Le Chant des chanz (review)

The editor of this volume has a long-standing interest in the influence of the Song of Songs on medieval lyric poetry. The 2880 lines of the Anglo-Norman verse commentary on the Song of Songs, contained in MS Oxford, Bodleian library, Rawlinson Poetry 234 (S.C. 14725, olim Rawl. Misc. 534, and D. 52), offer particularly fascinating reading, and Tony Hunt's edition does it full justice. Composed in monorhyme stanzas of alexandrines of variable length, this text is the most complete of the commentaries on the Song of Songs which survive in medieval French, covering the whole of the Song of Songs with the exception of chapters VI, 9 to VII, 10, which the editor presumes were contained in a number of lost folios. Hunt envisages the audience of the commentary as devotees of the Virgin and members of a religious community. Lines such as 'Cum trovum el Chant des Chanz ke lisum en present' (594) and 'En cest amerus escrit lisum en present' (724) confirm that this was reading intended for the refectory. A close relationship with the audience is maintained throughout the commentary by the use on many occasions of the first and second persons, and Hunt suspects that the author of the commentary divided the reading into a series of sessions, offering textual evidence in support of his theory. Inspired by William of Newburgh's Marian exegesis of the Song of Songs, Explanatio sacri epithalamii in matrem sponsi (c. 1190), the anonymous author of the Anglo-Norman commentary follows his source viewing the role of Mary as intercessor. Indeed, the Anglo Norman commentator considers the whole Song of Songs as the prefiguration of the life of the Virgin. Hunt puts forward a strong case for the anonymous Anglo-Norman author to be associated with the Augustinian Canons and to have written his text in the second half of the thirteenth century, probably in Yorkshire. This was clearly a man of considerable skill, showing 'restraint and sobriety in the service of piety, whilst demonstrating a literary competence sufficient to render his word attractive to its listeners' (p. 19). The current edition is preceded by an extremely valuable introduction, presenting the manuscript, the author and his work, the commentary and the Song of Songs tradition, style and language (all of which sections clearly and firmly place the commentary within the tradition of thirteenth-century Anglo-Norman texts), and is followed by extensive notes and glossary.