Studies in Troilus: Chaucer’s Text, Meter, and Diction by Stephen A. Barney (review)

REVIEWS conspicuously polarizes the classical and Christian elements that Spenser mixes together, thus emphasizing their mutual antagonism and putting it to creative use. {P. 185} In her "Conclusion" (pp. 211-15), Astell relates her complex thesis about "heroic poetry" in the Middle Ages to several earlier attempts by critics to explain the essential features of epic and romance. It would be churlish to fault a book that includes so much that is innovative and worthwhile for not having said everything. Nevertheless, a few omissions are puzzling. Because Astell is arguing for the continuity of "epic truth" in the later Middle Ages, one would have expected her to consider the influence ofHomer and Virgil not only as they were allegori­ cally refined into Boethian and Joban substitutes but also as they survived in works that treat the Homeric and Virgilian subject matter, albeit trans­ mogrified. Do Job and Boethius help account for works like Dictys's Ephemeridos be/Ii Troiani and Dares's De excidio Troiae historia {both ofwhich are mentioned briefly in passing on p. 73, without the further interpretive comment that seems called for); and what about Benoit de Sainte-Maure's Roman de Troie and Guido delle Colonne's Historia destructionis Troiae, nei­ ther of which is mentioned at all? A major study of epic and romance that Astell does not mention is Morton W. Bloomfield's "Episodic Motivation and Marvels in Epic and Romance" (in his Essays and Explorations: Studies in Ideas, Language, and Literature (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970), pp. 97-128). One would like to know how Astell would extend the complex thematic argument she has put forward in Job, Boethius, and Epic Truth to account for the very different structural features of epic and romance that Bloomfield identifies. Judging by the quality of the present book, Astell's answers to these questions would be of interest not only to all medievalists, including Chaucerians, but to anyone inter­ ested in literary theory or the history of ideas. LAWRENCE BESSERMAN Hebrew University STEPHEN A. BARNEY. Studies in Troilus: Chaucer's Text, Meter, andDiction. Medieval Texts and Studies, vol. 14. East Lansing, Mich.: Colleagues Press, 1993. Pp. viii, 167. $28.00. Stephen Barney is like many other Middle English textual editors: frus­ trated that not all (or even most) of their editorial labors may ever be 163 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER included as part of the apparatus of an edited text. Unlike these textual editors, however, Barney chose to do something about his frustration. Hav­ ing previously edited and annotated Troilus and Criseyde for The Riverside Chaucer, Barney in the present work presents a fulle_r exposition of his editorial methodologies in the Riverside. What is presented in the book becomes fascinating reading for any scholar who has had to wrestle with an array of variant readings for a text with multiple manuscript attesta­ tions and who thus had to "discriminate" often between scribal variance and supposed archetypal authority, or authorial intention and aesthetic preference. In the introduction Barney persuasively rationalizes the need for Studies by emphasizing the "foundational" role of textual, linguistic, and prosodic scholarship in understanding a Middle English literary document: such scholarship is "the technical retrieval of a poet's art [that} imitates the production of that art" (p. 1). Barney supplements this assertion with list­ ings of the sixteen important manuscript authorities for the poem (the most important of these manuscripts being, in descending order, the Mor­ gan Library , the Corpus Christi College, the British Library: Harley 2280, and St. John's College); the three early printed editions of Caxton, Thynne, and Wynkyn de Worde; and eight important modern editions (most im­ portantly the editions of Root, Robinson, Donaldson, and Windeatt). Also included are briefdefinitions ofsuch editorial terms as "archetype," "exclu­ sive common ancestor," and "convergent variation," altogether a succinct·' overview of the Gregian model of textual criticism for the beginning editor. Following the introduction are six chapters that present at least three broad arguments. The first argument-in chapter 1 ("Two New Editions of Troilus"), chapter 2 ("Discrimination"), and chapter 4 ("Glosses")--is a cautious yet pointed critique of Windeatt's edition. In chapter l, Bar­ ney particularly criticizes Windeatt...