A Book of Middle English by J. A. Burrow, Thorlac Turville-Petre

Abstract

REVIEWS debates on the nature of the literary object itself. Here as elsewhere in this volume, medieval literature is seen not as marginal to but as epitomizing current literary-theoretical concerns. The editors' division of this collection into four sections, "Theoretical Dimensions," "The New Philology," "Literary Anthropology," and "Au­ thority and History," may thus be less useful to the reader than it would have been to signal which articles are primarily theoretical and which primarily illustrative. The former, at least, are an important contribution to the field of medieval studies and should be of considerable interest to all medievalists. ROBERTS.STURGES University of New Orleans J. A. BURROW and THORLAC TURVILLE-PETRE. A Book ofMiddle English. Oxford and Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1992. Pp. vii, 303. $20.65 paper. Given the distinguished scholarly stature of the compilers, John Burrow and Thorlac Turville-Petre's anthology of Middle English texts and extracts deserves careful consideration by teachers of Middle English language and literature. The book consists oftwo major parts, each distinctive in its own way. The first part is an extended description (some sixty pages) of Middle English, covering general history, dialectalvarieties and diachronic change, pronun­ ciation, vocabulary, inflections, syntax, and meter, with a short section on the process of editing the manuscript and a concluding bibliography. Most of this part is a solid and lucid exposition of traditional grammar, charac­ terized rather modestly in the preface as "inevitably selective and somewhat simplified." The presentation is a skillful blend of paradigms and narrative explanations, liberally illustrated by quotations from the texts. Possibly the compilers assume too great a familiarity with Old English (especially among students in the UnitedStates), but the account is generally clear, and any opaque spots could be explained by a philologically competent teacher- an increasingly rara avis, however. The first part reflects well certain aspects of current scholarship. Besides the traditional account of Middle English dialects (Northern, West Mid177 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER land, East Midland, etc.), Burrow and Turville-Petre have included up­ to-date references to the methodology of the Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English and to recent studies on the importance of Chancery English. The account (pp. 62-64) of the steps by which an edited text (a passage from St. Erkenwald) is generated is a goodidea. It is, of course, too brief to act as a paleographical trainingguidefor students, and the plate is rather small, but it serves to show the problems often encountered by a modern editor and the decisions that have to be made in the preparation of a printed text. The short discussion of how different choices of editorial punctuation affect the sense of the opening lines of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (and the remark that Burrow and Turville-Petre disagree thereover) should be salutary for students who think that medieval texts are-and have always been-fixed on the printed page. Most of the books in the select bibliography belong to the last twenty years; the date of the latest citations is 1990. The second part of the book is a reader of fourteen verse and prose texts (counting the lyrics as onetext), chosen, the compilers say, for literary merit rather than simply as illustrations of the language. They range in date of composition from about 1150 to about 1400. The selection is fairly stan­ dard, from the "Anarchy" annal from thePeterborough Chronicle (1137) to the York Play of the Crucifixion (composed before 1400, though the manuscript datesfrom between 1463 and1477). Several of the intervening texts are given in their entirety-Sir Orfeo, Patience, St. Erkenwald, Tre­ visa's Dialogue Between a Lordand a Clerk. The remainder are represented by extracts-The Owl andthe Nightingale, La3amon's Brut, The Cloudof Unknowing, Piers Plowman, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and Gower's Confessio Amantis. Chaucer is deliberately omitted, since "the book is designed to be read in conjunction with an edition of Chaucer" (preface). I think the texts will prove reasonably easy of student access. The headnote to each selection typically places the work in context, notes the manuscript(s) used, and comments on the language. The typographical presentation is handsome and easy to read, a...