Dark Age naval power, a reassessment of Frankish and Anglo-Saxon naval activity (review)

152 Reviews Piers Plowman may be the great poem that A. V. C. Schmidt claims it is. While the argument is frequently complex, as one would expect given the text the writing is clear and quietly authoritative. The documentation from the poem, as well as of criticism and of contemporary sources and analogues, is very full and exact. The exposition is heavily into theology, but theology, Harwood makes one see, was not only the Middle Ages' strong point but Langland's also. Kevin Magarey Department of English (emeritus) University of Adelaide Haywood, John, Dark Age naval power, a reassessment of Frankish and AngloSaxon naval activity, London & N.Y., Routledge, 1991; cloth; pp. xii, 232; 5 maps, 11 ilustrations; R.R.P. AUS$135.00 [distributed in Australia by die Law Book Company]. This admirable book will be the definitive study of this topic for some time to come. A large range of sources make referencetopiracy and migration along the North Sea and Atlantic coasts in the late-Roman, sub-Roman and early medieval periods. That some of these sources are untranslated, and some only available in inconvenient nineteenth-century editions, probably accounts for why, as Haywood argues, maritime historians have neglected them in favour of archaeological evidence, in particular putting too much emphasis on spectacular, but unrepresentative, ship finds. It is indeed easy to agree with nearly every statement in Haywood's Introduction. He highlights correctly previous neglect of the maritime history of the Franks, the recent work of Ian W o o d being an exception, on account of a lack of maritime archaeological finds. He also contrasts tellingly the literary accounts of Anglo-Saxon seafaring with the rather limited purvue of ship finds; although, perhaps he could have noted that such imbalances of treatment are common in all aspects of Anglo-Saxon studies where the spectre of Sutton Hoo intrudes. His decision to accept most identifications of barbarian peoples in the sources at face value, unless there is clear cause for doubt, sets an important example in a subject where the long voyages undertaken by barbarian peoples have been treated with unreasonable disbelief by landlubberly commentators and the names of raiding groups 'corrected' accordingly. Haywood opts for a fresh approach on many topics. This is seen in his choice to deal only with warfare and migration, the primary sources for which have been largely neglected since A. R. Lewis's flawed study: The northern seas (1958). He has thus chosen not to deal with the study of commerce, with its larger secondary literature, though researchers in the latterfieldwould do well to follow Haywood's example with regard to the primary sources. Haywood also takes a fresh approach to particular questions such as whether the Saxons had Reviews 153 knowledge of the mast and sail,rightlyassuming that it is more logical to accept that they did, rather than, as is normal, that they did not. The figures on pages 18, 46, 92, 93, & 117 lack scales. That on p. 64 is unreadable. Apart from these minor points, this is an excellent book which is indispensible not only for those studying the early maritime history of northern Europe but also for anyone concerned with late-Roman and post-Roman naval and military history and the origins of the barbarian confederacies. Jonathan M.Wooding Department of History University of Sydney Hill, John M., Chaucerian belief: the poetics of reverence and delight, New Haven & London, Yale University Press, 1991; cloth; pp. xiv, 204; R.R.P. AUS$27.50. The best way to read this book might be to start at Chapter 4. It is a book I am glad to have read, but thefirstthree chapters are too hard. Hill can write with gusto, but certainly not 'lucidly and eloquently' as Traugott Lawler claims on the back cover. H e has unhappy tricks of style, including dangling modifiers, repeated locutions such as 'reverence and delight', compiled until they lose meaning, and Chaucerian words such as 'accord', 'assay', and 'affect' used in their medieval sense without inverted commas. H e piles up idiosyncratically used abstractions until some sentences lose control. Thefirstsentence on p. 22 has no main clause and the third occurrence of 'loss' in thefifthto...