Traditions and Innovations in the Study of Medieval English Literature: The Influence of Derek Brewer ed. by Charlotte Brewer and Barry Windeatt (review)

Threads of admiration and affection for Derek Brewer and his contributions to medieval literary studies unite this collection. An Introduction by Barry Windeatt and Charlotte Brewer and Afterword by E. G. Stanley frame the essays, and Derek Pearsall explores Brewer’s career in ‘Derek Brewer: Chaucerian Studies 1953–78’. Several contributors examine the historical reception of Brewer’s interests in the context of critical opinion, and some deepen or extend them.

Essays of the former kind include those of R. F. Yeager (‘Gowerian Laughter’), James Simpson (‘Derek Brewer’s Romance’), Elizabeth Archibald (‘Malory and Late Medieval Arthurian Cycles’), and A. S. G. Edwards (‘Manuscripts, Facsimiles and Approaches to Editing’). These offer valuable guides to changing attitudes and opinions.

Brewer’s views may be starting points for the writers’ deliberations. Alistair Minnis considers ‘Brewer’s Chaucer and the Knightly Virtues’, and the Knight’s reputation. Christopher Cannon weighs the significance of fluency in French in ‘Class Distinction and the French of England’. Corinne Saunders’s ‘“Greater love hath no man”: Friendship in Medieval English Romance’ traces the topic in various sources. Helen Cooper’s fascinating essay, ‘The Ends of Storytelling’, probes most deeply into its theme, to find a search to explain death, even when the work begins by evoking spring, as The Canterbury Tales does.

Several essays elaborate Brewer’s thoughts on Troilus and Criseyde. A. C. Spearing demonstrates implications of ‘Time in Troilus and Criseyde’. Mary Carruthers probes Troilus’s behaviour in ‘Virtue, Intention and the Mind’s Eye in Troilus and Criseyde’, as the hero attempts to control his memory and imagination. Jill Mann writes zestfully of ‘Falling in Love in the Middle Ages’, seeing it as ‘the supreme adventure’ (p. 110) in any age. Jacqueline Tasioulas’s ‘The Idea of Feminine Beauty in Troilus and Criseyde, or Criseyde’s Eyebrow’ corrects notions of Criseyde’s appearance, to show Troilus’s willingness to fall in love with her.

Charlotte Brewer’s essay, ‘Words and Dictionaries: OED, MED and Chaucer’, embraces both styles. She describes the making of the dictionaries, and also shows their limitations and suggests ways to use them most fruitfully.

These essays present Brewer as a generous, persuasive, innovative critic, who has inspired and encouraged the contributors and many other readers. Their extensions and explorations of his contributions have produced a graceful tribute to his influence.