Preachers, Poets, and the Early English Lyric by Siegfried Wenzel (review)

REVIEWS SIEGFRIED WENZEL. Preachers, Poets, andthe Early English Lyric. Prince­ ton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986. Pp. xii, 272. $30.00. SiegfriedWenzel's most recent excursion through the province ofthe use of vernacular poetry in late-medieval preaching is thoroughly to be recom­ mended,and theroutehe takes willproveparticularly invitingtohistorians of the Middle English lyric. His first chapter broaches the subjects to be subsequentlytreatedandproposesa simplebasicthesis: inmanyinstances, "the early English lyric was closely related to preaching." This is the uncontentious skeleton that the remaining seven chapters endeavor to put flesh upon. When he distinguishes six types of manuscripst that contain lyrics and have some connection with preaching, he shows himself to be grappling with sometimes reluctant categories (as the dwindling distinc­ tion between his "preachers' notebooks" and "miscellanies" reveals), al­ though he does so bravely. Such zest for classification persists in other chapters.Wenzel ably exposes some of the critical misapprehensions about the nature of certain Middle English lyrics: that sometimes they should be perceived not as homoge­ neous poems (though they are often printed as if they were) but rather as verses which serve toidentifyand announce a sermon's structural parts and that as such they may be split up and distributedover a quantity ofsermon prose. He considers whether lyricsinsermons wereeversung andshowshow scarce is the evidence for believing so. Chapter 2 looks at the medieval Latin hymn tradition andfor its point of departure comments in detail on the verbal artistry of the hymn "Ave praeclara maris stella," composed by the eleventh-century writer Hermann of Reichenau; Wenzel's lavish attention to a hymn that has no apparent consequence whatsoever on the Middle English lyric is, however, rather curious. He moves on to consider vernacular translations and imitations of theLatin hymns "AngelusadVirginem" and "Stabat iuxta Christi crucem," comparing and contrasting the style of the vernacular poems with that of their Latin models. The poem "Stond Wel, Moder, Vnder Rode," which is not known to derive from any extant Latin or French original, is next discussed, and its quotation in a sermon in British Library manuscript Royal 8.F.11, illustrated. "Stond Wel, Moder" is described somewhat dis­ paragingly as an "expandable" lyric, one whose flaccid structure ("the speeches do not reallygo anywhere," p. 52) can make room for any amount ofpadding. "Nv Yh She Blostme Sprynge," on the other hand, is judged not guilty of such aimlessness and compared to the "Ave praeclara maris stella" in the degree of its literary merit. 205 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER The third chapter describes the context in which preaching verses nor­ mally feature, the "scholastic" sermon. Here they may render the sermon theme and sermon division, as well as provide proof texts, message and memory verses, and prayers. Wenzel considers the Englishing of sermon divisions too hidebound ever to achieve any son of poetic vitality, whereas verse free of such constraints may begin to breathe. This point is obvious enough, butWenzel goes on to suggestplausibly that the demand made on a preacher for verse for his sermon divisions, poetically dead though his final product often was, would nevertheless have encouraged his capacity to versify and thusmay have served him ingood stead for writing poems in less confined circumstances. The middle chapters provide a useful study of the preaching handbook of FriarJohn of Grimestone, an unusual manuscript distinguished by the sheer quantity of its English verse (in this respect it far outstrips its nearest competitors, like the collection in British Library manuscript Harley 7322). The arrangement of the handbook is described, and its lyrics are classifed as adaptations, expansions, translations, or "free creations." Wenzel then asks whether all the poems are Grimestone's own composition and answers that they are not (an answerwhich comes a little oddly here since up to this point in the chapter they have been spoken of as if they might be) but that "in all likelihood" the poems unique to the handbook may be by Grimestone himself. Classification is exalted once more as Wenzel methodically labels the poems according to the mode they adopt; some are prayers, others give information, others exhort or warn, while yet others are affective. The relative occurrence of these respective modes is boiled...