DOUGLAS GRAY, Later Medieval English Literature.

Abstract

DOUGLAS GRAY’s latest book covers the period from the death of Chaucer to the earlier sixteenth century, quite like James Simpson’s 2002 volume in the Oxford English Literary History; but the two books are very different. Whereas Simpson’s has an overall historical argument, as its title Reform and Cultural Revolution declares, Gray’s sets out to do no more, and no less, than to persuade readers of the riches and variety to be found in the English and Scottish writings of the period. The author himself is one of those ‘literary students with antiquarian tastes’ to whom he alludes; and his voracious reading extends beyond the literary to include, not only the Paston Letters, but also such other practical texts as the ‘Vulgaria’—collections of passages in English for schoolboys to translate into Latin, of whose ‘vivid colloquial English’ Gray gives an appreciative account (pp. 88–90). This very big, wide-ranging book is divided, after a long Introduction to the period as a whole, into four sections devoted respectively to English prose, English verse, Scottish writings, and drama. The text is entirely without footnotes and there is no general bibliography, but each chapter ends with a selective list of References and Further Reading, arranged in accordance with the order followed in the preceding text. This arrangement produces a pleasingly uncluttered page, but it will make it difficult for readers to follow up many of Gray’s references: where, for instance, are they to find Dante’s account of his mother’s death (p. 62)?