Sidrak and Bokkus: A parallel-text edition of Bodleian Library MS Laud Misc. 559 and British Library MS Lansdowne 793 ed. by T. L. Burton (review)

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER book’s contents—and are thus too broad to be of much utility, especially given that the four general categories specified in the volume’s introduction are themselves so broadly defined. Likewise, the annotated bibliographic entries that follow each chapter provide relevant materials for further reading on a given topic, yet here again redundancy hinders the overall usefulness of the lists, with familiar names and titles recurring under a variety of topic headings. Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, the alphabetical ordering can seem a mishmash—for instance, ‘‘Other Thought-worlds’’ and ‘‘Visualizing’’ reside alongside such familiar encyclopedic entries as ‘‘Chivalry’’ and ‘‘London’’—though the chapters’ considerable thematic overlap renders such titular distinctions almost irrelevant. Teachers and students will be well served by the wide range of topics given serious yet accessible treatment by this impressive gathering of scholars, but, unlike the more portable and less expensive companion texts—Piero Boitani and Jill Mann, eds., Cambridge Companion to Chaucer (1986); Beryl Rowland, ed., Companion to Chaucer Studies (rpt. 1990); Helen Cooper’s excellent Oxford Guides to Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales (1989)—this hefty volume will be more appropriate for the library than the classroom. Overall, the essays in this volume effectively achieve its stated aims. Serious first-time readers of Chaucer, as well as veterans looking to pursue new avenues of inquiry, will likely find this solid collection appealing . It offers much in the way of scholarship and guidance to students and teachers of Chaucer and late medieval culture. Catherine S. Cox University of Pittsburgh, Johnstown T. L. Burton, ed. Sidrak and Bokkus: A parallel-text edition of Bodleian Library MS Laud Misc. 559 and British Library MS Lansdowne 793. With the assistance of Frank Schaer, Bernadette Masters, Sabrina Flanagan, Robin Eaden, and Christopher Bright. 2 vols. Early English Text Society, o.s. 311 and 312. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998, 1999. Pp. xcv, 941. 4 plates. $200.00. Two things are required of editors: that they know the materials they edit thoroughly and have command of a sound methodology; and, 380 ................. 9680$$ CH16 11-01-10 12:37:01 PS REVIEWS equally important, that they understand the needs of the audience for whom the edition is intended. Burton’s edition scores high on both counts. With regard to the first, no person is better prepared to undertake an edition of Sidrak and Bokkus than Tom Burton. Burton began work on the poem in the 1970s, as part of his dissertation (University of Bristol, 1976), a diplomatic transcript of the poem in BL MS Lansdowne 793. His two-volume Early English Text Society edition thus marks the culmination of a career well-spent in dedicated labor—an edition resilient with years of accumulated wisdom. Approaching the work through its two best manuscripts, Burton elucidates two strands of transmission for the English text: 1) a longer text represented by Lansdowne 793 (12285 lines), and 2) a shorter version represented by Laud 559 (10934 lines). Both of these MSS are essentially complete and were produced in the latter third of the fifteenth century. Indeed, though its French originals are earlier, the English Sidrak typifies quintessentially fifteenth-century vernacular taste—a love of stories, but an even greater love of encyclopedic lore. A somewhat well-developed romance plot of 1010 lines frames the poem: its villains are deliciously evil while the hero is so righteous that he cannot be touched by their machinations. The heart of the poem, however, consists of 11275 lines of questions and answers that often seem more useful for polite conversation than practical application. The number of questions varies—415 in the base texts for Burton’s edition, but 847 in many French versions and up to 1165 in later ones. Sidrak and Bokkus was one of the most popular encyclopedias of knowledge of the later Middle Ages. Originating in France, perhaps as early as the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century, over the next century and a half it spread through translations to England, Italy, Germany and the Lowlands. There are eight known manuscripts of the English verse translation (in most, the text is fragmentary because of missing leaves), one English prose version, and three...