Aspects of the Poetry of Dafydd ap Gwilym: Collected Papers by Rachel Bromwich

Abstract

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER concern. So one is left with an unsatisfactory treatment of one of the most important tales in the poem. The chapters dealing with The Canterbury Tales have already received some mention. It may be said that they accomplish competently enough a survey of the tales, though inevitably some tales receive very brief treat­ ment. The volume contains several more general chapters at the end. These tend to focus on The Canterbury Tales rather than the other works, though Trot/us also receives some attention. This is perhaps inevitable, because the subjects covered are extensive, and it would be difficult to deal with all of Chaucer's oeuvre within the confines of a single chapter. Morton Bloom­ field writes a very thoughtful chapter on Chaucer's realism which students for many years to come will find a useful starting point for critical apprecia­ tion of Chaucer's works. This is one of the most helpful studies of realism on literature that I have come across. Barry Windeatt on literary structures in Chaucerconfines his attentionlargely to The Canterbury Tales, though he comes up against the problem that so many of Chaucer's works have come down to us in an incomplete form. His view that The Canterbury Tales exhibits "a structure which shows Chaucer building with the structural techniques that distinguish all his poems, while moving towards a unity at once ambitious yet casual, finished yet fragmentary" (p. 203) is not suffi­ ciently well worked out for it to be convincing. Dieter Mehl writes on the narrator and emphasizes the need to keep the narrator quite separate from the poet. This applies particularly to the Retraction of The Canterbury Tales, which he rightly says is "part of the fiction, an utterance by the narrator, not by the man Geoffrey Chaucer" (p. 221). This volume contains many goodthings at a general critical level. It is not a book which students will find too useful as an introduction to Chaucer, but once they have got into his poetry, they will find much here that will open up new horizons for them. N. F. BLAKE University of Sheffield RACHEL BROMWICH. Aspects of the Poetry ofDafydd ap Gwilym: Col­ lectedPapers. Garland Reference Library of the Humanities, vol. 621. New York and London: Garland, 1986. Pp. xix, 177. $25.00. This volume collects six previously published pieces by Rachel Bromwich, one of the most distinguished Celticists of our time. I first became ac128 REVIEWS quainted withherworkinher editionofTn·oeddYnysPrydein, thetriadsof the namesand events ofWelsh legend. In that edition she lucidly presents and explicates some of the most cryptic and captivating poems in Middle Welsh. The chapters in the present volume are similarly successful discus­ sions of the often equally cryptic but no less captivating poetry of the greatest poet of medieval Wales, Dafydd ap Gwilym. The first selection, which is intended for a reader unfamiliar with medieval Welsh literature, offers a useful introduction to Dafydd's life, poetic achievement, and historicalsignificance. The five subsequentchap­ ters, three ofwhich appear here for the first time in English, are intended for the specialist, butthe clarity ofBromwich'sanalyses and her translations ofall quotations from Dafydd's poetry make these discussions accessible to the nonspecialist as well. These five chapters in turn explore the traditional and innovative aspects of Dafydd's poetry, his dependence on "a popular tradition which had already before his time absorbed many elements from outside sources" (p. 101), his use of the Bardic Grammar (essentially an early-founeenth-century counterpart to Snorri Sturluson's Hattata/), his knowledge ofother Welsh literature, and his relationship to contemporary poets. The chapters thus offer wide-ranging-and effective-discussions of Dafydd in panicular and much of Middle Welsh literature in general. While especially significant for Welsh scholarship, these chapters will also be ofcomparative interestto Chaucerians, because, though there is no reason to believe either writer ever heard ofthe other, there are a number of striking parallels between Dafydd's career and Chaucer's which may facili­ tate the study of both writers. Dafydd (ca. 1320-ca. 1380) was a rough contemporary ofChaucer and, also like Chaucer, was well acquainted with thecourtly milieu. More important, he was aninnovative...