Fifteenth-Century Studies: Recent Essays ed. by Robert F. Yeager

Abstract

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER Calkas's fateful birth (333-34) and his responsibility for T's death, but omits Troiolo's wishes for Calcas's death ([4.]39-40)." This magnificent edition will be of use to every reader of Chaucer. It contains new material for the most experienced scholar, and, price apart, its clear information and literary sensitivity make it ideal for those encoun­ tering the poem for the first time. Because of his learning, accuracy, and hard work, but most of all because of his original sense of how to use scholarship as a direct aid to literary criticism, Barry Windeatt has pro­ duced one of the great editions of Chaucer. C. DAVID BENSON University of Connecticut ROBERT F. YEAGER, ed. Fifteenth-Century Studies: Recent Essays. Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books; Shoe String Press, 1984. Pp. ix, 364. $39.50. Fifteen new essays appear in this collection, classified under three broad subdivisions: Reviews of Scholarship; Language and Paleography; Literary Criticism. Before discussing briefly a few of the very strong essays here (mostly occurring in the Literary Criticism section), it is necessary to say a few words about the structure and organization of the volume as a whole. Fifteenth Century Studies has a certain continuity rare in such collec­ tions, a continuity conveyed by the authors' collective sense that fifteenth­ century literature has long been misunderstood as the gray middle ground between the sparkling Ricardian poets and the first glimmers of the Renaissance makers. Together these essayists are convinced that fifteenth­ century literature is vastly underrated, and, in their turn, are quite con­ vincing. The spirit of this book is therefore revisionist and joyously so. There is much new here and very little thatis derivative or drab; most ofthe essays are spirited and provocative. Professor Yeager has allowed the authors a good deal of flexibility and the chance to reexamine key issues in fifteenth-century studies in ways that should interest not only scholars of Dunbar, Henryson, and Lydgate, but the general student, as well. From Thomas Ross's delightful lexicon of vulgar terms in fifteenth-century English to Larry Benson's somewhat iconoclastic approach to the idea of 270 REVIEWS courtly love in the later Middle Ages, Fifteenth Century Studies is a readable and thought-provoking gathering of viewpoints. Professor Yeager's opening remarks establish the context for the essays and the logic of the collection's arrangement. Fifteenth-century English literature remains an underdeveloped area of study,lagging far behind the literature of other medieval centuries in such fundamentals as bibliogra­ phies and reliable texts (for example,Yeager notes that scholars must still rely on the MacCaulay edition of Gower for most lesser-known Gower texts).With the intention of stimulating further inquiry,the first group of essays reviews the scholarship on: Gower (R.F.Yeager); Lydgate (A.S.G. Edwards); Hoccleve Uerome Mitchell); Henryson (Louise 0.Fradenburg); and Douglas and Dunbar (Florence H.Ridley).As a group these essays are unexpectedly refreshing.Bibliographical reviews are likely to become dry recitals of what has gone before,but here the authors' voices are distinct and individual.Edwards's essay,to name but one example,opens with the following: "The time seems to be slowly passing when Lydgate can be seen as a particularly arid stretch of desert interposed between the hanging gardens of Chaucer and the manicured lawns of Wyatt and Surrey." The same fresh spirit is evident in Mitchell's review of Hoccleve studies,which concludes with a positive and enthusiastic view of the present state of scholarship. The second section,on Language and Paleography,opens with Derek Pearsall's "Text, Textual Criticism, and Fifteenth Century Manuscript Production," an essay which reviews (very broadly) typical problems faced by editors of medieval texts (questions of scribal authority, mainly). Pearsall's main point is that scholars must examine every feature of a medieval manuscript in a concerted effort to avoid confining "our view of modern poetry within the scholarly intensive-care unit provided by the modern critical edition." Just as this essay represents what might be called a traditional English approach to texts,John H.Fisher's "Caxton and Chan­ cery English " represents a particular strength of American...