Barlam and Iosaphat: A Middle English Life of Buddha ed. by John C. Hirsh (review)

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER tional effect and connect the known secular world to that of the spirit by seeking to discover one in the other. The extent to which devotional works are identifiably feminist has yet to be determined, but constancy of purpose, dedication to certain profoundly Christian forms, and perseverance in doubt and in adversity, though not gender-specific, are attitudes which may reasonably be assigned to the readers of psalters, books of hours, and prayerbooks. The kinds of percep­ tions these compendia at once assumed and taught seem to me relevant to works like this one, with its concern for bonding (the woman narrator is addressed by the spirit of one "Margaret" and prays with her daughter to Mary), compassion (except, alas, for Muslims and Jews), and effective action (through Mary) to alleviate sin and suffering. The devotional aspect of the work is thus complex but resides in a view of life which both accepts and rejects a radical disjunction between the sacred and the secular, understanding that God may be manifest not only in beauty but also in pain. This is not a modern attitude, insisting as it does that even suffering may have value and meaning, but it is a finally human one and can help explain both the contemporary interest in texts like this one and the fascination with pain, both Christ's and humankind's, which appears in many late-medieval devotions. JOHN C. HIRSH Georgetown University JOHN C. HIRSH, ed. Bar/am and Iosaphat: A Middle English Life of Buddha. Edited from MS Peterhouse 257. Early English Text Society, vol. 290. London, New York, and Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1986. Pp. xl, 224. .£13, $32.00. In his edition of the Middle English prose text found in Cambridge University Library MS Peterhouse 257, John Hirsh helps illuminate a work that offers much of interest to scholars of late-medieval English literature. Bar/am andIosaphat translates the most nearly complete Latin version of a tale that originated in a life of Buddha but was Christianized in a Georgian version before passing through Greek into the West. Vernacular versions of the tale appeared across Europe in the late Middle Ages, and shorter versions entered English through incorporation in the Golden Legend, the South English Legendary, and the Northern Homily Cycle. 154 REVIEWS Since the editor presents the tale as entirely recast in its Greek version and acknowledges the distance between his text and known lives of Bud­ dha, the subtitle seems misleading; but Hirsh wishes to emphasize the contributions of traces of the tale's Buddhist and Manichaean origin, which, he argues, "remain in the text like granite, influencing and inform­ ing its meaning" (p. xxviii). The tension between the tale's origins and recasting might therefore deserve further elaboration, particularly in the commentary notes. Hirsh's introduction offers a detailed and well-documented discussion of the tale's movement from East to West. His extended discussion of the organization of the Middle English text illustrates its sophistication as instruction on the meaning ofascetic life and illustration ofthe theme that "the wisdom ofGod is the foolishness ofman" (p. xxx). Having established Bar/am and losaphat's complex heritage and artistic significance, Hirsh might have briefly explored its literary and theological contexts so as to establish the text's links with its most immediate milieu. While Hirsh correctly argues that full appreciation ofthe relationship ofthe English text to its Latin source must await an edition of the Latin, the allusions in the introduction, commentary notes, and appendices to parallels with works by Gower and Lydgate, with the W ycliffite Bible, and with English moral­ ity plays suggest that much might be gained from greater consideration of this text in relation to the spiritual literature of the period. There are other specific problems with the introduction. On pp. xiii and xiv, Hirsh seems to confuse the manuscript from which the translator worked with the version(s) of the Latin source available. Hirsh also states that the language ofthe translation was "typical and conservative Southern Midland and London English ofthe mid-fifteenth century" (p. xi), but he does not cite the evidence for this assessment. It...