Readings in Medieval Texts: Interpreting Old and Middle English Literature.
Boffey, Julia
Readings in Medieval Texts: Interpreting Old and Middle English
Literature. Ed. by David Johnson and Elaine Treharne. Oxford: Oxford
University Press. 2005. 25 [pounds sterling]. ix + 400 pp. isbn:
978-0-19-926163-5.
The twenty-five essays in this volume are designed to help student
readers find their bearings in the field of literature produced in
English between the eighth and the fifteenth centuries. Covering eight
hundred years in four hundred pages is a tall order, and the editors
have met it by inviting contributions on different genres of writing, in
the hope that consideration of generic characteristics and generic
differences will lead to productive ways of reading. Contributors have
been briefed to write to a template in which 'characteristics [...]
are elucidated, scholarly criticism is evaluated, and reading strategies
are proposed to highlight particular methods and approaches of
understanding the nature, form, and function of the texts' (p. 1).
One immediately perceptible benefit of this line of attack is that
the book is extremely generous with quotations from individual texts: it
is possible to use it as a kind of tasting menu, to sample Scottish
literature or Alfredian prose or Brut chronicles or Old English riddles,
and (appetite permitting) eighteen other tasty kinds of writing. The
essays are also generous in their tendency to open up a range of
possible critical approaches, rather than exhorting readers to adopt any
single one. Some, indeed, begin with the very basic nuts and bolts of
reading and understanding, inviting students to reflect on the formation
of 'impressions' about texts, before proceeding to more
overtly theorized analyses. Despite the necessary brevity of the
individual contributions, there is still space for some discussion of
historical contexts of different kinds, most explicitly in Elaine
Treharne's short introductory discussion of 'The Context of
Medieval Literature' which offers pertinent remarks about such
concepts as publication and authorship in the period.
As individual introductions to the texts or genres they cover, the
essays are mostly lively and accessible; some are indeed much more than
this, using the opportunity of small-scale textual analysis to outline
fresh suggestions for understanding larger works or more general
tendencies. Out of twenty-four essays, no fewer than eleven deal with
Old English literature, giving welcome prominence to its intellectual
and stylistic strengths. The essays on Middle English have a rather
harder job responding to the invitation to consider generic matters
within the framework of the canon as conventionally offered to
undergraduate readers. While the Gawain poet gets an essay to himself,
Chaucer is dissolved across several contributions, Langland and Gower
creep in only occasionally, and there is--rather surprisingly--hardly
any mention of the recently canonized Hoccleve. Broad-brush experiments
have their own merits, however. It is good to see Lazamon, The Pricke of
Conscience, Handlyng Synne, and Gavin Douglas's Palice of Honoure
given space and attention, and elsewhere some revealing comparisons are
generated: Andrew Galloway's exploration of 'Middle English
Prologues' ranges widely across late antique and medieval writings
to formulate a number of thoughtful insights and a helpful taxonomy of
'modes of beginning'.
This book makes no extraordinary claims for itself, and in view of
the huge chronological sweep it encompasses, and of the modest size of
its constituent essays, it may, at first glance, look unlikely to offer
much beyond the obvious. This is not the case, however. Its essays
generally have substance, and all are supported by well-annotated
references and suggested reading. Between them they tease out a series
of interesting parallels, contrasts, and continuities, giving readers a
usable map of the literature of the long medieval period, and helpful
aids for interpreting what they find.
Julia Boffey
Queen Mary, University of London
