The Scottish Romance Tradition, c. 1375-c. 1550: Nation, Chivalry and Knighthood (review)

The Scottish Romance Tradition is an ambitious project and the first book-length study to bring together the quintessential Scots romance-epics of Barbour and Hary with the romances from other cycles, including the Arthurian. With the attention to detail expected in a book ultimately derived from his doctoral thesis, Mainer is able to discuss these works with reference to their source material, their context of production, their shared themes and concerns, and finally the evidence for their 'Scottishness.' Overall, it is an engaging and fascinating project.

Mainer begins with a preface outlining his definition of romance and placing Older Scots romance with reference to French, Anglo-Norman, and Middle English romance, all of which necessarily had a significant influence on the Scots practice. Of all of these, the influence of Middle English romance is perhaps the least treated in the rest of the work: Scots writers tend to use French material as sources, and Mainer considers their debts in useful detail, though their debt to Middle English form and language (particularly but not exclusively in the alliterative romances) is perhaps overlooked.

The Introduction presents a necessarily summary account of Scottish cultural history between 1375 and 1550. Such an account is essential to the later thematic discussions in the volume; it is also perhaps where the tensions of Mainer's time frame become most apparent, particularly around his inclusion of Lyndsay's Squyer Meldrum. This is a difficult text and one certainly worthy of more attention; however, in this context, it is about fifty years later than the latest of the other material discussed (written in the minority of Mary, Queen of Scots rather than that of her father) and without contemporary company. Had the book concentrated on late fourteenth- and fifteenth-century writing, it would have had a sharper focus.

Chapters 1 and 2 present thematic discussions of the corpus, the first on 'National Constructs in the Medieval Scottish Romances' and the second on 'The Hero's Progression.' Together these chapters outline what might be described as the 'Scottishness' of these texts. The first chapter looks at the more obvious question of national myth and identity, in which Bruce and Wallace play such a key part; Mainer's point is that issues of sovereignty in particular are frequent across the entire corpus of Scottish romance and that this is crucial for understanding its reception and function. 'The Hero's Progression' takes one aspect of this, the recurrent Scottish concern with kingship and good government, and explores it further. Mainer compares the practice of government in Bruce and Wallace with Golagros and Gawane, and Lancelot of the Laik with Gilbert Hay's prose as well as his Buik of King Alexander the Conqueror. These chapters add useful discussion to current critical thought on Older Scots literature, about its likely audiences and original circulation, and its subsequent reception, as well as its assumptions about government and sovereignty.

Chapters 3, 4, and 5 divide the corpus of Scots romance into three: those with domestic material (Bruce, Wallace, Squyer Meldrum), the Arthurian material (Golagros and Gawane, Lancelot of the Laik), and the Alexander and Charlemagne romances (Buik of King Alexander, Buik of King Alexander the Conqueror, Rauf Coilyear). Chapter 3 explores the ways in which Barbour sets the pattern for subsequent Scots work, and the ways in which Hary and Lyndsay combine Barbour's influence with other developments. Chapter 4 compares the Older Scots works with their French sources in some detail; this kind of work is often hard to do well, but Mainer succeeds in uncovering patterns for the Scots' divergence from their sources. Chapter 5 does the same for Alexander and Charlemagne: Rauf Coilyear is of course a parody, but Mainer indicates the ways in which the points of parody are reflected in more serious works, enabling him to speak convincingly of a 'Scottish romance...