Four Middle English Mystery Cycles: Textual, Contextual, and Critical Interpretations by Martin Stevens (review)

REVIEWS the disorder created in the poem's world has also a positive effect: it becomes "the material for the creation offurther order, including the order of [the Gawain poet's] own art" (p. 190). In Purity, Spearing's application of concepts taken from modern social anthropology helps throw some new light on the poem's meaning. When applied by him to the tearing-of-the-pardon scene in Piers Plowman, modern literary theory proves to be less adequate. "The tearing of the pardon is an act that modern theory would call deconstructive, because it challenges the link between signifier and signified that constitutes the sign and thus makes possible what we habitually mean by meaning and under­ stand by understanding. . . . And the moment at which the sign itself is destroyed is the moment at which we glimpse a meaning beyond allegory and beyond language. Only that act ofdeconstruction makes possible the momentary release ofa meaning that escapes structure" (pp. 235-36). This is not the place to present and evaluate all the criticism trying to come to grips with this puzzling and deeply disturbing scene-Spearing does not do it either-yet one thing needs to be said: if what Spearing postulates were true, then the author ofthe C text was either no deconstructionist, or, and this seems to be more likely, he did not consider the tearing of the pardon the essential act of the pardon scene. In his preface Spearing proclaims that he has written a book intended not "primarily for scholars" (p. viii) but for a more general audience, though he hopes that his book contains things which will interest the former. I takethisas an invitation to practice thesamekindofeclecticism as the author who is always best when he produces a balanced close reading and makes judicious use ofmodern theory. For my part I enjoyed certain of the essays, even though I do not always share the author's views, but then unanimity of opinion would make literary criticism a very dull discipline. JOERG O. FICHTE Universitat Tiibingen MARTIN STEVENS. Four Middle English Mystery Cycles: Textual, Contex­ tual, and CriticalInterpretations. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univer­ sity Press, 1987. Pp. xv, 360. $44.00. FourMiddle English Mystery Cycles challenges our perception ofmedieval drama in general and our understanding of the Corpus Christi plays in 293 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER England in particular. Many studies of the last decade emphasize produc­ tion as an approach to the Corpus Christi plays. Stevens's book, however, asserts with considerable manuscript evidence and with carefully argued conclusions that the discontinuity between the very late dated manuscripts and records of performance makes such an analysis speculative at best. In the introduction, Stevens states that the cyclesdeserveto be read asself-standing andindividualworks ofliterature, that they must bestudiedin thecontextof themanuscriptsthat havetransmittedthem, and that the text must be seen as an entity separate from the cycle's performance history. [P. 3) While not every reader will agree with all of these very "literary" assump­ tions, the book, through its sympathetic and thoughtful treatment of the plays, provides analysis worthy ofconsideration by all students ofmedieval drama. The treatment ofthe York Corpus Christi play in chapter 1 is one ofthe highlights ofthebook, yet its approach goes beyond thenarrow limitsset in the introduction. Stevens characterizes the York cycle as "more nearly a communal experience than any other extant English cycle" (p. 17). In addition to reconstructing the social and economic contexts for a dramatic performance in York, he examines the York Register, which he concludes wasnever usedas a text in performance but asan "archival text" (p. 37). The mostsuccessful aspects ofthe chapter include its discussion ofthe regynalls and their relation to the York Register and the actual analysis of the cycle, which, according to the author, focuses on the "self-conscious concern of the York plays with the city itself" (p. 50). Seen in this context, the Skinners' pageant of Jesus's entry into Jerusalem is singled out as the microcosm ofthe entire cycle. Particularly illuminating is the discussion of the dramatic event and the mimetic aspect it shares with the Corpus Christi processional and the royal entry. Further emphasizing the processional character of the York cycle...