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Reviews 287 Paul Price examines the Anglo-Norman Gui de Warewic and English versions ofthe story, all ofwhich share the curious turning where Guy confesses to and repudiates a past life of culpable violence - a life that up to this point narrators consistently portray in positive heroic and chivalric terms. Guy's confession and the hagiographic conclusion to the romance allow the audience ' t o have our cake and eat it' (p. 110), however contradictory that may seem. The volume concludes with Helen Cooper's essay on William Warner's retelling of the Havelok/Curan story in his Albions England. His curious reshaping of the narrative as a pastoral fantasy and its incongruity within the larger chronicle leads Cooper to conclude that he was at pains to provide his readers with a foreshadowing of Queen Elizabeth's exclusion from court and subsequent triumphant return. If this volume deals with some of the romance-genre misfits and lesser luminaries, it nevertheless provides a coherent and interesting exploration of the titled themes of translation and innovation. The standard of editing is high, and the book usefully includes both general index and an index of manuscripts. Greg Waite Department ofEnglish University ofOtago Williams, Janet Hadley, ed., Sir David Lyndsay: Selected Poems (The Association for Scottish Literary Studies 30) Glasgow, Association for Scottish Literary Studies, 2000; paper; pp. xxvi, 348, 1; R R P £12.50; ISBN 0-948877-46-4 Sir David Lyndsay: Selected Poems offers readers scholarly texts of Lyndsay' major works aside from his most familiar one, a morality play titled [Ane Plesand] Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis. This selection thus reminds us of the particular concerns as well as the skill and diversity ofthe Lyndsay canon. Only four poems are not presented here and two of those are unsubstantiated attributions. This is volume 30 in an important series produced by the Association for Scottish Literary Studies which provides a textual, cultural and historical context for Lyndsay as poet, courtier, reformist and diplomat. The 10 poems published here - ranging from dream vision to complaint, bird fable, flyting, formal lament, mock-tournament, tragedy, heroic romance, literary testament and dialogue - give ample evidence of Lyndsay's metrical, generic and rhetorical skills. These poems also provide the opportunity to gauge 288 Reviews ' the composition and capabilities ofthe 'vernacular language of Lowland Scotland, n o w called Early Middle Scots (1450-1550)' in which Lyndsay wrote. There is evidence too of the political and cultural debate around the relation between Middle Scots and late Middle English. Stanza 2 of The Testament and Complaynt ofour Soverane Lordis Papyngo praises 'Chawceir, Goweir and Lidgate laureate' alongside the works 'Of Kennedie ... /Or of Dunbar, quhilk language had at large,/As maye be sene in tyll his Goldin Targe'. Nine ofthe 10 poems are presented as full texts and the tenth, Ane Dialog betwix Experience and ane Courteour, is an excerpt of 684 lines. Sadly, no authorial manuscripts of Lyndsay's poems survive. A letter written in 1531 preserves the single extant instance of Lyndsay's signature in holograph. The earliest printed editions of the poems are not only scarce but also made problematic by the editorial practices of sixteenth-century printers. Thus close study of Lyndsay's language, including its East Central regionalisms, is difficult. Janet Hadley Williams is a reliable, if conservative, editor and the result is a usefully mainstream edition. The texts here are critical editions based on the most reliable printed edition as exemplar (not invariably the earliest) collated against editions both earlier and later - sometimes unique copies elsewhere bound into other collections - where they are available. Spelling has been lightly modernised; abbreviations are silently expanded; capitalisation, italicisation and punctuation are according to current usage; line and stanza numbers are additional. O n two particular points, Hadley Williams shows herself to be a scholar of acuity: the chronology of the poems is as exact as the documents will allow since she resists speculation, no matter how tempting. Second, the Notes, treating the various Scottish, French and occasionally London texts used and consulted, the sometimes extravagant titles, poetic form (and departures therefrom), date (and the attendant doubts) and metre (with apposite comparisons), are expansive without being...

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