Verse with prose from Petronius to Dante: the art and scope of the mixed form (review)

Reviews 159 In this book, the author's readings resonate with acuity and irony. While the pace and the ground covered are remarkable, every argument is sensitively made andfitsinto a marvellously shaped argument. It is one of the very best books on Renaissance literary scholarship. Philippa Kelly Department of English Ausralian Defence Force Academy Dronke, Peter, Verse with prose from Petronius to Dante: the art and scope of the mixed form, Cambridge Mass. and London, Harvard University Press, 1994; cloth; pp. x, 148; R.R.P. US$32.50. Peter Dronke needs no introduction. His latest book, containing the four Carl Newell Jackson lectures he delivered at Harvard in 1992, is both a fascinating tour of some highways and by-ways in medieval literature and a significant contribution to critical enquiry in this field. The lectures appear to have been printed very much as they were delivered, with occasional colloquialisms and personal asides. Notes and an index are included, but no bibliography. More importantly, Dronke claims the lecturer's freedom to alight briefly, to juxtapose selectively, and generally to try out ideas without the obligation tofillin background or provide ponderous justification. The book's delight comes precisely from the sense of ease that this gives when an acute intelligence, backed by enviable emdition, allows itself to pursue what itfindsinteresting. Taking prosimetrum as his genre and Bakthin as his theoretical guide Dronke selects from a potentially immense corpus a more restricted range of texts, chosen for the 'creative' ways in which they combine prose and verse. These he organizes according to four perspectives: 'Menippean elements', 'Allegory and the mixed form', 'Narrative and the mixed form' and 'The poetic and the empirical "I" ' . While the chronological range is 'from Petronius to Dante', the geographical (or linguistic) range is also broad. Swept into the net along with the more predictable works such as Boethius's Consolation of philosophy and Dante's Vita nuova are obscure and sometimes even unpublished texts: Aethicus Ister's Cosmographia, Methodius's Symposium, the pseudo-Herodotean Vita Homeri, and Rather's Phrenesis. Holding all together is Bakthin's sense of Menippean satire as a dialogical genre in which 'ultimate philosophical questions are put to the test' (p. 5). 160 Reviews For Dronke this is not just a matter of grotesque or paradoxical content, but also of form. Alternation of prose and verse involves shifting perspectives. The essence of the genre is found in the opportunities which the fluctuations of form and style provide for relativizing and undermining. Having so defined 'Menippean elements', Dronke begins by finding them in three prosimetric texts not usually read this way: Aethicus Ister's Cosmographia, Notker's Life of Gallus and the late-twelfth-century Petronius redivivus, a work which he shows not only echoes its acknowledged model, but also Boethius's Consolatio. This sets the scene for his enterprise, in which he is simultaneously open to Menippean ironies lurking in the prose and sensitively responsive to creativeness in the verse, always with his eye on the point of their combination in a particular text. Chapter two begins with an interesting collection of beginnings where prose deflates the pretensions of verse. Menippean wit is then reclaimed for Martianus Capella and finally poetry's role in Boethius's Consolatio is explored. In chapter three Dronkefirstjuxtaposes some poets' lives (Greek, Irish, Icelandic, Provencal) which combine prose and verse, briefly touches on the Greek Alexander romance and Apollonius of Tyre and discusses Aucassin et Nicolette, a work 'profoundly Menippean in spirit' (p. 77). In chapter four he focuses on works in which the author appears as a firstperson protagonist. These skeletal summaries cannot convey the deftness with which links and similarities are traced within the prosimetric tradition. In fact, it is its very focus on that tradition as a tradition that gives this book its originality and its powerful claim for our attention. F. Muecke Department of Classics University of Sydney Duby, Georges, France in the Middle Ages 987-1460: from Hugh Capet to Joan of Arc, trans. Juliet Vale, Oxford, Blackwell, 1993; rpt.; paper; pp. xxviii, 331; 10 maps, 6 genealogical tables, 30 plates; R.R.P. AUSS45.00 [distributed in Australia by Allen & Unwin]. Readers of...