The Poetry of Praise (review)

This short but wide-ranging book has two main goals: first to remind readers of a literary mode, the encomiastic or epideictic, that played an important role in western culture through the Renaissance; and then to revisit various medieval English poems that illustrate this mode in operation, using its norms to question some modern critical readings that find irony or condemnation where Burrow believes praise is intended.

"Every poem and every poetic utterance is either blame or praise." Thus, the opening of Hermann the German's Latin translation of Averroes' Middle Commentary on Aristotle's Poetics. This work is important to chapter one, "The Poetics of Praise," which describes the evolution of the idea of discourse meant for praise or blame: its beginnings in classical rhetoric (epideictic oratory and the devices that achieve Aristotelian auxesis or magnification); its application to written genres in medieval arts of poetry, accessus, and commentaries; and (much more briefly) its continued survival in Renaissance theory. Hermann's first sentence is a touchstone throughout. Benvenuto da Imola's commentary on the Divine Comedy cites it and, as Burrow shows, uses the principle extensively as a critical tool for understanding Dante's poem. (For evidence of further medieval circulation of this sentence, see H. A. Kelly in Viator, 10 [1979], 161–209.) In the movement from classical oratory to medieval textual culture, writing to praise or to blame acquires pragmatic justification as a means of spurring readers to emulate what is praiseworthy or shun what is blameworthy. Burrow also points up the use of the mode for buildings and places as well as people.

Chapter two explores several uses of this mode in Old English literature. Cædmon's Hymn is an exemplary case of Anglo-Saxon auxesis, an entire poem celebrating God through a variety of laudatory epithets. The technique occurs in narrative as well, and Burrow notes the compatibility of formulaic composition with the rhetoric of superlativeness. His longest discussions concern The Battle of Maldon and Beowulf, particularly the critical debates over Byrhtnoth's ofermod and Beowulf's eagerness for lof. After reviewing opposing opinions on these well-known cruxes, he argues that even if the words in question convey some criticism, in neither poem is it sufficient to make ironic all the explicit praise of the heroes elsewhere. Heroic virtues remain heroic, and virtuous, even though they may lead to unfortunate consequences.

The chapter on Middle English alternates even more dramatically between a survey of instances of praise poetry (love lyrics, Marian lyrics, and portions of the Brut) and detailed exploration of critical controversies: the character of Arthur in the alliterative Morte Arthure, which Burrow thinks is not criticized other than in terms of common human sinfulness; the character of Alexander in The Wars of Alexander, where Dindimus's letters provide a serious critique of Alexander's way of life but not one integrated into the rest of the work; and the character of both the hero and his court in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, where Burrow finds less to criticize than some critics do, though he also argues that the poem explores its subtle moral territory only through deliberate qualification of the rhetoric of praise and blame.

The chapter devoted to Chaucer is similarly alert to the possibility of ironic or comic use of auxesis (e.g., the Merchant's mock-encomium on marriage, the parodic hyperbole describing Thopas) while maintaining that in general the poet uses this mode straightforwardly, especially in praising women such as Blanche, Alceste, and of course Mary. Burrow describes some features of Chaucer's auxetic style, particularly the prevalence of intensifiers like ful and wel, a technique that echoes the use of words like moult and maint in French love poetry he read. Chaucer's praise of the Knight and the Knight's of Theseus are seen as essentially unironic. In the most detailed discussions of character, Burrow argues that Troilus combines the roles of lover and warrior rather than subordinating his...