars may also help readers achieve a better understanding of the poem's contours. One such scholar is Allen Frantzen; in the work reviewed here, Troilus and Criseyde: The Poem and the Frame, he recognizes that a twentieth-century reader does not under- stand a literary work's central meaning if its "frame"-its overlying constructs of convention, theme, or form-seems "insubstantial" (45). Frantzen attempts to remedy this problem by explaining a number of the

poem's "frames" for the reader. As a survey of contemporary critical concerns intended for the general

reader, Frantzen's study sets off on the right course. The book is divided into two broad sections: "Literary and Historical Context" (chapters 1

through 3) and "A Reading [of Troilus]" (chapters 4 through 10). Each

chapter is conveniently brief in length yet somewhat too complex in

presentation. In the first section, Frantzen aptly supplies background materials for understanding the poem. The section begins with a chapter that considers Troilus as a "social text" (an idea amplified in the second section) then proceeds to discuss the fourteenth-century context of the

poem (or the lack of a context). In the remaining two chapters of the first section, Frantzen addresses

two more major concerns. The first concern is his justification for the

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South Atlantic Review 125

poem's continued appeal to twentieth-century readers. He proposes "four points that connect us as modern readers to Chaucer's poem," one such point being the universal interest in the Troilus story through the ages (10). Frantzen concludes this section with a chapter on the history of the poem's critical reception from the fifteenth through the twentieth centuries.

The second section of the book opens with the chapter "Looking through and at the Frame," which is composed of two parts that define the critical terms of "subject" and "frame." In defining "subject," Frantzen quotes Marshall Leicester's explanation of subject as "a site through which various forces pass." Frantzen then expands on this critical asser- tion by saying that the characters of Troilus, Criseyde, and Pandarus are such "sites" through which "the power and history of Trojan society flow"; thus, the social status of these characters are "redefined" in "terms of hierarchies of power and influence" (32-33). Such a sociological approach establishes the critical emphasis of the second section.

The second part of chapter 4 defines different types of "frames." Of those types the most important seems to involve "codes," which "govern private as well as public lives" and which relate "general text" ("the 'real' public world in which ... characters exist") to "written text" or literary elements (36-38). Throughout the remaining portions of the book, Frantzen analyzes such framing codes as the doctrine of courtly love, principles of gender relationships, the division of estates, religious ideals, and English national virtues. Chapters 5 through 10 are discussions of all these codes in relation to certain framing subjects. Five such subjects are discussed, one subject for each book of Troilus and one for each chapter in Frantzen's study. Accordingly, book 1 (chapter 5) presents the framing activities of the narrator, who, "as an apologist for love," is situated between "love past and present, religion then and now, social worlds public and private" (47). Book 2 (chapter 6) analyzes Pandarus as a "framer," whose "function within the poem closely parallels that of the narrator outside it" (64). The "Boethian concept of universal love" (44) becomes the frame for book 3 (chapter 7), followed by the frames of war in book 4 (chapter 8) and of fate in book 4 (chapter 9). Chapter 10 concludes the book by viewing the characters of Troilus and Criseyde as framing subjects: he is depicted as "the powerful, rigid, isolated idealist, obsessed with his desire for an unchanging world"; she, as "the powerless pragma- tist who must take circumstances, public or private, as they come" (134).

As I read my way through the book, I became increasingly aware that Frantzen seemingly emulates Chaucer: he first dazzled me with his knowledge of critical theory but then perturbed me with an abundance of critical perspectives. He never, in my opinion, narrowed his focus to a single frame that could provide a unifying interpretation of Troilus. Despite such a problem (and some critical pluralists would not consider

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126 Book Reviews

the situation a problem), Frantzen's study is a presentation of some value. It certainly offers a wealth of interpretational possibilities.

James R. Sprouse, Pensacola Christian College

O Drama and the Market in the Age of Shakespeare. By Douglas Bruster. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. xv + 164 pp. $39.95.

As one of the opening titles in a new series from Cambridge on Renaissance literature and culture, Drama and the Market in the Age of Shakespeare participates in that branch of new historicist studies depend- ing less on anecdote and analogy than on the insights provided by social history and cultural studies. Specifically, this book examines those cul- tural sites and literary tropes that seem to have carried particular reso- nance within Renaissance drama and then demonstrates how those

figures allowed playwrights to articulate the new and unfamiliar effects of London's burgeoning free market. Douglas Bruster's command of the historical material is admirable, and his work makes a significant contri- bution to historically based studies of early modern drama.

In a preface, Bruster describes the three avenues of investigation that

permeate his study, following three strategies Renaissance dramatists used to describe their increasingly market-driven society. First, he finds, playwrights drew on a long tradition of linking sexual possession and material ownership, erotic transaction and economic intercourse. Second, many writers sought to describe London's new market mechanisms

through traditional folk metaphors, "agrestic figures" such as cony-catching and cuckoldry, that allowed concepts such as labor and property to be

glossed in familiar terms. And finally, London's booming protocapitalist economy caused dramatists to look abroad for similar urban models of the past and present, where the implications of property, exchange, and the

acquisitive impulse could be explored more fully and safely. By setting these

literary strategies against the backdrop of commercial London, Bruster

successfully demonstrates how each device connects with material culture. Given its vast increases in population, suburban growth, and market

capacity, there is little question that London's changing social and eco- nomic conditions impacted dramatically on its playwrights. Bruster's

introductory chapters on these economic and demographic shifts are concise but serviceable and even produces moments of revealing clarity, as when he reminds us that, during the years Shakespeare "was producing English literature's most acclaimed work[, ]the real incomes of many of his countrymen and women were the lowest they would be in seven centuries" (18). On the difficult question of what the Renaissance market was, Bruster hedges a little-"[A]ny definition aspiring to preciseness

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