The Centre and Its Compass: Studies in Medieval Literature in Honor of Professor John Leyerle ed. by Robert A. Taylor, et al. (review)

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER ROBERT A. TAYLOR, JAMES F. BURKE, PATRICIA J. EBERLE, IAN LAN­ CASHIRE, and BRIAN S. MERRILEES, eds. The Centre and Its Compass: Studies in Medieval Literature in Honor ofProfessorJohn Leyerle. Studies in Medieval Culture, vol. 33. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Western Michigan Uni­ versity, Medieval Institute Publications, 1993. Pp. xii, 474. $20.00 paper. This collection of seventeen essays was offered in celebration of John Leyerle's sixty-fifth birthday, and in both its scope and its title (a quotation from one ofLeyerle's articles) demonstrates the fruit ofhis energetic teach­ ing and promotion ofinterdisciplinary medieval studies. Following a short biographical preface by Brian Merrilees are studies which range over latin biblical and liturgical manuscripts, medieval and Renaissance theater, and texts in latin and many European vernaculars. One oftheir most notable shared features is a respect for the common scholarly profit to which indi­ vidual projects can contribute: some essays signal subjects and areas which merit further study; others offer methods and programs for adaptation and modification; a few even entice readers into correspondence with the offer ofvideos or computer databases. Overall, they convey an invigorating sense of informed and productive research in progress. The essays are arranged alphabetically by author but fall into certain roughly definable subject groups. Those concerned with manuscripts in­ clude a substantial survey by Andrew Hughes, "The Scribe and the Late­ Medieval Liturgical Manuscript: Page Layout and Order ofWork," which suggests guidelines for distinguishing different kinds of liturgical books and calls for more comprehensive tabulation ofevidence to facilitate such categorization. Leonard E. Boyle, O.P., scrutinizes the tonic marks and advice on pronunciation in a treatise ascribed to Grosseteste called Correc­ torium tocius biblie; his call is for the recording ofsuch markings in manu­ script descriptions and catalogues to indicate the extent of public perfor­ mance awarded to certain texts. Possibilities for future research into the textual tradition ofThe Battle ofMa/don are opened by Fred C. Robinson's report on fragments ofa newly studied transcription, probably made from the burned Cotton manuscript which formed the basis of the earliest printed edition. Among the multidisciplinary and comparative contribu­ tions are essays by A. G. Rigg, who investigates the fourteenth-century English propagandist circulation ofLatin texts preserving the legend ofthe supposedly lowly origins of Hugh Capet; Robert A. Taylor, on "Bar­ abarolexis Revisited: The Poetic Use ofHybrid Language in Old Occitan/ 268 REVIEWS Old French Lyric"; and from David N. Klausner, who compares "The Topos of the Beasts of Battle in Early Welsh Poetry" with approximately analogous examples in Anglo-Saxon and early Scandinavian literature. Essays on the subject ofmedieval theater range from close textual studies to analyses of the localities and social organizations which fostered certain texts or traditions of performance. Alexandra F. Johnston locates patterns and emphases in the York plays which reveal their sophisticated realization of the Augustinian paradox of Christ as silent logos, while James F. Burke traces in the taurine symbolism ofLope de Vega's seventeenth-century play Peribafiez the survival of an ancient ritual process for controlling the inte­ gration of young men into the community. John Cartwright surveys the texts and documents ofa volume commemorating the Antwerp Landjuweel of 1561, an opportunity for local chambers of rhetoric to debate a pre­ scribed question, and Anne Lancashire takes a new look at records asso­ ciated with the London Drapers' Company before 1558 to assess the level and nature of members' involvement in dramatic performances. Chaucer scholars will find much that is suggestive, not always explicitly in relation to Middle English, in the contributions which address French texts. Frames of reference and terminology appropriate to discussing narra­ tors, for example, are considered in David Staines's account of the romances of Chretien de Troyes. Basing his study primarily on the prologues, Staines distinguishes different kinds of narrating voice or "literary self" and probes the gradually diminishing number of "first-person appearances" over the course of the five romances. Intertextual rewriting in Froissart's Prison amoureuse is the subject of a perceptive and witty study by Laurence de Looze which illuminates several features of Chaucer's dream poems: their complex interweaving ofthe crafts ofpoetry and oflove; their concern...