The Matter of Araby in Medieval England by Dorothee Metlitzki (review)

REVIEWS Chapter 5 considers the Passion theme in Rolle's other writings, including the Passion lyrics. Here, banalities such as 'Each stanza consists of four lines of either six or seven stresses with a marked mid-caesura ...' and unfortunate notions such as 'the intermingling and then shift from the staccato vigor ofthe b's and d's to the more restful l's and m's in the final descriptive stanza ... ' are horribly reminiscent of juvenile exercises which every teacher prays he may be spared (but the book was originally a doctoraldissertation presentedat St.Louis Univer­ sity and evidently still bears some of the marks of this form). Finally, appendices include a transcript ofMS.Cotton Titus C XIX ofthe Meditations (could not the ms abbreviations have been expanded?) and an examination oftheir authorship: I cannot see how dialect could be a test of authenticity here, in view of scribal copying. A substantial bibliography concludes the book. In conclusion, although nothing especially original emerges, this is a well-researched and copiously documented (perhaps sometimes over­ documented) account of Rolle's treatment of a theme which dominated the spiritual life of the Middle Ages. MARTYN f.WAKELIN Royal Holloway College, University of London DOROTHEE METLITZKI, The Matter of Araby in Medieval England. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1977. Pp. xi, 320. $15. In this rich and wide-ranging compendium there is much ofinterest and value to Chaucerians."The matter ofAraby" is an authentic medie­ val code expression, as is also "Saracen," for the chiefother that from the eleventh century on provided comparison, contrast, difference to the established culture which, after the Dark Ages, European Latin Chris­ tendom had forged out ofits inheritance from antiquity.It embraces the physical conflicts and confrontations of the Crusades. Its geography includes, largely, the outside world as known to, conceived of in, and imagined by the Latin west-places as far away as the far reaches ofAsia: Samarakand and Mecca, Egypt, northern Africa; as near as the Muslim kingdom of Sicily and Islamic Spain.Its contributions to that culture include matters as practical and mundane as arabic numerals and the 181 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER abacus. It advocated the study of Aristotle, many of whose works it had preserved and now introduced into the West; it insisted on reliance upon experience and experiment. It re-interpreted Hellenistic philosophy and science, already the heritage of that culture from its Romano-Christian past. It introduced alchemy and a new astronomy with the astrolabe and the almagest. It provided new themes, forms, and subject-matter for imaginative literature. To her task of detailing the ways in which the reality of Islam manifested itself in the life and literature of medieval England Professor Metlitzki brings enormous energy and verve, a remarkable facility in languages, and thorough proficiency in the scholarship dealing with the history and literatures of Islamic civilization. The story begins with Adelard of Bath's sojourn of several years' duration in Sicily and the Levant early in the twelfth century and his return to England about 1120 to translate from Arabic into Latin an astronomical text and, for the rest of his life, purvey his enthusiasm for Arabum studia by continued transla­ tion and by polemical admonitions to his own nephew as well as to the nephew of the king, the future Henry II, Arabum sententias super spera et circulis stellarumque motibus intelligere. It is basic to the learning displayed in, as to the charm and not infrequent excitement of Ms. Metlitzki's book that she detects in the form of Adelard's effusions to his own and the king's nephews the influence of an Arabian text written by Hunian ibn Ishaq of the ninth century. One wonders whether Adelard might have been introduced to the text by his teacher of Arabic in Tarsus. This is not to say that Professor Metlitzki indulges in fanciful speculation. She has done her homework thoroughly and is tentative and sober-sided in advancing ideas upon matters for which her investigations appear to warrant a modification of the received opinion. To return to our story as Professor Metlitzki unfolds it: during the years of Adelard's absence from...