The Numerical Universe of the Gawain-Pearl Poet, Beyond Phi by Edward I. Condren (review)

??8arthuriana provenance, six are Welsh law-books, of which three are in Latin. Daniel Huws provides here a full codicological description ofone ofthe latter, now British Library, Cotton Vespasian E.xi, and also ofAberysrwyth, NLWMS 20143A, aWelsh-language redaction copied in the second halfofthe fourteenth century. Editions ofthe Laws of Court based on these two manuscripts are also provided, by Morfydd E. Owen and Paul Russell. Turning to the secondary material, a number ofthe contributors concentrate on specific officials such as the household priest (Huw Pryce) or the medianer (Morfydd E. Owen), whilst Robyn Chapman Stacey provides an account of the role of the king, queen, and edling (heir-apparent). Others take a more thematic approach, Dafydd Jenkins, for example, exploring hunting with hawk and hound as reflected in the Laws of Court and Peredur Lynch concentrating on the relation between poetry, power and politics; food, drink and clothing are amongst the other topics considered (by T. M. Charles-Edwards and Robyn Chapman Stacey). In the two previous volumes, considerable attention was rightly given to comparisons with the Irish material. As far as the royal household is concerned, however, the Irish texts can offer nothing on the Welsh scale, but the gap is filled to some extent by briefdiscussion where possible ofparallels to specific officers or of similarities in terminology, and by Maire Ni Mhaonaigh's edition of an Irish text on the customs of the Ui Mhaine of Co. Galway, which throws light on the link between lineage and hereditary office, a question ofsignificance in Wales too. This volume will not be of interest to Celticists alone, however. Much of the material discussed will be relevant to historians of medieval royal households in other western European societies, not least because the contributors have taken pains to set the Welsh evidence within that broader context. Those working on the literature ofthe period who have long recognised the importance ofa knowledge of the Welsh Laws for a proper understanding of Middle Welsh narrative texts, will find here many new insights and more informed considerations of familiar topics, not least in Manon Phillips's chapter on the connections between 'courtly' behaviour as depicted in the literary texts and the customs outlined in the Laws of Court. This volume is dedicated to the memory of the Welsh historian Glanville R.J. Jones and provides a fitting tribute to a noted scholar. CERIDWEN LLOYD-MORGAN National Library ofWales, Aberystwyth Edward i. condren, The Numerical Universe ofthe Gawain-Pearl Poet, Beyond Phi. Gainesville: The University Press of Florida, 2002. Pp. 205, including index and glossary, isbn: 0-8130-2554-0. $55. The ways in which mathematics and poetry intersect as pathways to the Divine is the central theme ofEdward Condren's new study ofthe four poems ofthe Cotton Nero A.x manuscript, including the Arthurian classic, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. That intersection is, itself, a valuable (and very medieval) lesson for students educated in the modern university where disciplines are so rigorously separated REVIEWS 109 that freshman Math majors declare their dislike ofcomposition and English majors studiously avoid Math requirements. One place where the two disciplines come together is in regard to the most fundamental ofall questions: whether we live in a 'mindful cosmos'—that is, whether the universe has order and hence intention, as opposed to randomness. Ironically, the same questions may be asked by students ofthe Cotton Nero A.x manuscript— consisting of the four poems Purity, Patience, Pearl and Sir Gawain—for scholars have long debated whether the joining ofthese poems is merely a random accident or a declaration of intent by a single, poetic 'creator.' Thus, readers of the Cotton Nero poems have either sought or denied a unifying 'mindfulness' behind both the content and forms ofthe four poems in question. For the medieval thinker, the clearest evidence ofsuch mindfulness was the presence ofpattern or relationship or ratiowhich, in turn, is the root of'rationality.' Proportion is taken as evidence of intent; rationality of higher order—design, that overcomes the surface appearance of randomness. In short, we are made in the image of God because we ourselves are proportionate. The argument goes that it cannot be an accident that...