The Arthur of the English ed. by W.R.J. Barron (review)

Abstract

112ARTHURIANA W.R.J. Barron, ed., The Arthur ofthe English. Cardiff: University ofWales Press, 1999. Pp. 395. isbn: 0-7083-1477-5. $65. In his introduction to the University ofWales's Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages, series editor W.R.J. Barron remarks on the changes in Arthurian studies since the appearance ofRoger Sherman Loomis's Arthurian Literature in theMiddUAges in 1959. The expansion ofArthurian scholarship has meant that AEMAs successor is actually a series ofvolumes, each representing a particular culture. In TheArthur oftheEnglish, the second volume in the series, the cultural (rather than linguistic or national) emphasis of the volumes in the series is immediately evident. The first essay, Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan's 'The Celtic Tradition,' deals with Welsh material, while the second, a chapter on 'Dynastic Chronicles' by Barron, Françoise Le Saux, and Lesley Johnson, considers Middle English works alongside the Anglo Latin and Anglo Norman chronicles with which they share obvious affinity. Catherine Batt and Rosalind Fields chapter on 'The Romance Tradition' casts the net yet more widely, placing Chrétien and continental romances alongside Marie de France and Anglo Norman romance. While the essays on later works focus on Middle English, the linguistic and geographical range ofthis early section is an important indication ofthe scope ofthis collection. This recognition ofthe intertextuality of Arthurian literature is manifested as well in many essays which consider relationships between various versions ofthe same story, or between Middle English works and their analogues: two examples are Elizabeth Williams's treatment of Sir LandevaU, Sir Launfal, and Sir Lambewell, and Flora Alexander's discussion ofLanceht ofthe Laik and Sir Lanceht du Lake. Another welcome feature of this collection is the attention paid by many contributors to the manuscript record (though I would have appreciated a list of manuscripts as part ofthe Reference Bibliography, rather than the single collective entry in the Index). As one would expect, this emphasis is more pronounced in some essays than in others, and it takes various forms. Karen Hodder, for example, deals with issues of ownership in her short essay on the Prose Merlin; Maldwyn Mills considers the reshaping done by scribe-redactors in the various manuscripts of Lybeaus Desconus; and Lesley Johnson points to the discrepancy between the widespread manuscript circulation ofRobert ofGloucester's ChronicU and modern disparagement of this once-popular work. Diane Speed's short essay on The Grene Knight includes the sobering reflection that, had the manuscript ofSir Gawain and the Green Knight perished in the Cotton fire, this Percy Folio poem would have been our only version ofthe story. Finally, P.J.C. Field's chapter on Malory spends considerable time on the Caxton/ Winchester debate, and deals as well with the editorial tradition of Malory's Morte. This Malory chapter—a masterful and elegant summary, worth in itselfthe price of admission—brings me to another feature of the collection, and that is, the considerable variation in approach to the works being considered. Some works are summarized: Barron offers a useful précis ofGeoffreys Historia and CaroleWeinberg summarizes the Stanzaic Morte Arthure as she offers her reading of it, for example. Others are presented chiefly through specific readings, as in Mills's emphasis on the REVIEWS113 competing claims ofkinship and chivalry in AV PercyvellofGaUs. There is a useful critical survey by Johnson in the essay on the Alliterative Morte Arthure, while Rosamund Allen's piece on the Awntyrs offArthure is a complete, self-standing overview in the survey style. Some contributions are written with considerable verve—I noted with pleasure Gillian Rogers's definition ofthe Carle narratives as 'eclecticism run riot' (207); Barron's description ofLady Bertilakas a self-interested sexual flytrap' (171); and Fields's assertion that, whatever little details he may get wrong, 'Malory gets the nobility right' (244). Sometimes the categories which have been created for the romances are carefully defined at the start, as in the long chapter on 'Chivalric Romance.' Sometimes the definitions clarify only retrospectively, as for example at the end ofthe section on 'Dynastic Romance.' And sometimes there is a clear-eyed recognition that all attempts to subdivide romance are at best imprecise, as in Rogers's remarks about the 'sliding scale between...