Traditions and Innovations in the Study of Medieval English Literature: The Influence of Derek Brewer ed. by Charlotte Brewer and Barry Windeatt (review)

Abstract

charlotte brewer and barry windeatt, eds., Traditions and Innovations in the Study of Medieval English Literature: The Influence of Derek Brewer. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2013. Pp. ix, 317. isbn: 978-1-84384-354-2. $90.This collection assesses the influence of Derek Brewer on the study of medieval English literature by presenting 'a sequence of conversations with, and developments from, aspects of Brewer's work' (16). Charlotte Brewer and Barry Windeatt choose to impose no controlling structure on the volume, preferring to let the diversity of voices generate its own unities.If, five years after Brewer's death, these voices describe the shape of his influence, then the core of that influence has been in Chaucer studies. Derek Pearsall outlines Brewer's Chaucerian work in the first half of his career. Alastair Minnis extends Brewer's defense of Chaucer's Knight to a similar defense of Theseus in 'The Knight's Tale' and Arveragus in 'The Franklin's Tale' as paragons of chivalric virtue. A.C. Spearing shows how Brewer's rejection of the 'narrator theory of narration' (61) opens up complex readings of time in Troilus and Criseyde. Indeed, Chaucer's Troilus becomes a center of gravity for the Chaucerian essays in this collection. Mary Carruthers defends the lovelorn Troilus against imputations of spineless emotionalism by arguing compellingly that his very weepiness is a reasoned rhetorical position. Jill Mann picks up one of Brewer's observations about the variety of courtly loves to explore the question 'was falling in love in the Middle Ages different from falling in love today?' (88). Jacqueline Tasioulas, acknowledging Brewer's 1955 article on 'The Ideal of Feminine Beauty in Medieval Literature,' argues that Chaucer very deliberately does not represent Criseyde as the ideal of feminine beauty. Continuing a pervasive interest in Brewer's work, Barry Windeatt considers Chaucer's representations of Venus in comparison to his sources. Other essays with wider concerns also turn out to have connections with Chaucer. Thus Christopher Cannon uses Brewer's discussion of 'Class-Distinction in Chaucer' (1968) as a framework to explain the social and cultural impact of the French of England. R.F. Yeager's essay on 'Gowerian Laughter' ends, inevitably, by considering the posthumous laugh with which Chaucer's Troilus leaves the world. And Charlotte Brewer shows how Derek Brewer's intuitions about Chaucer's language are supported by the Middle English Dictionary and successive editions of the Oxford English Dictionary.We are reminded, nevertheless, that Brewer's interests extended beyond Chaucer to Middle English literature more generally, and especially to Malory and the romances. …