Middle English Literature by J. A. W Bennett (review)

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER these the treatment ofideas about imitation and allusion should certainly be mentioned, especially the account ofdifferences in attitude and practice between Boccaccio and Petrarch (pp. 51-57). The framework for discussion ofthe genre ofboth Teseida and The Knight's Tale is also, as I have implied, a useful one that calls into question common assumptions about epic and romance. And the work in general can be seen as contributing to a current revaluation of both Boccaccio and Statius as "epic" poets-to which those who heard Professor Ahl's livelyassessment ofthe Thebaidand its critics at the NCS congress last year will be particularly receptive. Anderson, it can be said, gets his own (or rather Boccaccio's) back at the nineteenth-century critics ofthe Teseida by exposing some oftheir own prejudices and compla­ cencies early on (pp. 9, 13) and by arguing that the poem is no mere "failed epic" or "loose baggy monster"-though in imitating the latter phrase (from Henry James on the Victorian blockbuster novel) he ought not to have imitated the medieval practice of concealing his source. The argu­ ment, as I have suggested, has a good deal to commend it, and the monsters may yet win over the critics. N. R. HAVELY Centre for Medieval Studies University of York ]. A. W BENNETT. Middle English Literature. Vol. 1, part 2. Ed. and completed by Douglas Gray. Oxford and New York: Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press, 1986. Pp. xi, 496. $45.00, £25.00. To comment helpfully on more than sixty works, including gatherings of prose writings, sermons, and lyrics, is a bold task in these latter days ofthe specialist. Only a widely read scholar should attempt such a commentary; only a reader with a keen eyeand agood earcould enliven a survey intended for the undergraduate or for the beginning graduate student already versed in the household concerns ofliterary study.]. A. W Bennett died before he could work his notes and drafts into a completed book, but what we have contains both passion and gold-a passion for religious and didactic liter­ ature and gold given the intelligence and stylistic originality often found there (even in fairly close Englishings of French and Latin originals). 180 REVIEWS Perhaps the "English" in the title should receive special attention. Ben­ nett's continuing task was to clarify the Englishness and the virtue ofthat in his commentaries on everything from The OwlandtheNightingale toPiers Plowman, while also reflecting a sensitive awareness of Continental influ­ ences and indebtedness. Within this task two other concerns arise: re­ peated attention to Old English poetic deposits in Middle English verse and prose, whether alliterative or otherwise, and an appreciation of the vividly quotidian detail. The survey begins abruptly with discussions of such poems as The Owl and the Nightingale, The Land ofCokaygne, and The Man in the Moon, under the heading "Pastoral and Comedy," where comedy means literary humor but intermixed with touches of the earth. Subsequent chapters on didactic, homiletic, and historical verse exchange satire for humor but look repeatedly at the practical and down-to-earth in such poems as Mum and the Sothsegger and in collections such as The South English Legendary. Even idealizeddetails ofcountryside and husbandry attract attention in the course of accounts that note what is flaccid or unending in these verses. Bennett's interest sharpens as he moves through Layamon into overviews ofMannyng's Chronicle and Barbour's Bruce before settling into long and busy chapters on romances and the poems ofthe Gawain manuscript. The discussions ofverse history look past the propagandistic to the appearance of pithy talk, to the factual, and to a concern for veridical detail. These emphases sort well with recent interest in the medieval doing ofhistory and in the truth-telling functions of historical narrative. The observations on metrical romances struggle under the burden ofChaucer's brilliant parody, a struggle redeemed through attention to the ways in which a listening audience must have shaped the structure oforally delivered romances and in part dictated the choice ofstylistic features for the professional gestour. Moreover, Bennett emphasizes the ways in which medieval romances­ whether French or Eastern-manifest a distinctively Christian form, rather than...