Dunbar the Makar by Priscilla Bawcutt (review)

REVIEWS Similarly, in his treatment ofall italicized words in the Athlone editions, Alford explains their significance in reference to such diverse matters as alliteration, the assimilation ofloan words into fourteenth-century Middle English from Latin and French, and manuscript rubrication. In his brief but important consideration of the text, he reminds us of two important facts, namely, that, while the poet's own words survive in the fifty-two extant manuscripts of his poem, "the quotations can be checked against a vast body ofexternal evidence" and that Langland "wascapable ofmisquot­ ing as well as deliberately modifying his borrowings to fit new contexts" (p. 14). The second part of the introduction, "The Question of Sources," pro­ vides a summary of the provenance of Langland's scriptural and nonscrip­ tural quotations. Stressing that many of Langland's quotations, including those from the Bible, came from secondary sources, Alford introduces the possibility that much of the poet's learning came from florilegia, en­ cyclopedias, and commentaries and gives some specific examples of how many of the poem's quotations, especially the ones from Scripture, come from the Apocrypha, the liturgy, canon law, grammaticalmiscellanies, and theological works.Forthe poem'sreaders perhaps the most importantpoint concerning biblical quotations is one that Alford makes with great care: what appear to us to be inexact or inaccurate quotations are actually reflections of the instability of the medieval Latin text of the Bible in Langland's day. This is a book that will serve students ofPiersPlowman for years to come, especially those who seek to understand better its compelling nature and the genius ofits maker. To quote Alford'sclosing words to his introduction: "That Piers Plowman is more than the sum of its borrowings hardly needs stating. But no study ofthe poem-whether of its author, its audience, or its art-can afford to ignore them" (p. 30). GEORGE O. ECONOMOU University of Oklahoma PRISCILLA BAWCUTI. Dunbar the Makar. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992. Pp. xiii, 396. $95.00. Seventeen years ago Priscilla Bawcutt's Gavin Douglas: A Critical Study appeared, an impressive work of scholarship that at once summarized 155 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER much of what was known at that time about Douglas, put forth fresh and compelling arguments about one of the great Middle Scots makaris, and served (albeit for a relatively small number of enthusiastic scholars) as a necessary foundation for further study. Dunbarthe Makar, impressive in its own right despite a few disappointing limitations, does and will do much the same thing for readers of William Dunbar. Dunbar the Makar opens with a long introduction in which the author remarks on the poet's "many voices" and the immense variety of his poems, rightly admitting from the outset the difficulty of viewing his work as a coherent whole. This discontinuity, however, is too much replicated throughoutBawcutt'sbookitself,which is wide-ranging and compendious, sometimes frustratingly so. In the introduction alone the author moves from a summary of common approaches to Dunbar, to a consideration of biographical facts related to the makar, to a discussion of the Dunbar canon; she includes interesting remarks on the terms maker and ballat in Scots and English, dismisses firmly but tactfully portraits of Dunbar as either a "ScottishChaucerian" or a "ScottishLydgatian," and examineshow Dunbar appears to have viewed his own poetry. The treatment of these subjects, each touched on only briefly, is bolstered by Bawcutt's scholarly authority, but the concluding observation of this first chapter, "Again and again Dunbar defeats easy, simple formulations" (p. 38), while true, is unsatisfying. Chapter 2 focuses on "Dunbar's World," by which Bawcutt means "Dun­ bar's use of place, people, and time" (p. 39). Bawcutt examines representa­ tions of Edinburgh and Aberdeen in the poems, figures of Dunbar's "fellow-servitours," and time references in some of the poems, especially those related to holy days. After this chapter the book unexpectedly begins to be organized around the poems' various genres and modes. Chapter 3, "Court Poems: Praise and Petition," includes interesting comments about James IV and his court, as well as a very solid section on Dunbar's "begging­ poems." Chapter 4, "'Moralitee and Hoolynesse,"' presents a successful defense...