A Companion to the Middle English Lyric by Thomas G. Duncan (review)

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260 Reviews Palice ofHonouregiven space and attention, and elsewhere some revealing comparisons are generated: Andrew Galloway's exploration of 'Middle English Prologues' ranges widely across late antique and medieval writings to formulate a number of thoughtful insightsand a helpful taxonomy of 'modes of beginning'. This book makes no extraordinary claims for itself, and inview of thehuge chrono logical sweep itencompasses, and of themodest size of itsconstituent essays, it may, at first glance, lookunlikely tooffer much beyond theobvious. This isnot thecase, however. Its essays generally have substance, and all are supported bywell-annotated references and suggested reading. Between them they tease out a series of interestingparallels, contrasts, and continuities, giving readers a usable map of the literature of the long medieval period, and helpful aids for interpreting what theyfind. QUEEN MARY, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON JuLiABOFFEY A Companion to the Middle EnglishLyric.Ed. by THOMAS G. DUNCAN. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer. 2005. Xxv + 328 pp. ?50- ISBN: 978-I84384-o65-7. It is a pleasure to review a collection with such consistently good contributions. This volume isdedicated toDouglas Gray and will prove as important a milestone in criti cism of theMiddle English lyricas the authoritative studies by Rosemary Woolf and Douglas Gray, published in I968 and 1972 respectively.These are critical essays, but everywhere the significance of manuscript contexts in their interpretation isgiven its due. Equally appropriately, the relationships between English, French, and Latin lyrics (some other linguistic traditions)are weighed with freshand up-to-date expertise. We begin withJulia Boffey's account of 'Middle English Lyrics andManuscripts', an outstanding compendium of research and analysis virtually a short reference book in itsown righton thissubject. Thomas Duncan comes nextwith a fineessay onmetre thathelpfully explores the links to issues of editing, and theproblems of relationships between Latin and English metre.John Scattergood's scholarly and original essay on the difficultand disparate subject of the love lyricbefore Chaucer, giving numerous fresh insights intowhat are, in hiswords, often 'astonishing and strange texts' (p. 5i), draws on wide critical and historical perspectives toopen up plausible interpretationsofmany particularly elusive compositions. Vincent Gillespie's 'Moral and Penitential Lyrics' takes a clever approach, in view of the fact thatmany readers todaywill lack theChristian background tomake full sense of the assumptions underlying themedieval texts:he arranges hismaterial so that theessay also conducts amaster-class. Itsdeftarrangement of thingsbegins with fearof death and gently takes itsreader througha sequence of the ensuing theological doctrines. Gillespie brings out well theemotional subtletiesofmuch of this writing,while explicating the intricateconnections between vernacular religious lyricsand theLatin and learned worlds of theology and liturgythatfed them.The same is trueof Christiania Whitehead's essay onMiddle English religious lyrics, which also explores thenarrative and visual affinitiesof many, and theirvaried material contexts: not just lyricsscribbled in themargins of othermanuscripts, but such profoundly un modern accompaniments to the 'literary' text as reckonings of how many years off Purgatory will be won by frequent recitals of particular lyrics. YES, 38.I & 2, 2008 26I If one could specifyany one topic that might have been included in the menu forthe book and is not, it is that of performance contexts and audiences. But, despite the absence of a single essay wholly dedicated to this, it is handled in a state-of-the-art fashion in several of thecontributions.This isparticularly so inDouglas Gray's masterly account of 'Middle English Courtly Lyrics: Chaucer toHenry VIII', which makes a powerful rehabilitation of latemedieval courtly lyricsthroughamyriad of contexts and affinities,especially manuscripts and illustrations,and many different typesof upper class social 'game': court rituals and 'entertainments. Each page reaches out to a concisely indicated wealth of linksand speculations, and it includes a sparkling short new analysis of Chaucer's lyricoutput. Performance appears also inKarl Reichl's essay on the Middle English carol,which examines both the textsand theirmusical contexts, ecclesiastical and secular,with an expertise likelyto satisfythemusic historian aswell as literarycritics,and with informa tionabout some parallel Spanish and French developments. Contexts feature too in Alan Fletcher's 'The Lyric in theSermon', which pushes forwardour understanding of both sermons and their lyrics,and also, as he says, of our 'appreciation of theweight of culturalwork that these lyrics were allowed to support' (p. I89).With itscharacteristic combination of wit and...