Arthurian Literature, Vol. 18 by Keith Busby

Abstract

MLR, 98.2, 2003 423 (78 instances), notae (11), rubricated words (6, together with a slightly larger number of letters touched in red). In quantitative terms these data do not seem a sufficient basis for useful conclusions at all, let alone to possess the 'wealth of meaning' Bryan asserts they contain. Indeed, apart from an evident interest in the history of King Arthur, the forms of decoration do not seem to offermuch clear insight into anything. The design of her book seems tacitly to acknowledge this evidential shortfall. For, in spite of the claim of the title that this work is concerned with 'medieval scribal culture', the longest single chapter (pp. 128-76) is actually concerned with post-medieval annotations, with an attempt to identify the Elizabethan annotator who underlined or otherwise marked a number of passages in the Otho manuscript. Bryan's candidate is the seventeenth-century collector Joseph Holland. Even if this were so, and the evidence seems at best meagre, itis hard to see how it contributes to an argument ostensibly concerned with the manuscript construction of a medieval text. For the arguments advanced here to be significant or even very meaningful there would have to be a more extended analysis of early medieval vernacular book pro? duction and the place of the Otho manuscript within the geographical and temporal pressures that helped to shape its construction. For example, it is symptomatic ofthe inability of this book to consider fruitfulquestions of 'scribal culture' that there is no discussion ofthe factthat the manuscript is not copied as verse, a form oftranscription that invites comparison with modes ofcopy ing ofother vernacular texts and, ofcourse, with the copy ing of Old English verse texts. Overall, Bryan offersa lot of detail about the Otho manuscript but not many conclusions of value. Those that are reached here hardly justify their expansion to generate the form, let alone the substance, of a book. There are some errors and omissions: neither of the versions of Hardyng's Chron? icle is in prose (p. 205); I do not think the 'York and Lancastrian rivalry moved into the complexity of Tudor politics in the late fifteenthand early sixteenth centuries' (p. 143; my emphasis), nor am I clear on what this observation means; it is curious that the chapter on Elizabethan annotation makes no mention of the still useful study by R. Willard, 'La3amon in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries', University of Texas Studies in English, 27 (1948), 239-78. London A. S. G. Edwards Arthurian Literature, Vol. 18. Ed. by Keith Busby. (Arthurian Literature) Cam? bridge: Brewer. 2001. viii + 255pp. ?45; $75. ISBN 0-85991-617-0. In the words of the editor, this volume 'initiates an alternation of miscellanies with theme issues'. This miscellany contains fivearticles on, respectively, Beroul, Tristan de Nanteuil, La Curne de Sainte Palaye, the Brut and Le Morte Darthur, and the Anglo-Norman prose Brut. It concludes with a survey of Arthurian literature pub? lished between 1995 and 1999, with a few earlier items which were omitted from the New Arthurian Encyclopaedia (New York: Garland, 1995), to which this is a supplement . The compilers of this supplement (Norris Lacy and Raymond H. Thompson) list well over 150 titles,mainly short stories, although there is also a considerable num? ber of full-length novels, many of them linked to science fiction. Poetry and drama are in short supply but film and television have both shown considerable interest in Arthurian themes. Clearly Arthur and his court continue to be a major and profitable source of inspiration, and most Arthurians should find something to interest them here. The longest article by far (75 pages) is the late Richard Illingworth's dense and detailed study of Beroul, in which he argues that the text, as we have it, is the work of a reviser who elaborated Beroul's version of the original legend. This would explain the differences between Beroul's text and Eilhart's, which would pre-date the work 424 Reviews of the reviser. Illingworth is convinced that the text as we have it is the work of one author and explains the inconsistencies as the result of the reviser introducing his own...