Expectations of Romance: The Reception of a Genre in Medieval England by Melissa Furrow

Abstract

MLR, 105.4, 2010 1135 particularly inhis treatment of citation formats.The chapter on 'TheMajor Systems' isnot simply anglophone, butwholly American?a striking lacuna when measured against his claim to study all forms of documentation used in the Western world'. Indeed, it would have been worthwhile to consider why English-language textsde mand a level of explicit codification that other languages do perfectlywell without. Publishers carry the can formuch of what Hauptman perceives as currently wrong with documentation, chieflywith references. Their relentless cost-cutting is reiterated as an article of faithmore than a dozen times throughout the book. While there is truth to this, nowhere is its effect quantified. How much money does it actually save to delete footnotes, or set them as endnotes? These days text is text: setting costs are a function of keystrokes and number of pages. In fact,publishers often prefer to remove footnotes or shove them at the end in order to present amore affable appearance to the general reader. Equally wrong-headed, perhaps, but nothing to do with trimming expenses. Conversely, Hauptman's exasperation with too many footnotes?'distracting and annoying for those readers who prefer to follow the text in a committed and participatory fashion' (p. 50), a constant bombardment [. . .] bound to disenchant' (p. 52)?could be remedied by endnotes, which his own publisher has adopted. Approached as a series of essays, Documentation contains some interesting observations and examples. But assessed by Hauptman's own ambitious criteria, the book has too many gaps to be called a history, and too little analytic evaluation to be called a critique. His subject is simply too vast to be handled satisfactorilywithin the book's eclectic compass. Oxford University R. M. Ritter Expectations of Romance: The Reception of a Genre in Medieval England. By Melissa Furrow. Cambridge: Brewer. 2009. iv+274 pp. ?50. ISBN 978-1-84384-207-1. This book sets out to discover what expectations eleventh- to fifteenth-century readers living in England brought to romance. As Melissa Furrow acknowledges (PP- 43-51)> definition is a problem. Modern scholars fail to agree among them selves and are, in addition, uncertain about the use of the term 'romance' in the Middle Ages. Employing LakofFs concept of radial categories (pp. 51-71), Furrow rejects theview that all romances must share certain attributes. Some romances will be more central to the genre than others?these, which include Guy ofWarwick, Tristram, and theArthur stories, Furrow identifies from their repeated classification as romances in catalogues?while less central romances will be linked to them in a chain pattern. Furrow examines how expectations govern both reading and rewrit ing (pp. 71-93, 144-54). Guenevere must fulfil expectations by being adulterous, but nevertheless romance views of her can vary, demanding a flexible reader. In theAuchinleck manuscript Guy of Warwick, rejecting his worldly position, refuses to identify himself by name or title, but expectations of romance attitudes to 1136 Reviews heritage mean that this restraint is lost in laterversions. The moral problems raised by Tristram and Isolde resulted in a new, less risky love story:Amadas and Ydoine. Furrow devotes a whole chapter to Tristram, cataloguing reader responses (including a variety by Gower (pp. 160-63)). She devotes a chapter, too, to romance's relationship to neighbouring genres. In Furrow's view (pp. 96-116), the distinction between romance and chanson de geste material was not valid in England: the French distinction between the orality of the latter and the literacy of romance did not apply; the two genres did not differ in form; and the words geste and romance could be treated as synonyms. The very existence or otherwise of the fabliau in English is determined by the changing nature of English romances (pp. 116-41). Romances pre-dating Chaucer, such as the English version ofHavelok, lacked the narrow emphasis on the courtly and ceremonial of their Anglo-Norman counterparts, and a fabliau response was, as a result, not forthcoming. However, as Chaucer and his contempories returned to the continental model, the fabliau too returned to prominence. Changes over time affected romance's reception. As Furrow demonstrates in Chapter 1, formuch of the period under discussion romance was considered controversial. The...