The Psalms and Medieval English Literature: From the Conversion to the Reformation ed. by Tamara Atkin, and Francis Leneghan

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Psalms and Medieval English Literature: From the Conversion to the Reformation ed. by Tamara Atkin, and Francis Leneghan Emma Knowles Atkin, Tamara, and Francis Leneghan, eds, The Psalms and Medieval English Literature: From the Conversion to the Reformation, Cambridge, D. S. Brewer, 2017; hardback; pp. xviii, 344; 18 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. US $99.00, £60.00; ISBN 9781843844358. In his introduction to this valuable collection of thirteen essays Francis Leneghan identifies the psalter as 'the most highly prized, frequently copied and widely used of all books of the Bible' (p. 1) for medieval Christians. Throughout the volume its foundational role in intellectual culture is emphasized as contributors examine how memorization of and repeated exposure to the Psalms impacted literature. This, alongside a recurrent interest in the varieties of voice present in the Psalms, creates an ongoing conversation which is one of the volume's great successes. A thematic structure assists the creation of connections between essays. This usefully destabilizes period boundaries and establishes links between [End Page 180] vernacular engagements with the psalter across the volume's roughly 800-year scope (c. 700–c. 1500). In making these associations it offers an important and necessary contribution to the recent upsurge of scholarly interest in the Psalms by drawing together expert contributors from different periods and placing their work in dialogue. Leneghan's useful introductory essay traces the reception of Psalm 50.1–3 from the Vespasian Psalter to Thomas Brampton's fifteenth-century paraphrase of the Penitential Psalms, and highlights the constancies and differences present in approaches to the psalter over time. Opening the 'Translation' section, Jane Roberts's chapter examines the fifteen psalters with a vernacular gloss that survive from Anglo-Saxon England. She focuses on the relationship between gloss and manuscript, distinguishing between 'opportunistic' glosses at one end of the scale and 'integral' at the other (p. 40). Concentrating on one of the psalters Roberts discusses, Mark Faulkner argues persuasively that an archaic exemplar for the idiosyncratic Old English gloss found in the twelfth-century Eadwine Psalter was deliberately chosen. Annie Sutherland promotes the significance of the fourteenth-century Prose Psalter in her chapter. She demonstrates that the attitude to translation lying behind it, in which it 'translates not what the Psalter says but what the Psalter means' (p. 126), offers a different rhetorical approach to that found in more imitative translations. The consistent revision of vocabulary between the Earlier and Later Versions of the Psalms in the Wycliffite Bible leads Elizabeth Solopova to argue that these were texts created with different translation strategies in mind. She suggests that the revisions were part of an attempt to develop a 'standard terminology for theological and devotional discourse' (p. 145). The 'Translation' section ends with Katherine Zieman's chapter on Richard Rolle's English Psalter which carefully considers the stages of revision this text went through and the motivations that lay behind these. The 'Adaptation' section opens with Leneghan's compelling reading of the ornamental alliteration in the 'little admired' (p. 179) Old English Metrical Psalms. He argues, in perhaps the standout essay of the volume, that this created a musicality in the translation which aided memorization. Daniel Anlezark follows this with a discussion of the treatment of the Psalms in what he re-names the Old English Office (formerly the Old English Benedictine Office) and examines what this suggests about prayer in the Anglo-Saxon church. M. J. Toswell concludes a trio of chapters on Old English by demonstrating the ways in which the deep understanding of the Psalms in the period is reflected in syntactic and rhetorical parallels in a variety of Old English poetic genres. Completing the section Mike Rodman Jones demonstrates how certain disputational Psalms were deployed at 'distinct and specific textual moments' (p. 252) in Middle English alliterative poetry. The volume concludes with a section on 'Voice'. Lynn Staley opens this with an examination of the relationship between Richard Maidstone's Penitential Psalms and his Concordia that places them in their late fourteenth-century [End Page 181] political context. Vincent Gillespie surveys a series of classical and medieval sources to consider the connections between poetic theory and the interpretation...