A Companion to Fifteenth-Century English Poetry ed. by Julia Boffey and A.S.G. Edwards (review)

Abstract

julia boffey and a.s.g. edwards, eds., A Companion to Fifteenth-Century English Poetry. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2013. Pp. 254. isbn: 978-18-438-4353-5. $99.Julia Boffey and Tony Edwards have produced an exemplary volume in Boydell and Brewer's Companion series: compact in size, succinct in content, and broad enough in scope to introduce the range of interesting ideas with which a student might engage this dynamic sub-field of Middle English studies, the fifteenth century, long relegated to benign neglect within larger literary histories. Though the book's most obvious audience will be students, both advanced undergraduate and graduate, many scholars working in the field, and in adjacent fields, will find, as I did, clear, coherent syntheses of existing scholarship, and new interpretations and contexts for familiar material.The seventeen chapters of this book are organized into three sections, with the first, 'Background and Context,' being by far the shortest. The two essays in this section approach context through literary production: Carole Meale provides an astute and judicious catalogue of references to author-patron relations, while Simon Horobin surveys the available evidence for the circulation of texts in the literary and scribal culture. Attentive to detail and clearly written, these essays exemplify the way the movement in manuscript studies has honed and clarified our understanding of the conditions under which fifteenth-century authors worked. This section also clearly establishes that the volume's focus is the production of poetry, which is not reducible to the historical context that has dominated the study of fifteenth-century poetry. This decision allows the individual contributors to pull their authors farther to the edge of the shadow of Lancastrian propaganda that has hovered over the study of the period. Indeed, some of the most interesting new work on display in the volume involves mid-to-late century poets, discussed in terms of their aesthetic and intellectual contexts and concerns, a refreshing shiftin perspective from the focus on the violence and bloodshed that has colored the conventional reception of the period as non-conducive to good writing.In the second section of the volume, 'Authors,' five of the eight chapters predictably focus on the two signature poets of the fifteenth century, Hoccleve and Lydgate, on whom the vast majority of critical attention has been focused. The two essays on Hoccleve-Sheila Lindebaum on his biographical context and autobiographical writing, David Watt on The Regiment of Princes-and the three essays on Lydgate- Robert Meyer-Lee on the major poems, Anthony Bale on his religious poetry, and Joanna Martin on his short, secular poems-are engaging, clear, accounts of most of the major issues that have driven criticism over the last two decades. The excellent line-up of scholars from whom they have solicited work suggests the editors' strong sense of the current state of the field. Each essay coherently synthesizes major trends in the study of these important poets, and points to future avenues of research, as in Meyer-Lee's call for further study of deluxe Lydgate manuscripts as 'brimming repositories of social and cultural history' (68).The final three chapters of the 'Authors' section break new ground by offering lively readings of six less-frequently studied authors, discussed in pairs. The pairings cleverly suggest a new vein of critical conversation to be extended from the conventional critical pairing of Hoccleve and Lydgate around common questions (relationships to Lancastrian power, relationship to Chaucer, and engagement with contemporary devotional poetry). Sarah James approaches John Capgrave and Osbern Bokenham, both of whom have gained more recent critical attention, through the genre of the verse saint's life. John Scattergood links Peter Idley and George Ashby through questions of advice and instruction, noting the deep roots of this genre of writing in the 'civil service' characteristic of English poets, from Chaucer forward. …