Castleford’s Chronicle or The Boke of Brut ed. by Caroline D. Eckhardt (review)

REVIEWS last chapter, "Modern Readers/Medieval Texts" (pp. 148-57), is slightly disappointing, probably because its title made us expect more than what is actually just a rather repetitive conclusion. My own conclusion highlights the importance of this interdisciplin­ ary contribution. It also congratulates the author and the editor for the correctness of the French quotations, names, etc., and even the reliabil­ ity in their use ofFrench accents. There are, however, a few slight errors or inconsistencies. Names starting with a first de/De are difficult to spell and to classify alphabetically. Those of Dutch/Flemish origin should in general be spelled with a capital D and appear under D, but since there are different practices, I would not object to a different system. Let me simply say that we find De Man, Paul, in the index, versus de Man, Paul, in the bibliography (yet under the letter D); Bruyne, Edgar de, in the index and bibliography (under the letter B) versus Bruyne in the text (his actual name is De Bruyne). Anthime Fourrier's book should read L'Hzmzanisme medieval dans !es litteratures romanes dti Xlle at1 XIVe siecle, and not rzzedievale (twice on p. 193). On p. 189, Terence Scully's edition ought to read "Le Cottrt d'Arzzottrs" de Mahiett le Poirier et la "Suite Anonyme de la Court d'Amours." Let me also suggest the addition of Bakhtin (cf. p. 182) to the index; and, to the bibliography, an edition (or translation) of Gerald of Wales's De rebus a se gestis-"a crucial text" (p. 168). It is often a bit mean to pinpoint such small details; given the exceptional neatness of the presentation, I hope that this very short list will rather show that it has almost reached editorial perfection. JULIETTE DOR Universite de Liege CAROLINE D. ECKHARDT, ed. Castleford's Chronicle or The Boke of Brue, vols. 1 (introduction and books 1 to 6) and 2 (books 7 to 12), Early English Text Society [EETS}, o.s., 305 and 306. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Pp. xvi and vii, 1065. $125.00. Castleford's Chronicle, as it is usually called (from the name written at the top of the opening folio, although this is not necessarily the name ofthe author), is "a long verse chronicle, written in a Northern English dia­ lect" and surviving in a single copy (from the fifteenth-century) in the 349 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER Niedersachsische Staats-und Universitatsbibliothek in Gottingen (vol. 1, p.xi).It belongs to "a broad family of medieval texts, widely distrib­ uted in Latin and French versions as well as in English, that recount the traditional history of the British Isles, attributing the early settlement of Britain to Brutus, a descendant of Aeneas" (1:xii).The text "follows the general contents of the other vernacular 'Brue' chronicles ...but it does not agree with any of them exactly" (1:xiii).It includes, for ex­ ample, "a strange version of the Norman Conquest in which Harold is said to marry William's sister Elaine" (1:xi), and appears to conflate Geoffrey, Duke of Brittany (son of Henry II), with his illegitimate half­ brother, Geoffrey, Archbishop of York (1:xiii). After a prologue ex­ plaining why Britain was originally named Albion, it "presents a series of legendary rulers-including Brutus, Lear, and Arthur-who reflect the construction of early British history established some two centuries earlier by Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia regum Britanniae ...then proceeds through the period of the Saxon and Norman conquests and continues into more recent times, closing with the events of the year 1327" (1:xii).The text ends "perhaps incomplete, with the deposition of Edward II and his imprisonment in Berkeley Castle," but makes no mention of his death (1:xiii). Excerpts from Castleford's Chronicle have been published before, but Eckhardt's edition (completing the work begun by Angus McIntosh in 1938 and continued by Frank Behre) gives us for the first time a printed text of the whole thing.The two volumes so far published contain the complete text (nearly 39,500 lines, in short rhyming couplets) preceded by a brief introduction; volume 3 will include the...