English Lyrics Research Articles

Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts in Late Medieval Britain: Essays for Felicity Riddy by Jocelyn Wogan-Browne , Rosalynn Voaden , Arlyn Diamond (review)

Denis Renevey begins the re-evaluation of Watson, proposing as subcategoriesof vernacular theology 'vernacular spirituality' (p. 5) and, most pertinently here, 'female vernacular theology' (p. 2). In her introduction, Christiania Whitehead situatesthis collection in relation to recent work on gender and spirituality,and to other work in the book's principal area of interest: 'the relation of women to religious books, both as writers, as receivers, and as often contentious objects of representation within them' (p. 7). Although the editors are wise enough not to labour the puns in their title, their book is concerned both with women who write and with women who are written, and with righting some of the neglect they have suffered. The book is divided into four parts. The first, rather oddly, contains only one essay, in which Bella Millett situatesAncrene Wissealongside the firstbooks of hours at the 'breakdownof the sharp early medieval distinctions between religious and lay, litteratus and illiteratus' (p. 28). Both the influence of Ancrene Wisseand the via media between religiousand lay are recurrentthemes of the collection. PartIIlooks at 'CarthusianLinkswith Female Spirituality'throughMarleen Cre's examination of the Amherst manuscript as a context forJulian's Short Text and the Mirrorof Simple Souls,and two essaysthat drawattention to workswrittenby Carthusiansfor women that deserve to be betterknown:Rebecca Selman on the Speculum Devotorum and Anne McGovern-Mouron on the ps.-BernardLiber demodo bene vivendi adsororem. PartII reminds us that there is more than one vernacular involved in vernacular theology, with a pair of essays that use contrasting texts (ChristianiaWhitehead's choice is Grosseteste's Chateau d'amour while Karin Boklund-Lagopoulouexamines a range of Middle English lyrics) to show how female empowerment frequently comes at the expense of disembodiment,while the most powerfullymaterialbody in the lyricsis the fleshly,maternal, 'female'body of Christ.These strandsare brought together in Partiv in the person of MargeryKempe. Essaysby Samuel Fanousand Naoe Kukita Yoshikawaoffer some substantial analysis of the oft-repeated claim thatMargery'wantedto be a saint',Fanousthroughexamination of hagiographical models and KukitaYoshikawavia the liturgy.Denis Renevey sees Margery'stext as a commentary on her body's public performanceof (with a nice recollection of the themesof Millett'sopening essay)anchoriticdiscursiveand lay devotionalpractices. Richard Lawes'scontributionoffersfascinatinginsightsfromcontemporarypsychiatric medicine into Hoccleve, Kempe, and Julian. Although on one hand his primary focus on Hoccleve might seem at odds with the rest of the volume's concerns, Lawes'sessayprofitabysuggestsyet anotherlens (thistime of life-writing) throughwhich we might refocusour attentionon late medieval literature. To these consistentlystrongcontributionsthe editors have added a consolidated bibliography and index and this, together with the frequent cross-references between the essays,addsto the impressionof an unusuallywell-conceived, coherent, and valuable collection. UNIVERSITY OF EXETER E. A.JONES Medieval Women. Texts andContexts inLateMedieval Britain.EssaysforFelicity Riddy.Ed. by JOCELYN WOGAN-BROWNE, ROSALYNN VOADEN, ARLYN DIAMOND, and others. (Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts, 3) Turnhout: Brepols. 2000. xv + 436pp. 2o07 BEF. A festschrifton this scale, comprising twenty-three essays by well-known scholars covering 390 pages, is more than a glowing tributeto its dedicatee, more even than a multiple contributionto the interdisciplinarygender-sensitiveinvestigationof the Denis Renevey begins the re-evaluation of Watson, proposing as subcategoriesof vernacular theology 'vernacular spirituality' (p. 5) and, most pertinently here, 'female vernacular theology' (p. 2). In her introduction, Christiania Whitehead situatesthis collection in relation to recent work on gender and spirituality,and to other work in the book's principal area of interest: 'the relation of women to religious books, both as writers, as receivers, and as often contentious objects of representation within them' (p. 7). Although the editors are wise enough not to labour the puns in their title, their book is concerned both with women who write and with women who are written, and with righting some of the neglect they have suffered. The book is divided into four parts. The first, rather oddly, contains only one essay, in which Bella Millett situatesAncrene Wissealongside the firstbooks of hours at the 'breakdownof the sharp early medieval distinctions between religious and lay, litteratus and illiteratus' (p. 28). Both the influence of Ancrene Wisseand the via media between religiousand lay are recurrentthemes of the collection. PartIIlooks at 'CarthusianLinkswith Female Spirituality'throughMarleen Cre's examination of the Amherst manuscript...

Love Songs and Lullabies: The Compassionate, Crucified Saviour in Late Middle English Lyrics

L'A. etudie la poesie lyrique anglaise du XIIIeme et du XIVeme siecle qui porte sur la Passion, notamment chez le poete franciscain John Grimestone dans des livres d'heures et le theâtre, en s'appuyant sur Ellen Ross (The Grief of God: Images of the Suffering Jesus in Late Medieval England, New York, 1997).

Memorabilia. English medieval lyrics: a new anthology

Memorabilia. English medieval lyrics: a new anthology

Medieval Marriage: Literary Approaches, 1100-1300

Part 1 Perspectives upon medieval marriage: modern theories of medieval marriage - the two models medieval theories of marriage - canon law and theology Guilhem IX of Aquitaine - champion of adultery? Andreas Capellanus - adultery's legislator? Part 2 Literary paradigms: Ruodlieb Le Mystere d'Adam Erec et Enide the letters of Abelard and Heloise. Part 3 The St Albans Psalter: the development of the legend of St the Chanson de St Alexis and its treatment of marriage St and Guy of Warwick The Life of St Christina of Markyate. Part 4 Corpus Christ College Cambridge MS 402 and Oxford Bodley MS 34 (the AB-Group): wooing - Ancrene Wisse, Part VII wooing - the Lives of Juliana, Margaret and Katherine virginity and marriage - Hali Meithhad. Part 5 Jesus College Oxford MS 29 and BL MS Cotton Caligula A9: the Middle English lyrics Chardri - Le Petit Plet The Owl and the Nightingale - introduction the death of the nightingale the nightingale's defence - ll 1331-1416 maidens and wives - ll 1417-1602.

Shane K. Bernard. Swamp Pop: Cajun and Creole Rhythm and Blues. American Made Music Series. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1996. CD included, xiii, 264 pp. ISBN 0-87805-875-3 (hardcover)

Shane K. Bernard. Swamp Pop: Cajun and Creole Rhythm and Blues. American Made Music Series. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1996. CD included, xiii, 264 pp. ISBN 0-87805-875-3 (hardcover). Un article de la revue Canadian University Music Review / Revue de musique des universités canadiennes (Volume 18, numéro 2, 1998, p. 1-134) diffusée par la plateforme Érudit.

The Genre of the Grave and the Origins of the Middle English Lyrics

The Genre of the Grave and the Origins of the Middle English Lyrics

Chaucerian Realism by Robert Myles

REVIEWS Edwards explores the contexts of Osbern Bokenham's Legendys of Hooly Wummen through a codicological analysis of BL MS Arundel 327. Thomas G. Duncan reopens the difficult question of the meter of Middle English lyrics, with an analysis of "Mirie it is" and "Lord thou clepedest me," arguing that the formal constraint on these lyrics was principally syllabic. In a very characteristic "Introductory Address," Dr. Doyle himself sur­ veys the progress ofmanuscript studies and suggests work that needs to be done. As with everything he writes, this is briefand packed with a range of information that will be valuable to all those working with manuscripts. It is a fitting opener for this fine volume. THORLAC TURVILLE-PETRE University of Nottingham ROBERT MYLES. Chaucerian Realism. Chaucer Studies, vol. 20. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1994. Pp. 153. $53.00. Robert Myles's study of Chaucerian realism has two main aims. In the first phase ofhis study, Myles seeks to correct faulty accounts ofChaucer's philo­ sophical sympathies; indeed, he begins his study with this contra: "Con­ trary to much current opinion, Chaucer is a realist in many senses" (p. 1). Here, Myles challenges the recent tendency to see Chaucer as a nominalist, and instead argues that the poet was a realist in his metaphysics and epis­ temology as well as in his understanding of language and psychology. Myles's project extends beyond this corrective phase, however, to a positive statement about how realism informs Chaucer's poetry. Like his predeces­ sors, who have used "Chaucerian" to describe the poet's approach to trag­ edy, irony, belief, and theatricality, Myles argues that realism is essential to Chaucer's craft. In particular, he claims that realism provides Chaucer with a basis for his portrayal of characters and their intentions. In the preliminary stage of his study, in which he locates Chaucer in a realist rather than a nominalist tradition, Myles is generally persuasive and informative. He begins by suggesting that those who have associated Chaucer with nominalism have frequently done so by employing an over­ simplified definition ofrealism. Most notably, they have equated realism in general with a more specific strand ofthe tradition, Cratylic realism, which holds that "there is a natural, real relationship between a word and a 257 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER thing-that somehow the essence ofa chair is reflected or contained in the sound ofthe word 'chair'" (p, 2), But, as Myles points out, realist thinkers as diverse as Socrates, Augustine, Boethius, and Dante saw the relationship between word and thing as conventional. Consequently, Chaucer's exam­ ination ofthe relationship between word and deed in such places as The General Prologue to T he Canterbury Tales, the proem to book 2 ofTroilus and Criseyde, and the lyric poem "Lak: ofStedfastnesse" does not serve to classify him as an antirealist. Moreover, Myles suggests, critics who have placed Chaucer among the nominalists have mistakenly equated nominalism with "post-Saussurian language theory" (p. 14). This assertion leads Myles to a critique ofthe "major misunderstandings" often scholars who have sought to explain Chaucer's poetry in nominalist terms, beginning with Robert Jordan's Chaucer's Poetics and the Modern Reader (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987) and including Russell Peck's influential article, "Chaucer and the Nominalist Questions" (Speculum 53 (1978}: 745-60), as well as studies by John Gardner, P. B. Taylor, and Rodney Delasanta. While Myles is concerned with all aspects ofChaucer's realism, he pays particular attention to the ethical dimension of the poet's philosophical allegiances. For Chaucer, as for most thinkers ofthe Middle Ages, "the will is the ethical center ofthe speech act" (p. 27). In support ofhis portrait of Chaucer as an ethical realist, Myles provides an extended survey ofmedi­ eval and modern theories ofintentionality. Here, Myles finds a high degree of consistency between medieval thinkers, such as Boethius and Duns Scotus, and modern ones, such as Paul Ricoeur and John Searle, in seeing linguistic utterances as intentional mental acts. It is against this extended tradition ofthinking about intentionality that Myles places Chaucer's fre­ quent probing of the "entente" and "entencioun" of his characters; like both ancient and modern thinkers, Chaucer is interested in...

Beyond "Loose Lamb": The Form and Themes of the English "Dolnik"

In this paper I present and analyze a verse meter transitional between syllabotonic and purely accentual. Russian scholars, who were first to notice and study this meter, have called it dolnik, and I am using this term here. I analyze English and German dolnik poetry, comparing it to its Russian counterpart. Western metrists have overlooked this form, confusing it with neighboring metrical types, yet dolnik, or strict stress-meter, warrants investigation as a verse form in its own right. In late Middle Ages, following influence of French syllabic verse and Medieval Latin hymns on accentual Germanic prosody, a verse form evolved in which a consistent number of syllables between adjacent stresses was not required, yet complete freedom was not allowed: number of unstressed syllables was typically restricted to one or two. After having virtually disappeared from Germanic literary poetry, dolnik was revived during late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when English and German literature was recalling its past. The German and particularly English literary dolnik was based on most popular binary meter of epoch -the iamb. I focus on dolnik in English texts from Southey to Frost and in German texts by Heine and Benn. I compare these to Russian literary dolnik, which has no predecessor. It came into existence in twentieth century and evolved from ternary meters. Establishing and distinguishing dolnik from adjacent verse forms, I show that different metrical boundaries have been set up by Russian, German, and English poets. The different origin of Germanic literary dolnik, on one hand, and its Russian counterpart, on other, has played an important role. Difference in linguistic structure, particularly length of words, is equally important. Further, I study formal differences between particular groups of poems and their thematic and stylistic preferences: different Poetics Today 16:3 (Fall 1995). Copyright ? 1996 by The Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics. CCC 0333-5372/95/$2.50. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.141 on Mon, 18 Jul 2016 05:48:55 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 494 Poetics Today 16:3 verse forms gravitate to particular themes, such as love, God, the historical, or the supernatural, and when dealing with same theme, different verse forms treat it in stylistically dissimilar ways. When we read a poem, we understand not only what it tells us with words, but also what it implies by form of its meter or stanzas. Every poem written in Spenserian stanza brings to mind The Faerie Queene, together with its images and style. Every tragedy written in unrhymed iambic pentameter is perceived against background of Shakespearean tragedies, with their character types, plots, and stylistic colorings. Each verse form has accumulated many layers of associations during long period of its use by generations of poets. It is mostly these associations that make some meters seem naturally suitable for elevated and serious subjects, and other meters for light and playful motifs. To understand fully message of a poetic text, including its semantic undercurrents and implications, we must identify its metrical form and study historical background of this form, together with its thematic and stylistic preferences. Such of verse forms for particular subject matters and stylistic colorings are, of course, not rigid. They are no more than tendencies, especially with widely used, omnivorous forms. But preferences are definitely traceable. They develop historically and surround form with a kind of semantic halo (cf. Gasparov 1976, 1982; Tarlinskaja and Oganesova 1986; Tarlinskaja 1989). In English poetic tradition, for example, theme of is more frequently accompanied by iamb than by trochee. English lyrics written in trochaic tetrameter couplets rhymed aabb prefer theme of God, while abab variant prefers love theme, but not as consistently as iambic tetrameter poems with abab rhyme scheme do (Tarlinskaja and Oganesova 1986: 90). The love theme, when coupled with iambic tetrameter, usually assumes a melancholy, unhappy semantic variant; when coupled with trochee, it develops a different semantic variant: joyous, playful. The stylistic coloring of iambic poems about love is typically elevated, often with bookish and classical associations, while in trochaic poems typical stylistic coloring is lower, with folk settings and images. Here are just two typical examples of iambic and trochaic tetrameter couplets, rhymed abab, both from poetry of Thomas Moore.

Generosity and the Limits of Authority: Shakespeare, Herbert, Milton

Book Reviews83 William Flesch, Generosity and the Limits ofAuthority: Shakespeare, Herbert, Milton. Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1992. 277 pp. $35.95. by Janis Lull In Generosity and the Limits ofAuthority: Shakespeare, Herbert, Milton, William Flesch compares three poets rarely treated together and finds common ground in their concentration on generosity and its antitheses: abandonment, loss, and "extremity," a final stage of emptiness in which the subject ceases to believe that plenitude is possible. While Flesch links the poetic exploration of extremityto the work of such theorists as Blanchot, Mauss, Freud, and Wittgenstein, the strength of the book lies more in its sensitive readings of particular works than in the explanatory power of the theories. The moments of extremity Flesch finds in such works as Herbert's "Love" (III) or Shakespeare's Richard II can usually be illuminated by theories familiar to the poets themselves — Protestant theology, for example, or the social thought associated with feudalism. While Flesch explores these connections, he also senses that many presentday readers will empathize more easily with Herbert's crises of faith or Shakespeare's nostalgia for authority when they are described in the language of modern philosophy, psychology, and anthropology. In his first chapter, "Public and Private in Herbert," Flesch compares Herbert's Protestant faith to Wittgenstein's analysis of skepticism. Just as Herbert's speakers often find the assurance of God's nearness hidden in their feelings of estrangement, so Wittgenstein maintains that the very act of doubting the external world assures us that it exists, in the form of the "language game" that makes doubt possible in the first place. In many of Herbert's poems, Flesch argues, the speaker's act of questioning his membership in God's community ultimately assures him that he does belong. But Flesch also discovers in Herbert, as in Wittgenstein, a sense of loss so profound that it cannot be redeemed even by God's grace. In his analysis of "Love" (HI), for instance, Flesch emphasizes the past-tense verbs in the final line: "So I did sit and eat." While Flesch agrees with other critics that the poem dramatizes God's generosity in justifying the unworthy speaker, he also insists that the feast portrayed in the poem's present-tense dialogue — "You must sit down, sayes Love, and taste my meat" — is not the eternal feast of love in heaven because it is over by the end of the poem. At best, 84Book Reviews "Love" (III) is a brief, lyrical vision of heaven, and Flesch finds in the last line a suggestion that the speaker may be excluded forever from God's community. He thus connects Herbert's most intense anxieties not with the fear of damnation but with the fear that the divine generosity of grace can be exhausted, leaving the human subject completely outside any system of relations to God or, in Wittgenstein's terms, outside the real. Flesch's skill as a reader leads him to an important insight: in the same way that the past-tense ending of "Love" (III) undermines its vision of present grace, so real despair haunts the fringes of Herbert's poetry of faith and gives it its deepest resonance. Flesch brings out the nature of this despair especially well in his treatment of "The Sacrifice" and "Redemption," poems that represent the Incarnation as a kind of divine bankruptcy rather than as a fulfillment. Having identified a neglected note in Herbert's poetry, however, Flesch sometimes tries too hard to hear it, as in his unpersuasive reading of "The Pulley." His assertion that the poem is "not about everlasting rest but about everlasting exile from rest" (p. 83) ignores the suggestions of reassurance hidden, as so often, in Herbert's puns, especially in "let him keep the rest" (1. 16). Flesch's philosophical-cultural approach is helpful in highlighting an undercurrent of "extremity" in Herbert's English lyrics, but it works even better when he turns to Shakespeare, a poet more overtly concerned with exchange and loss and often discussed in such terms. Flesch demonstrates, for example, how Rkhard II reflects the feeling of decline surrounding the early modern transition from a feudal gift economy to a...

The Virgin's Gaze: Spectacle and Transgression in Middle English Lyrics of the Passion

Depictions of the Virgin in Middle English lyrics of the Passion are one of the most common medieval sources for accounts of a woman's gaze. Her gaze in these laments, however, runs counter to cultural proscriptions of female gazing, as illustrated in Dante, Chaucer, Alan of Lille, and Bernard of Clairvaux and as theorized in recent feminist film theory. The Marian poems complicate the gaze by repeatedly enjoining the reader to view Christ's suffering and mutilated body through an intricately mediated visual enterprise: the reader looks not only at the figure on the cross but also at the Virgin gazing, a sight that is further mediated by the poet, often in the persona of someone watching at the scene. Spectatorship in the laments sets up a complex tension between the Virgin as spectacle and the Virgin as a transgressive subject of maternal and erotic power.

Early Printers and English Lyrics: Sources, Selection, and Presentation of Texts

Early Printers and English Lyrics: Sources, Selection, and Presentation of Texts

Preachers, Poets, and the Early English Lyric by Siegfried Wenzel

REVIEWS SIEGFRIED WENZEL. Preachers, Poets, andthe Early English Lyric. Prince­ ton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986. Pp. xii, 272. $30.00. SiegfriedWenzel's most recent excursion through the province ofthe use of vernacular poetry in late-medieval preaching is thoroughly to be recom­ mended,and theroutehe takes willproveparticularly invitingtohistorians of the Middle English lyric. His first chapter broaches the subjects to be subsequentlytreatedandproposesa simplebasicthesis: inmanyinstances, "the early English lyric was closely related to preaching." This is the uncontentious skeleton that the remaining seven chapters endeavor to put flesh upon. When he distinguishes six types of manuscripst that contain lyrics and have some connection with preaching, he shows himself to be grappling with sometimes reluctant categories (as the dwindling distinc­ tion between his "preachers' notebooks" and "miscellanies" reveals), al­ though he does so bravely. Such zest for classification persists in other chapters.Wenzel ably exposes some of the critical misapprehensions about the nature of certain Middle English lyrics: that sometimes they should be perceived not as homoge­ neous poems (though they are often printed as if they were) but rather as verses which serve toidentifyand announce a sermon's structural parts and that as such they may be split up and distributedover a quantity ofsermon prose. He considers whether lyricsinsermons wereeversung andshowshow scarce is the evidence for believing so. Chapter 2 looks at the medieval Latin hymn tradition andfor its point of departure comments in detail on the verbal artistry of the hymn "Ave praeclara maris stella," composed by the eleventh-century writer Hermann of Reichenau; Wenzel's lavish attention to a hymn that has no apparent consequence whatsoever on the Middle English lyric is, however, rather curious. He moves on to consider vernacular translations and imitations of theLatin hymns "AngelusadVirginem" and "Stabat iuxta Christi crucem," comparing and contrasting the style of the vernacular poems with that of their Latin models. The poem "Stond Wel, Moder, Vnder Rode," which is not known to derive from any extant Latin or French original, is next discussed, and its quotation in a sermon in British Library manuscript Royal 8.F.11, illustrated. "Stond Wel, Moder" is described somewhat dis­ paragingly as an "expandable" lyric, one whose flaccid structure ("the speeches do not reallygo anywhere," p. 52) can make room for any amount ofpadding. "Nv Yh She Blostme Sprynge," on the other hand, is judged not guilty of such aimlessness and compared to the "Ave praeclara maris stella" in the degree of its literary merit. 205 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER The third chapter describes the context in which preaching verses nor­ mally feature, the "scholastic" sermon. Here they may render the sermon theme and sermon division, as well as provide proof texts, message and memory verses, and prayers. Wenzel considers the Englishing of sermon divisions too hidebound ever to achieve any son of poetic vitality, whereas verse free of such constraints may begin to breathe. This point is obvious enough, butWenzel goes on to suggestplausibly that the demand made on a preacher for verse for his sermon divisions, poetically dead though his final product often was, would nevertheless have encouraged his capacity to versify and thusmay have served him ingood stead for writing poems in less confined circumstances. The middle chapters provide a useful study of the preaching handbook of FriarJohn of Grimestone, an unusual manuscript distinguished by the sheer quantity of its English verse (in this respect it far outstrips its nearest competitors, like the collection in British Library manuscript Harley 7322). The arrangement of the handbook is described, and its lyrics are classifed as adaptations, expansions, translations, or "free creations." Wenzel then asks whether all the poems are Grimestone's own composition and answers that they are not (an answerwhich comes a little oddly here since up to this point in the chapter they have been spoken of as if they might be) but that "in all likelihood" the poems unique to the handbook may be by Grimestone himself. Classification is exalted once more as Wenzel methodically labels the poems according to the mode they adopt; some are prayers, others give information, others exhort or warn, while yet others are affective. The relative occurrence of these respective modes is boiled...

The Bible in Middle English Literature by David C. Fowler

R E V I E W S David C. Fowler, The Bible in Middle English Literature (Seattle: Univer­ sity of Washington Press, 1984). xiii, 326. $25.00 It is relatively rare among the scholarly labours of medievalists for a book to be produced that has evident appeal for the general academic reader as well as much value for the specialist. David C. Fowler’s latest book is, how­ ever, a notable exception to the rule, and it deserves a wide audience among general students of English literature. From the point of view of its scholarly plan, this is actually the second of a two-volume study which has occupied Fowler for many years, since his early and important work on Piers Plowman. Fowler has been a pioneer in the teaching of the Bible in Literature, and the study here brought to con­ clusion is a natural outgrowth of his combined interests. The first volume, The Bible in Early English Literature (1976) was in effect an introduction to the transmission of the Bible during the Middle Ages, from textual tradi­ tions to popular vernacular paraphrase and translation. It is an extremely useful study, containing central chapters on St. Gregory’s Moralia on Job, the Old English translation and paraphrases, and, in closer anticipation of this second volume, the Middle English “metrical Bible” or Cursor Mundi, Higden’s Polychronicon and the Wyclif Bible. With this background on the availability of biblical literature itself, Fowler pursues in his second volume the role of the Bible in those central works of Middle English literature with which, for the most part, non-specialists as well as specialists are quite familiar. Having in this brief fashion indicated something of the relationship of the two volumes, I want to say plainly that the present book can be read entirely on its own, without any sense of loss, and that in my opinion Fowler has been remarkably successful in his intention (signified by the absence of any formal indication that they are in fact “vol. I ” and “vol. I I ” ) to make it so. Furthermore, the book is admirably written, with the easy, almost conver­ sational grace of the mature scholar and teacher; Fowler’s prose and his old E n g l is h S t u d ie s in C a n a d a , x ii, 4, December 1986 humanist’s gift for the well-told story calls up those pleasures of reading an earlier generation of scholars were more careful to preserve for us, so serving as Sir Arthur Quiller-Gouch once put it, a literature which “is not, and should not be, the preserve of any priesthood.” This book offers, in fact both a worthy introduction to Middle English literature and a pleasurable reconnaisance of its rich resources and landscape. Chapter One is devoted to the medieval drama — particularly the cycle drama and morality play — and opens with an illuminating discussion of the Cornish Ordinalia, a lively and much overlooked English cycle play which, because of its relative concision among other values, allows Fowler to introduce liturgical influences on the structuring of adapted biblical narra­ tive. He goes on to locate the development of medieval drama in its theo­ logical and catechetical milieu, but with special attention to the role of narrative typology. Examples are drawn from Chester, Wakefield, and the Castle of Perseverance. The second chapter, “Medieval Lyrics and the Church Calendar,” is one of the most interesting in the book. Here Fowler’s discussion commences with influences of the Song of Songs, and “the harmony of sacred and sexual significance” in some exemplary Middle English lyrics indebted to the biblical poem for language and image, and moves on to suggest ways in which certain lyrics might be performed in connection with the annual schedule of Bible readings in churches from Christmas tide, with its lections from the prophets and Gospels, to Advent with its lections from the Apoca­ lypse of St. John, in an annual biblical cycle. This chapter, which offers attractive readings of several lyrics, contains a discussion of the role of Mary Magdalene — not only in the lyrics but also in the saints’ play which bears her name...

Chaucer’s Native Heritage by Alexander Weiss

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER ALEXANDER WEISS. Chaucer'sNativeHeritage. American University Stud­ ies, Series 4. English Language and Literature, vol. 11. New York, Berne, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1985. Pp. iv; 247. $29.25. Alexander Weiss has written what is, on several counts, an old-fashioned book. Chaucer's Native Heritage argues first of all for the existence of a definable national character, embodied in the writing of its people and epitomized in the work of individual geniuses like Geoffrey Chaucer. Moreover, the traits of genius emerge in naturalistic, lifelike poetry. What Weiss calls "poetry in the finest sense of the word" (p. 42) comes chiefly from illusionistic recreation: a text is "eminently believable" because "we seem to be overhearing this conversation as we would if we were actually present" (p. 155); "We see, we hear, we feel-we experience" (p. 39) when poetry succeeds. For Chaucer studies, this amounts to a revival of the dramatic theory, extended here beyond the CT to the early translations, the LGW, the Roman, and the Trot/us so that it virtually describes the greatness of the "great" poetry. Weiss's arguments stipulate a distinctive national style, transcendently present in this sceptered isle in disregard of time, circumstance, means of production, or horizons of expectation. This heritage, which marks all genuinely English medieval poetry, consists largely in linguistic survivals, such as diction, idiom, "clear and straight-forward grammatical construc­ tions" and an "eminently natural syntactic structure" (p. 194), all deriving from Old English accentual verse. This "conversational style" also takes in "melancholic tone, verbal and structural repetition, and visual con­ creteness" (p. 121), and, between Beowulfand Chaucer, finds its clearest expression in Middle English lyrics. The lyric's articulation of "conversa­ tional style"-in this analysis, equivalent to naturalistic representation­ involves a simple, expository manner that establishes a participatory inti­ macy with the audience. The designation of Englishness comprises not only inherent features of native texts, but contrasts with other national poetical stereotypes. Pro­ fessor Weiss provides a selective analysis of troubadour and Proven�al poetry, the exclusive purpose of which is to show what Old and Middle English poetry is not (p. 49 ff.). In its "too self-consciously sophisticated" style (p. 131), French poetry is internally complex, distant, overtly crafted, abstract-a beautiful object rather than an intense experience. This antith­ esis forces some unexpected conclusions: that Chaucer "has no concern for 258 REVIEWS 'craft' but only for 'sentence'" (p.90); that the "naturalness of his transla­ tion" establishes the Roman's essential "Englishness" (p. 204); or that "Chaucer's 'ABC,' far from preserving the spirit and manner of the original ...belongs, in spirit and manner as well as in tone and style, firmly in the tradition established by the early Middle English lyricists" (p. 168). The same spirit transforms Italian sources: "The difference in purpose, form and tone between Chaucer's version of this speech and Boccaccio's suggests Chaucer's close ties with the tradition of Old English poetry" (p. 105). The necessary circularity involved in fixing the priority of the genius of English or English geniuses constrains other arguments. If continental poetry is urbane and cool, English writing is expository and intense, "primarily concerned with teaching a moral and virtuous lesson" (p.104)- "the recognition of which can be beneficial to us and guide us to a better life" (p.89)."For Chaucer poetry must be, above all, truthful... an honest representation of life" (p. 88). This Polonius-like aphorism apparently points back to the experiential and lifelike in poetry (pp.49, 130, 140, and so on). The intuitive, positivist assumptions behind such commentary account perhaps for the disregard of historical considerations: the central argument about native heritage is, despite some asseverations to the contrary, in no way historical.But vast gaps in time, context, and the fundamental resources and structures of cultural meaning mark the discus­ sions of non-English poetry as well: how, for example, may a poem by the Count of Poitiers be profitably compared with an early Middle English lyric? what ground, if any, do they share in terms of language, poetic craft, political and social setting, literary allusion, erudition, notions oflove and...

Alliterative Technique in the Lyrics of MS Harley 2253

MS Harley 2253, compiled in the first half of the fourteenth century in the neighborhood of Hereford, perhaps at the priory of Leominster, perhaps in the household of the bishop of Hereford, contains Latin prose and verse, saints' lives and fabliaux, and miscellaneous Anglo-Norman and English poems, including versions of King Horn, The Proverbs of Hendyng, and The Sayings of Saint Bernard.2 But it is for the thirty-two superb and unique English lyrics it preserves that MS Harley 2253 is justly celebrated as one of the great treasuries of medieval English poetry. Particularly interesting are the eighteen alliterative lyrics that reflect a whose influence was widespread and long lived3 and yet whose metrical and alliterative practices and techniques have so far engendered only controversy-are these lyrics in the syllabic tradition of French poetry or in the long-line tradition of native alliterative verse? The purpose of this essay is to deduce rules of scansion that may be applied uniformly to the alliterative and nonalliterative lyrics in the manuscript, to demonstrate the resemblances between rhythms in devotional alliterative prose and in these alliterative lyrics, and to analyze the variety and occurrence of those rhythms in the alliterative lyrics. Ultimately, the comparison of rhythms in the alliterative and nonalliterative lyrics will show that the alliterative lyrics were not composed in the accentual syllabic tradition but sprang from the same tradition of literary language as the high style in rhythmical devotional

Verses in Sermons: Fasciculus Morum and its Middle English Poems by Siegfried Wenzel

REVIEWS As a whole, the volume offers little that is both new and striking, but much that is solid and interesting, especially when the authors are not formulating or drawing upon suspect generalizations but are giving concrete analyses of specific literary works. Melczer's statement of the need for interdisciplinary piecework is particularly important, and Rid­ ley's study of Dunbar in the context ofthe court ofJames IV shows that one does not have to wait for congresses orcollaborators to take advantage of the methods and results of other fields of scholarship. H. A. KELLY University of California, Los Angeles SIEGFRIED WENZEL, Verses in Sermons: Fasciculus Morum and its Middle English Poems. Cambridge, Mass.: The Mediaeval Academy of America, 1978. Pp. 234. $20.00. This latest contribution by Siegfried Wenzel to our understanding of the rhetoric of preaching and its possible impact on imaginative litera­ ture will appeal not simply to those who are interested in didactic literature per se, but also to the broader audience concerned with lyric forms and meditative poetry in general. Wenzel begins his introduction with the bold statement that "Mid­ dle English lyrics owe a profound and multiform debt to contemporary religious beliefs and institutions," and he then proceeds to develop this thesis throughout his work. First ofall, he describes the "Little Bundle of Morality," a Latin treatise which was meant to teach friars the art of effective oratorical delivery (an outline is provided at the end). He then proceeds to put the Fasciculus in an historical and aesthetic perspective, and finally he offers a complete critical edition of the 61 English poems that are scattered through some of the manuscripts of the treatise (their number being exceedingly variable, as is shown in a table on pages 106-07). Wenzel's work is, as a whole, the most complete commentary on the text to date, and his edition ofthe poetry surpasses those ofhis predeces183 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER sors because of its completeness and accuracy; indeed, the entire book, with its many difficulties in a variety of languages, is remarkably free from errors in any. The book is divided into three main chapters. In the first, Wenzel places the Fasciculus in the Franciscan tradition, where it stands as an important English contribution to the literature of the Seven Deadly Sins. Wenzel then describes the twenty-eight manuscripts of the trea­ tise, including R, which serves as the base for his own edition of the poems. He shows that the work, in several forms, was widely read throughout England in Chaucer's day, functioning as a clergyman's guide. Wenzel next wrestles with the problem ofdating, settling on the latter years of the reign of Edward I as the most likely time for its composition. The author then reveals himselfas an excellent detective as he sifts through the evidence offering four different candidates for authorship. He decides, in a way that is perfectly reasonable, that the greatest claim belongs to Robert Selk. The first chapter ends with a very interesting discussion ofthe fortune of the Fasciculus through references to it by other people, and concludes with some generalizations on the art ofpopular preaching. Wenzel notes that many allusions in these works are drawn from natural science, but, rather surprisingly at first glance, few from the world of the clergy; the greatest number ofallusions is related to the world ofthe common man, and this makes sense when one considers the audience. The world ofthe Plowman provides the backdrop for the world ofthe Parson, precisely as Chaucer portrayed the characters in his Prologue, side by side. When one considers Chaucer's own great predicators-such as the Pardoner or Chauntecleer-one sees that the milieux of the barnyard and the tavern are never very farremoved from the ecclesiastical forum. This blending of the lowly with the sublime, which formed the center for Auerbach's great essay on Sermo humilis, and which reached its optimum of expres­ sion in Dante's Comedy, can be seen rather more humbly in this English work. Chapter II explores that phenomenon ofblending the poetic with the prosaic that is shown in the Fasciculus. Wenzel documents the wide­ spread practice of writing...

English Lyrics

English Lyrics

Reading the Harley Lyrics: A Master Poet and the Language of Conventions

Before the late fourteenth and fifteeenth-century lyrics of Chaucer and the so-called Chaucerians, little has survived in English of the great flowering of medieval erotic poetry stimulated in Europe by Latin and Romance models. The major exception is a dozen or so texts among the English poems of an important miscellany (which includes Latin and French texts), collected by an unknown scribe in the first half of the fourteenth century: MS Harley 2253. Most of these lyrics are written in a style whose aggressive alliteration and complex stanzaic rhyme patterns show a distinctive and vigorous attempt to fuse native and Romance elements in a new, elegant synthesis. The Harley lyrics, despite their clear links with earlier and later poetry, provide a lively contrast with the smoother, aureate style of most later English love lyrics, and have earned high praise from critics since their earliest publication.1 But the reader first grappling with these poems, familiar with either Renaissance or medieval European amorous poetry, may well be frustrated as well as charmed. The force of much exuberant imagery and passionate statements of desire and despair seems often dulled by mechanical or indiscriminate schemes of elaboration, catalogues or amplifications, or worse, dissipated'by clumsy shifts of theme that render character or situation incoherent. Earlier critics often charitably judged the results naive, along with much other medieval literature. But as respect for and understanding of medieval poetry has grown, scholars have returned to the Harley

Middle English Lyrics: Authoritative Texts, Critical and Historical Backgrounds, Perspectives on Six Poems

It is the only anthology which includes all thirty-one English lyrics from MS Harley 2253, all the verses by Friar Herebert printed in Brown XIV, and all the important poems given in Robbins' Secular Lyrics. In all there are 245 lyrics, arranged thematically. To make these delightful poems accessible to the modern reader, the editors have removed many of the orthographic impediments inherent in Middle English verse and have modernized punctuation, capitalization, and obsolete letters while scrupulously seeking to retain the substantive integrity of the poems. Critical and Historical Backgrounds are provided in essays by Peter Dronke, Stephen Manning, Raymond Oliver, and Rosemary Woolf. In a special section, six poems are singled out for critical comment by A. K. Moore, Edmund Reiss, D. W. Robertson, Jr., E. T. Donaldson, John Speirs, Thomas Jemielity, D. G. Halliburton, Leo Spitzer, and others. Two of these lyrics, Maiden in the mor lay and I sing of a maiden, are discussed by four different scholars. In all, twenty-five poems are discussed in the essays. The volume also includes a list of Abbreviations, a Table of Textual Sources and Dates, a Select Bibliography, and an Index of First Lines.

The Influence of Richard Rolle and of Julian of Norwich on the Middle English Lyrics

The Influence of Richard Rolle and of Julian of Norwich on the Middle English Lyrics