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  • “Sir Bevis of Hampton” in Literary Tradition
  • Rosalind Field
Jennifer Fellows and Ivana Djordjević, eds. “Sir Bevis of Hampton” in Literary Tradition. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2008. Pp. xii, 207. £50.00; $95.00.

Sir Bevis of Hampton is a familiar presence in romance studies, acting since Sir Thopas as a representative Middle English romance. It is also, [End Page 334] as this new collection makes clear, one of the most enigmatic, problematic, and difficult to place whether textually or ideologically. The geographical and chronological expanse of the Bevis story outlined in the introduction to this volume is remarkable: from the eleventh to the nineteenth centuries, from its earliest appearances in Anglo-Norman and Middle English through French and Italian to Yiddish and Russian, with traces in folklore and oral tradition. The title of this collection establishes that it is concerned with the literary tradition, but it is also the case that apart from one welcome discussion of the Old Norse version, this book is confined to the British Isles—to the Bevis known to readers of Anglo-Norman, English, Welsh, and Irish.

The Anglo-Norman Boeve de Haumtone is the subject of the first two papers. Marianne Ailes examines the question of genre surrounding a “romance” written in chanson de geste form. From the perspective of Continental tradition, Boeve is a characteristically insular development combining chanson discourse with the scholarly rhetoric of the schools. It is useful to be reminded at the start that this apparently direct narrative is a carefully constructed literary artifact. Judith Weiss focuses on Boeve's mentor Sabaoth, who departs in several vital ways from similar figures in other insular romances, and indeed in contemporary society. Her conclusion, that Sabaoth is a figure whose role and name evoke the pre-Conquest past and link the D’Albini family with English history, gives a new weight to the reading of Boeve as foundational history.

The other languages of insular literature give the Welsh and Irish prose Bevis narratives considered by Erich Poppe and Regine Recke. The thirteenth-century Welsh Bown does not depart from the plot or narrative intention of its Anglo-Norman original, but does adapt its style to native convention. As with the fifteenth-century Irish reworking of the Middle English Bevis, this means the excising of the narratorial presence that features so strongly in the earlier versions. The Irish redactor, probably Uilliam Mac an Leagha, adopts the florid Irish style and this later version does modernize some of the material dealing with honor and morality. The Old Norse Bevers saga, studied by Christopher Sanders, survives in eighteen copies. He argues for a clerical author producing a narrative of historical prose, less fictional and less humorous than its Anglo-Norman source. In line with later developments in English, it is also more emphatically Christian and anti-Islamic. Ivana Djordjević provides a close examination of the translation of formulae from Anglo-Norman to Middle English and the often unconventional, [End Page 335] even playful, use the translator makes of a common generic repertoire. These three contributions, drawing on expertise across five languages and underpinned by reference to translation theory, provide valuable material for the ongoing study of the freedoms and strategies of medieval translation.

The second part of the volume, dealing with the English-language versions of Bevis, begins with a clear exposition by Jennifer Fellows of the complex interrelation of the manuscript and printed versions from the fourteenth century to the eighteenth. The Auchinleck manuscript does not deserve the authority it is often given, as she demonstrates from analysis of the clear traces of Boeve or the original Middle English to be found in later manuscripts and the printed tradition. The English versions position Bevis as Christian hero, even martyr, drawing on the Saint George legend, while at the same time developing Josiane as a strong romance heroine. An appendix to this chapter provides a detailed descriptive list of the surviving manuscripts and printed editions from the 1330s to 1711.

The chronological range of the reworkings of Bevis causes tensions and inconsistencies that provide a common theme for the following essays. Robert Rouse analyzes the conflicting identities that make up the figure...

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