The Union of Words and Music in Medieval Poetry ed. by Rebecca A. Baltzer, Thomas Cable, James I. Wimsatt (review)

REVIEWS defining the other in medieval society. But she goes on to show how Christ's body throughout the play is manipulated so that in the end all outsiders will be included as insiders. In doing so theater and liturgy were intimately combined, and the Corpus Christi procession at the end of the play incorporated the audience. Lee Patterson's essay on SirJohn Clanvowe and The Book ofCupide points to the "self-fabrication" that was characteristic of the courtier and court literature. The courtier and the writer for the court set themselves apart in dress, behavior, and literary style. Employing the lyric (the courtly style) and the typical dialogue over love between the male and female, Clanvowe uses the character of the cuckoo to criticize Richard II's court. Patterson's goal in his essay goes beyond Clanvowe's poem and the posturing ofcourt­ iers, however. He finds in court writing a breadth of concern and interpre­ tation that turns it into literature. Thus the Tudor poets and Milton, who greatly admired The Book ofCupide, represent a continuity of the medieval court writers. The crossing of boundaries, the ones imposed both by master narratives and by the disciplines of history and literature, makes this collection of essays outstanding. The authors and the editor have assembled a collection that will help shape our perception of the late Middle Ages. BARBARA A. HANAWALT University of Minnesota REBECCA A. BALTZER, THOMAS CABLE, and JAMES I. WIMSATT, eds. The Union ofWords and Music in Medieval Poetry. Austin: University ofTexas Press, 1991. Pp. vii, 157. $40.00. It seems somewhat ironic that the title of the work under review, which immediately draws the reader's attention to the concept of "union," has been applied to a collection of five essays that could hardly be more diverse in subject and approach. This often turns out to be the case with publica­ tions that originated in a symposium, here, one that was held at the Uni­ versity ofTexas in 1987. It.is to their credit that coeditors James I. Wim­ satt and Thomas Cable address this matter squarely in their introductory remarks to the collection. The reader must bear in mind the genesis of the material to be considered, for "In the beginning poetry and music formed 145 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER one art: Homer was sung, Beowulfwas sung, the Proven�al lyric was sung." Wimsatt and Cable voice the further assurance that, "despite the diversity, there is a binding principle that derives from the essential unity of the subject and ties all the essays together" (p. 1). The Introduction also does an excellent job oftying all the essays together. Its authors sift through the "diversity" and thus direct the reader toward some appreciation of the essays as a group. Coeditor Rebecca A. Baltzer's "Notes on the Accompany­ ing Tape by Sequentia," at the end ofthe volume, provide further guidance by describing the thirteen selections on cassette that serve as "musical illustrations" of the works studied by the five contributors. The table ofcontents reflects an ordering from essays on earlier material to essays on later material. Leo Treitler's "The Troubadours Singing Their Poems" and Thomas Cable's "The Meter and Musical Implications of Old English Poetry" thus precede the essays on Old and Middle French poetry and Chaucer. Taking my cue from Machaut's rondeau "Ma fin est moo commencement," I shall approach this collection by making its end my beginning. Much is to be admired in the final essays of the book: James I. Wimsatt's "Chaucer and Deschamps' 'Natural Music'" and Lawrence Earp's "Lyrics for Reading and Lyrics for Singing in Late Medieval France." Steven Guthrie's "Meter and Performance in Machaut and Chaucer" con­ nects well with these, dealing with the same general period and repertory. Wimsatt uses the concept of "natural music" defined in Eustache Des­ champs's late-fourteenth-century Art de Dictier (i.e., "paroules metrifiees") as point ofdeparture to comparing Machaut's ballade "Tout ensement" and part of one of the English lyric poems in Harley Manuscript 2253, "The Fair Maid of Ribblesdale." In so doing, he demonstrates that "the two types of poetry operate...