Chaucer and the Ethics of Time by Gillian Adler (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Chaucer and the Ethics of Time by Gillian Adler Arpit Gaind Gillian Adler, Chaucer and the Ethics of Time (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2022), x + 230 pp. In Chaucer and the Ethics of Time, Gillian Adler examines temporality and structures of time in the works of fourteenth-century English poet Geoffrey Chaucer. Adler picks five of Chaucer’s seminal works, organized as five separate chapters with an introduction and a conclusion, addressing themes of morality, aesthetics, and epistemological structures in order to show the “temporal ethics” (2) of time in Chaucer’s poetry. Chaucer and the Ethics of Time demonstrates the ways in which Chaucer argued for ideas of subjectivity, free will, and chance that govern human individuality. Drawing from Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy and Augustine’s Confessions, Adler examines how time is experienced and the role of “intentionality” in understanding the past and its relevance to the present. According to Adler, the active transformation of the “now” and shaping how memory is structured govern Chaucer’s project of human ethics (7). Adler also explores Chaucer’s reworking of the moral and social discourses on temporality in the Middle Ages, where wasting time was considered a “sin of acedia.” In “The Process of Time in the Parliament of Fowls,” Adler starts with the writings of Shakespeare while giving a vivid description of the medieval notion of wasting time as a sin and expressing time as a virtue (124). However, Adler shows how Chaucer, in his works, departs from such a binary of sins and vices and points toward a more complex relationship that temporality shares with human subjectivity. The author points out the use of subversion in Chaucer as a way to move toward ambiguity showing temporal discourses as neither “productive” nor objectively accurate. Adler draws upon Chaucer’s work on poetic form and its impact on temporality by distinguishing between “story” and “narrative.” The former, for Chaucer, is a depiction of events, and the latter is about the structure of those events and the retelling of the story. For Adler, the dichotomy of story and narrative in Chaucer’s work is of great significance, as it shows the representational practices of language and literature during the Middle Ages; the poet created both “tales on time” and “tales about time” (17). Another theme of significance in Chaucer and the Ethics of Time is the question of “anachronism.” Adler argues that Chaucer’s works counterpose the wholeness and singularity of time and reasons for the ruptures and “fragmentations” that emerge in the human experience of time (39). For instance, in “Seeing Time and the Illusion of Control in Troilus and Criseyde,” Adler draws upon Chaucer’s Translation of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy in Troilus and Criseyde. Adler demonstrates well how Chaucer constructs time and its impact on the Thebes-Trojan “historical continuum,” as well as what the city of London as a fantasy means for the reader (61). In “‘What may ever laste?’: Narrativising Transience in the House of Fame,” Adler examines the range of literary devices—such as “allusion” and “cataloging”—employed by Chaucer in showing the “temporal dimensions” of fame (96). Adler does an excellent examination of House of Fame to demonstrate Chaucer’s concern with ideas of existentialism, eternity, and desire. Adler’s reading of Chaucer’s works shows a keen interplay between the form and discourse of the latter’s writings and the characters he drew upon. The text examines Chaucer’s outlook on the role of insecurity at the heart of human [End Page 199] experience and how that helps the reader understand the period in which Chaucer was writing. In the “Nonlinear Time in Chaucer’s Frame-Narrative and the Wife of Bath’s Prologue,” Adler draws upon the Canterbury Tales and specifically the Wife of Bath’s prologue to show how narratives are framed conceptually as an instrument of analysis in Chaucer’s work. The prologue becomes an instance, Adler argues, where characters’ dispositions toward memory, nostalgia, and future time become a way to narrate the story. Returning to Chaucer’s use of ambiguity, Adler shows how the chronology of events becomes a significant aspect of critique in the...