Prophetic Song: The Psalms as Moral Discourse in Late Medieval England by Michael P. Kuczynski (review)

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER Mertens is asking for might be imagined as a rolling equivalent of the York Manuscripts Conferences, supervised by Anne Hudson. Lollard specialists might indeed benefit from acquainting themselves with this corpus, which forms such a fascinating contemporary counterpart to Lollardy: an attempt to revive the common life of the apostles, to revive the monastic spirit of the early Middle Ages, and to encourage brothers and sisters through the production of spiritual "testaments." Erik Kooper's volume, which contains a useful bibliography of transla­ tions and an excellent four-column chronology, instructively complements the (predominantly) English-based collaboration edited by Caroline Barron and Nigel Saul, England and the Low Countries in the Late Middle Ages (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1995). It certainly deepens the fascination of this shifting, densely populated bloc of European territories, native ground to anxieties and fantasies that will flower through Bosch and Brueghel and so inaugurate, some might say, the ego's era. DAVID WALLACE University of Pennsylvania MICHAEL P. KUCZYNSKI. Prophetic Song: The Psalms as Moral Discourse in Late Medieval England. Middle Ages Series. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995. Pp. xxx, 292. $36.95. This is a solid work of careful scholarship that makes an important, albeit limited, contribution both to our understanding of Psalmic reception and imitation in the later Middle Ages and, more generally, to our growing appreciation of the model character of biblical texts for medieval writers. As such, it takes us further down the exciting and challenging pathway pioneered by scholars like Beryl Smalley, A. J. Minnis, and Judson B. Allen. A hallmark of the book is Kuczynski's close attention to, and citation of, numerous works in manuscript and his appended editions of two previ­ ously unpublished Middle English texts, "The Direccioun of a Mannys Lyfe" (a treatise concerning temptation) and "The Remnant of My Thoughts" (a meditation on Psalm 75:11). The book also includes four illustrative plates taken from differet1t psalters, each of which Kuczynski 238 REVIEWS comments upon and incorporates into his larger discussion of the Psalmic "rhetoric of exegesis" (to echo a phrase he borrows from James O'Donnell). This rhetoric, as Kuczynski explains, involves both interpretation and imitation. Biblical interpreters (preeminent among them, Saint Augustine in his Enarrationes in Psalmos) conveyed to others their own "often emo­ tional readings of the Psalms" (p. xxiv) in the form of commentaries and homilies. This exegetical tendency to extend the language of the Psalms into one's own discourse was supported in the schools by a complementary grammatical and rhetorical tradition of biblical imitatio. As a result, Kuczynski argues convincingly, Middle English writers were moved by "an irresistible impulse to amplify, and (they hoped) thereby to clarify, the meaning of David's inspired poetry" (p. 217). That meaning, according to Kuczynski, was primarily the moral teach­ ing that derived from interpreting the Psalms not as autonomous lyrics but as prophetic utterances "caught up inextricably with the biography ofDa­ vid" (p. xx). As "both just King and murderer, Beatus vir and adulterer," David enjoyed a special status as "God's supreme prophet" (p. xxi), some­ times speaking in the persona of Christ, sometimes voicing the praise or penitential sighs of the Church. David's words could thus be appropriated by every Christian. As Kuczynski emphasizes, "Middle English authors introduce David most often as an exemplum of compunction or penitential humility, citing and commenting on the Psalms in order to induce a humble attitude in their readers" (p. 84). As a person whose personal sin and repentance had definite public consequences, David taught the Middle Ages the "essential relationship between the renewal of the individual soul and the reform of society itself" (p. xvii). Kuczynski therefore focuses in particular on how the language of the Psalms influenced "the shape of moral discourse in late medieval England" (p. xv) and provided Middle English moralists with a "language ofethics" (p. xvii) that was both public and private, personal and social, devotional and ideological. Dividing his study into three parts, Kuczynski first considers the Psalms as they were interpreted in the light of David's biography and prophetic status. Second, under the heading of "Psalm Discourse," he examines...