The Arthur of the Welsh: The Arthurian Legend in Medieval Welsh Literature ed. by Rachel Bromwich, A. O. H. Jarman, Brynley F. Roberts (review)

REVIEWS concern for moralization, the anxiety toward literary interpretation, the interest in correcting Chaucer's prosody-need to be taken into account to explain eighteenth-century modernization in theory and in practice. Such a theory might also explain why Chaucer's original finally seems more modern than do any of these more recent adaptations. This double-column edition is readable, though at sixty-three lines per column the type is admittedly small. Line numbers have been added, and parallel lines are noted parenthetically, though "parallel" is defined broadly. Footnotes appear sporadically. A brief biographical introduction precedes and textual information follows each modernization. ANNA BATIIGELLI State University of New York at Plattsburgh RACHEL BROMWICH, A. 0. H. JARMAN, and BRYNLEY E ROBERTS, eds. The Arthur ofthe Welsh: The Arthurian Legend in Medieval Welsh Literature. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1991. Pp. xiv, 310. $55.00. In 1959 Oxford University Press published Arthunan Literature in the Middle Ages: A Collaborative History, which soon became an essential book for all students of Arthurian literature. Comprising forty-one essays by thirty eminent scholars, it surveys the facts, documents, and specula­ tions concerning Arthurian material across Europe from its first appearance in written sources through the work of Malory. It is an immensely useful project, and references to ALMA have steadily appeared in the footnotes of Arthurian studies ever since. An especially valuable dimension of ALMA's contribution is the inclusion of a substantial group of essays on Arthurian material in Welsh. This undoubtedly reflects the interest of the editor, Roger Sherman Loomis, who had long sought to establish the origins of Arthurian themes and characters in the literary, historical, and mythologi­ cal traditions of the Celtic peoples, particularly the Welsh. It cannot be said that the essays by Welsh scholars in ALMA give strong support to Loomis's theories, but they do open a window onto the isolated field of Celtic studies and transmit to a wider world a large fund of specific information regarding the figure of Arthur in Welsh tradition. Here are, in early historical writings, glimpses of Arthur and his men in battle against 169 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER the Saxons centuries earlier, enigmatic references to lost stories about them in early Welsh poems and bardic lists, andcomplete Arthurian narratives in polished Welsh prose. In 1985 the Vinaver Memorial Trust of the British Branch of the Interna­ tional Arthurian Society decided to commission a series of volumes that would "supplement and revise" ALMA in the light of recent scholarship and thinking. The Arthur ofthe Welsh: The Arthurian Legend in Medieval Welsh Literature (henceforth AOW') is the first volume of that projected senes. Going well beyond simply reconsidering the Welsh essays in ALMA (chapters 1-8, 12, and 16), most of the essays in AOWare completely new work by different hands. Two of the original contributors to ALMA appear again: A. 0. H.Jarman has greatly expanded his earlier discussion of the legends and poems associated with the Welsh figure of Myrddin (Merlin), and Rachel Bromwich, whose earlier essay on the Welsh Triads unfortu­ nately has been dropped, has two new essays, one on the surviving Welsh fragments (disappointingly few and late) of the Tristan story and another on "First Transmission to England and France," especially valuable for its discussion of the personal names of Welsh, Cornish, and Breton origin that appear in the Latin and French Arthurian works of the twelfthcentury. In a field where hard evidence is difficult to find, that substantial body of names, she points out, "constitutes the most important and incontroverti­ ble evidence for the Celtic contribution to Arthurian romance." Two works of the Latin chronicle tradition that have always been impor­ tant to studies of Arthur are the ninth-century Historia Brittonum (long attributed to "Nennius"), which lists twelve victorious battles fought by Arthur against the Saxons, and the twelfth-century Histon'aRegum Bn'tan­ nz'ae, by Geoffrey of Monmouth, which presents a picture of the whole reign of Arthur so compelling that very little Arthurian material, Welsh included, was afterward untouched by its influence. Both works receive in AOWcareful discussion that reflects an interesting shift of attention away from gleaning historical evidence...