REVIEWS Geoffrey Chaucer by John Livingston Lowes. Oxford Universi Press, Humphrey Milford, London, 1934. 199 pp. 8s. 6d. This book is not all that its title and the distinguished name its author would lead us to expect. It consists of six lectures on specific aspects of Chaucer’s poetry, delivered at Swarthmore College in 1934. ‘They are admirable lectures, but they do not make a book on Geoffrey Chaucer. This is the more dis- appointing in that there is probably no man living better qualified than Professor Lowes to write a critical survey of ucer’s works, Critical surveys of Chaucer have already been written, perhaps too many of them, but there is still a sping need for interpretation by a scholar who is also a critic. ¢ task requires an unusual scholar and an inspited critic ; and if Professor Lowes will not undertake it, who can ? Of the six lectures in this volume we can say, however, that they ate the best general account yet published of the cultural— especial the literary backeround of Chaucer’s postry. No other scholar knows this field as Professor Lowes does, and almost all that he has to say about it is valuable, The summary of Chaucer’s astronomy is perhaps too much simplified, written down for such as have never even heard of the seven spheres. The author’s intention was not to explain the whole system, but to illustrate its importance and interest to the man of Chaucer’s time ; and this he has done with remarkable sympathy and imaginati Best of all is the account of the French poets Chaucer read, and the use he made of them. Professor Lowes knows these poets almost as well as Chaucer himself did; he is able to follow Chaucer’s path and show us what Chaucer found to admire. As he describes Machaut, fot example, that poet no longer seems dauatingly prolix and irritatingly artificial ; there is some real humanity and artistry in the Dit dow Fyn and La Fonteinne Amourense, two of the to which cer tured for matter for his Deeth oj wnche the Duchesse. The study of Blasnche and its sources affords one of the best examples of the value of the comparative method of studying Chaucer, At the time of Skeat’s edition only the last part of the poem was seen to be influenced by French models ; Lounsberry in 1892 335 Copyright (c) 2003 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) Society for the Study of Mediaeval Languages and Literature