The Perfect Age of Man's Life (review)

Reviews 119 out their meaning but no doubt this is what will give the editors their greatest satisfaction. Hilary Carey Department of History University of Sydney Dove, M., The Perfect Age of Man's Life , Cambridge; C.U.P., 1986; pp.xix, 175. Mary Dove's book is one of three in much the samefieldto have appeared in 1986. The others are by Elizabeth Sears, The Ages of Man: Medieval Interpretations of the Life Cycle . (Princeton, Princeton University Press) and J. A. Bin-row, The Ages of Man: A Study of Medieval Writing and Thought (Oxford, Clarendon Press). Inevitably there is some overlap amongst the three. This is the case particularly in regard to discussion of earlier sources for schematic understandings of the human life cycle, and to some extent in regard to the medievd manifestations of those ideas chosen for consideration. Each book, however, has aratherdifferent focus from the others. Sears writes a history of ideas, using primary materids (especidly in the visud arts)tochart the passage of these schematic understandings through the Middle Ages. Bunow works in the opposite direction to explicate narrative literature in the light of such understandings. Dove probably has more in common with Burrow. Indeed, his Ricardian Poetry (1971) was evidently an important stimdus for her early thoughts. However, she focuses on one particular topic, medievd ideas about the 'perfect age', and the sigmficance of these for key passages in the writings of the four principd Ricardian poets: Langland, Gower, the Gawain-poeU and Chaucer. The tradition of the ages of man is expressed in schemes which divide the human life cycle into three, four, or seven periods. All schemes show man moving towards death and some developments of the tradition can be seen as responses to the implicit memento mori. One response was to praise middle age as the age of maturity. Middle age was considered superior, not only to old age, with its decline towards death, but also to youth, with its immaturity. Another response was to advance the concept of the perfect age. This might be thought of in physicd terms as coinciding with middle age, or in spiritud terms as indicating a state of inner maturity which the Christian might strive to attdn in any period of life. The Ricardian poets explored possible implications of these concepts in the course of their narratives of internalized aventure, where the quest is for the truth 120 Reviews about man. In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, to take one such narrative, the age terms have been amongst the most difficult features of the text to interpret Following consideration of the overall use of age terms in the late fourteenth century, Dove argues that the description of Arthur's court as being in the 'first age' places it at the early end of youth, the period otherwise known as adolescentia . But neither this description of the court, nor that of Arthur himself as 'sumquat childgered' is derogatory, as critics have sometimes cldmed: the court is an ided court, it is simply experiencing an actud stage of life. G a w d n is still young, like spring, when he arrives in Bertilak's castle, but the inner man is aging by the end of the poem, as G a w d n accuses himself of sins associated with old age. Bertilak, described as being of 'hyghe eldee' and 'olde', is seen above all as ambiguous and thought-provoking, associated varyingly with middle age and old age. The poem at large is seen as susceptible to interpretation as a 'game of the ages', and more of its detail is considered in this light In a briefer discussion, B u n o w reaches similar conclusions about Arthur's court and Gawdn, but he resolves the question of Bertilak's age by placing him wholly in middle age. The flurry of activity in this area of scholarship has brought forward a wedth of fascinating materid. Dove's book in particular is at least as chdlenging as it is informative: it should enlighten and rouse readers of the Ricardian masterpieces and it should launch similar investigations into medievd writing from other contexts. Diane Speed Department of...