Ethics and Exemplary Narrative in Chaucer and Gower. by J. Allan Mitchell. Chaucer Studies, 33. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2004. Pp. viii + 157. $80.

In this study of narrative ethics in the major tale collections of Gower and Chaucer, Mitchell takes issue with a common assumption that exemplary narratives were fashioned by medieval writers chiefly to promote the "static generalities" of conventional morality. He provides extensive and convincing evidence that the application of a moral rhetoric of exemplarity in these two poets is designed to achieve a very different end: not to instantiate aspects of a monolithic, unvarying ethical code but to challenge readers to consider, by means of particulars in these narratives, what "it is good to do" practically in their lives outside the text. Mitchell's focus on ethical practice and reader response, predicated on the Aristotelian idea that ethics is "an inexact science concerning practice in the contingent realm of particulars" (p. 26), emphasizes case reasoning, a procedure that must adequately account for how different circumstances affect individual choices and actions. Consistent with this practical emphasis, Mitchell shifts our gaze away from what the text means—from perceiving the narrative as controlled by and enforcing established norms or "prejudices" or, alternatively, as subverting such norms or undermining "prescriptive ideological statements"—to what the text does, namely how it gives readers bearings for their future decision making and conduct.

Kurt Olsson
University of Idaho