Barbour's Bruce and its Cultural Contexts: Politics, Chivalry and Literature in Late Medieval Scotland ed. by Steven Boardman and Susan Foran (review)

The ten essays in this collection offer fresh perspectives on the earliest extant Scottish vernacular work, John Barbour's Bruce c. 1375. The introduction by Steve Boardman and Susan Foran situates the reader in the context of the chapters that follow by touching on a variety of topics, including a summary Barbour's life, his sources for the Bruce, some background on Robert Bruce himself, and a discussion of the dissemination of the work. On the whole, the volume offers a variety of new readings of a much-studied text.

The collection is bookended by two chapters concerned with the creation of the extant manuscripts. To open the collection, Emily Wingfield provides a thorough description of the two extant late fifteenth-century manuscripts and the early print editions. She also finds that the two extant manuscripts were the product of the same scribe, John Ramsay. Michael Brown's chapter complements Wingfield's essay by examining the political and social conditions in Fife during the period that the two extant manuscripts were copied. He argues that Fife had a unique political makeup at the end of the fifteenth century and that its lack of major magnates, coupled with increased ecclesiastical and crown interests in the region, created a community of minor local landowners with increased literary interests. These two essays move the conversation about the Bruce's consumption in Scotland during the Middle Ages beyond the royal courts and magnate environs. Along similar themes, Steve Boardman's chapter concerns itself with the political circumstances of the Bruce's initial composition. He suggests that the poem was in some ways a response to the ambivalence exhibited by the Scots in their relationship to the English during the late fourteenth century. This interest in contemporary contexts of both the composition of the Bruce itself and the extant manuscripts gives this volume much value for those interested in Barbour's external influences and the consumption of the text in later periods.

Past attempts to assign the Bruce a particular genre—whether romance, epic, history or otherwise—have never produced a definitive answer. Several essays in this volume address specific literary and stylistic influences evident within the poem. The volume extends the debate about classification of the Bruce beyond attempts to provide one specific categorization. Rhiannon Purdie assesses the extent to which the Bruce can be categorized as conforming to a particular genre and dissects some of Barbour's direct engagements with romance conventions to show that he employed these elements to improve his narrative. While Purdie argues that Barbour was most concerned with crafting a history, she suggests that he was by no means contemptuous of the storytelling methods offered by romance. While this essay focuses on the Bruce, it also adds nuance to ongoing debates about tensions between romance and history during the period in general. Theo van Heijnsbergen also explores Barbour's literary models in his chapter, examining Barbour's use of classical rhetoric to establish a textual community of Scottish readers in the opening sections of the Bruce. Biörn Tja¨llén's chapter also focuses an early part of the poem, addressing the largely ignored second half of Barbour's famous eulogy on freedom. Tja¨llén suggests that Barbour's attempt to educate a readership unfamiliar with the realties of thralldom reflects the depth of his engagement with classical sources concerned with the same issue. Since Barbour's past and educational background remains something of a mystery, these three fresh readings help to flesh out what is known about Barbour's literary influences.

Of course, no volume on Barbour's Bruce would be complete without some assessment of the poem's engagement with chivalry. One way that this theme manifests in the volume is in Chris Given-Wilson's attempt to situate the Bruce within the...