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104 LETTERS IN CANADA 1987 Those who want all the instances of a common word are referred to the Concordance, except in the case ofwords with fewer than twelve instances; but the sampling of citations for other words (such as dc£d, which, we are informed, has circa 1200 instances) includes a good many more fully quoted citations for every sense and sub-sense than can be found in B-T. Other virtues of the DOE include outlines of all senses and sub-senses at the beginning of the entry for a word with many shades of meaning and special uses (such as dc£g) and information about grammatical forms given at the beginning of the entry rather than embedded in the citations as in B-T. The editors urge readers to report their 'constructive criticism,' and we can trust that those who note shortcomings will do so. Some readers will surely complain that line-references had to be 'to the start of the sentence· in which the headword is found, not the precise line number in which the headword occurs,' but since we have been alerted to this fact we can surely live with it. The omission of etymologies will be regretted by some readers, as will, perhaps, the omission of all personal and place names. In general, however, all thatis wrong with'd' is that itleaves me feeling like Oliver Twist. Please, sir, I want some more. (CONSTANCE B. HIEATT) Ross G. Arthur. Medieval Sign Theory and 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight' University of Toronto Press. 182. $25.00 In this useful and informative study, Ross Arthur has brought the distinctions of medieval logic to bear on the three crucial 'signs' of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Arthur argues that critics have been only partially successful in establishing unequivocal 'referents' for the pentangle , girdle, and Gawain's neck-wound because the Gawain-poet had a more subtle notion, which was informed by elementary logic texts, of the relation between a sign and its referent. Medieval commentaries on Aristotle's Peri Hermeneias as well as Augustine's De Magistro and De Doctrina Christiana (the latter, perhaps, more· properly belongs to the study of rhetoric) present highly sophisticated analyses of verbal signs which invite one to consider these signs from various perspectives: in addition to significatio, these texts consider the institution of a sign, its range of possible meanings, and its restricted meaning (suppositio) in a particular context or 'proposition.' Arthur believes that the distinction between significatio and suppositio is particularly useful in understanding the Gawain-poet's manipulation of symbols: 'the poet uses ... the pentangle and the green girdle not only as static labels for timeless universal referents (significatio) but also as elements in "propositions," which make assertions that must therefore be examined for their truth-value' (13). HUMANITIES 105 In his analysis, Arthur elaborates and refines John Burrow's distinction between the pentangle as a signum naturale and the girdle as a signum ad placitum. Adducing evidence from various medieval sources (including school texts such as Boethius's De Arithmetica and late medieval heraldic treatises), Arthur follows previous critics of the poem in viewing the pentangle as a received sign ofdivine trawp, buthe contends that this sign (which is best compared to 'physically endless objects signifying a temporally endless quality' [33-41], such as representations of the Trinity) should not be identified unequivocally with Gawain, for Gawain only possesses the sign secundum quid. As a man, he is entitled to carry a sign attributed to God only as long as he remains in a state of grace, a state from which he falls when he accepts the girdle. As Arthur notes, it is difficult to find an exact signification for the girdle, but Arthur helpfully directs our attention away from the absolute value of this sign and towards Gawain's attempt to interpret its meaning: Gawain seeks to institute the girdle as a sign of his untrawp, but his sign-making is flawed and unreliable, for in his intemperate self-condemnation he has lost sight of man's opportunity for repentance and forgiveness. In contrast to these bipolar opposites of trawp and untrawp (which properly belong...

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