ABSTRACT
E. Talbot Donaldson's wariness with regard to historicism seems to be based on more than the typical New Critical rejection of anything "outside the text": he was also reacting to the conflict among historicists themselves. Donaldson's strong opposition to patristic exegetical criticism, as practised by the Robertsonian school, is based in large part upon his implicit assumptions about audiences. Donaldson's reader betrays other characteristics. He seems indubitably masculine: the reader is put in a position of desire with relation to the feminine and the female characters in the text. Donaldson's aim is to "make history serve Chaucer's poetry rather than be served by it. The existence of the ironic distance between reader and characters is a key aspect of Donaldson's criticism. Donaldson's image of Chaucer's audience, then, is of a man much like himself, a "careful reader", who would be more-or-less the same whether he were medieval or modern.
