Alliterative Revivals by Christine Chism (review)

Abstract

98ARTHURIANA The inclusion of 'troubadours' in the title is a bit misleading, as this is a book about the Ermengard's political world, built primarily out of legal and political documents. Troubadour lyrics merely supplement and illustrate. Nonetheless, the book, particularly chapter 13, 'Love and Fidelity,' is worth the time ofstudents of troubadour lyric and 'courtly love.' Here Cheyette examines the language oflove as found in the oaths, treaties, and land conveyances ofthose who first listened to the lyrics. Therein we find how vero amore (fin amor) and drudus (drutz), for example, informed non-erotic relationships, how intimately the language ofthe court infused both private passion and public discourse, how significations of amor—especially fin amor—spiral out from a central concept offidelity, not eros. Bringing together lyrics and legal documents, Cheyette analyzes both the warp and weft ofOccitan cultural fabric and offers readings which decades ofnew criticism has ignored. The chapters in part three which lead up to this one offer an important exposition of the connection between the discourses offidelity and the health ofthe community. Oaths and treaties are not individual matters requiring public witness but public rituals reinforcing communal bonds. The author attempts to read many ofthe famous features and critical conundrums ofmedieval Occitania (e. g.,fin amor, heresy and the Albigensian Crusade) through a sharp focus on political life. There are obvious advantages to such simplification, although it comes at the cost ofinherent falsification, because features so thoroughly infused throughout a society cannot be adequately explained in terms ofonly one aspect of that society. Cheyette explicitly understands this (xii), and the careful reader ofthe Introduction will find it very nicely handled. Nonetheless his 'general reader' might need to be reminded ofit more forcefully more often. Scholars must ask, then, is the trade off for clarity worth it? Do we come away from this book with a better understanding ofthis world—not just quantitatively but qualitatively better? My answer is an unequivocal affirmative. MARK N. TAYLOR Berry College Christine chism, Alliterative Revivals. The Middle Ages Series. Philadelphia: University ofPennsylvania Press. 2002. Pp. 327. isbn: 0-8122-3655-6. $57.50. At the end of her Alliterative Revivab, Christine Chism characterizes alliterative romance as 'clutching at the mantle of tradition while questing after innovation' (268). In its own way, this book attempts, for the most part successfully, a similar strategy. Building on traditional philological and historical work, Chism discerns in alliterative romance a self-conscious historical awareness and then draws on the resources ofculture studies to interrogate that awareness. Chism finds in fourteenth-century alliterative romances a concern with the influence, for good and for ill, the past holds over the present. Performing close readings of both texts and likely contexts for the origins and uses of these poems, Chism asserts that the poems 'revive' some aspect of the past in order to explore some contentious border of aristocratic culture. For instance, in the case of Saint REVIEWS 99 Erkenwald, the revived figure is the preserved bodyofa pre-Christian judge and the issue is the civic authority ofthe Bishop ofLondon, Robert Braybroke. The difficulty ofperforming this kind ofcultural reading is greatly increased by the almost complete lack of specific information about the poems' authors and their communities oforigin. Faced with these silences, Chism explores the cultures and geographies represented in the poems themselves, moving from the most specific setting, the London of Saint Erkenwald, to the European context of the Morte Arthure. The picture that Chism draws with this approach enriches the current trend to characterize 'theAlliterative Revival' as a diverse, culturallysophisticated exploration of 'public' issues surrounding the relations between power and virtue, a movement alert to and troubled by the difficulty of combining the two. In the Arthurian material she discusses, Chism sees this tension played out in several ways. In Sir Gawain andthe Green Knight, she contrasts the 'childgercd' figure ofArthur (and by extension his court) with the older, more experienced court ofBertilak. She sees the chivalry of Bertilak's court as an idealized correction to an Arthurian lack of seriousness. But in the end, its inner dividedness—represented most powerfully in the figures of the Lady and Morgan—and conflict prevent Arthurs court from profiting...