Gawain: A Casebook edited by Raymond H. Thompson and Keith Busby (review)

Abstract

RAYMOND H. THOMPSON and KEITH BUSBY, eds., Gawain: A Casebook. Arthurian Characters and Themes, Vol. 8. New York and London: Routledge, 2006. Pp. viii, 362. ISBN: 0-415-97122-5. $60. This long-awaited volume completes the original Arthurian Characters and Themes series begun in 1995 under the auspices of Garland Publishing and general editorship of Morris J. Lacy. It is a worthy conclusion (although a possibility remains that the series may be extended by a future volume or two). As have the other contributors to this authoritative series, Raymond Thompson and Keith Busby assemble a collection of nineteen of the most significant essays covering an enormous variety of medieval to modern literature, including film, about the figure of King Arthur's nephew and perhaps most important (pace Lancelot) knight. Sixteen of the chapters are previously printed; the remaining three-Albrecht Classen's study of Gawain in Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, Marie-Jose Heijkant's discussion of the figure in medieval Italian romance, and Thompson's survey of English treatments after the Middle Ages-were written expressly for the volume and uphold the high scholarly standard set by the others. The editors directly contribute their expertise in a 36-page Introduction, 7-page Select Bibliography of secondary sources, description of contributors (new in this series), an index (a helpful feature previously incorporated only in Merlin: A Casebook), and two articles apiece. The Casebook is carefully produced, with few proofreading errors and no factual ones that I could detect. There is some unnecessary redundancy, however, as when the same passage from William of Malmesbury's Gesta Regum Anglorum is quoted at length in three of the first four pieces (twice including the original Latin). Its inclusion in two previously published chapters is logical, but a summary would have sufficed for the Introduction. The repetition of Gawain's characteristic features and treatment in the same texts throughout several articles does not constitute a similar redundancy, however, because these repeated characteristics form the structural core which it is the book's purpose to explore, and each chapter approaches these formative texts from a different viewpoint which augments rather than merely repeats the insights of previous chapters. In this respect, the anthology's contents are artfully chosen and constructed around key themes. The editors' Introduction and the magisterial opening chapter by B.J. Whiting (which covers far more ground than revealed by its somewhat misleading title, 'Gawain: His Reputation, His Courtesy, and His Appearance in Chaucer's Squire's Tale) quickly establish the 'dual track' stemming from his early (mostly chronicle) role of heroic warrior, which either praises Gawain's character (influenced primarily by medieval verse romances) or condemns it (medieval prose romances). As successive chapters bear out, his essential tension or contradiction is one of the most forceful contributors to continuing interest in the character-further complicated by the strong tendency to treat Gawain, a 'received character' whose identifying traits are already well-known, as a static rather than developing figure. …