Rewriting Resemblance in Medieval French Romance: Ceci n'est pas un graal (review)

292 Short Notices Rockwell, Paul Vincent, Rewriting Resemblance in Medieval French Romance: Ceci n'est pas un graal (Garland Studies in Medieval Literature 13), N e w York and London, Garland, 1996; board; pp. xvi, 245; R.R.P. US$50.00. 'Resemblance' for the purposes of this book has been defined in the opening chapter as playing 'an important role in the elaboration of such fundamental concepts as representation, truth-value, meaning, perception, and understanding' (p. 3). The central hypothesis of the book is stated a page later: 'that through the rewriting that was imposed by thirteenth-century writers on the romances of the previous century, the notion of resemblance itself was rewritten and as a consequence redefined'. Early discussion focuses on the nature of likeness as i t is presented in a variety of texts. There are three particular features which mar the exploration of this interesting subject. The first is a tendency to 'rewrite' other critics and in particular Douglas Kelly. Rockwell's account of the result of Kelly's examination of the 'vocabulary describing both poetic and historical composition in vernacular texts' (p. 13), is almost the opposite of that which Kelly states. Rather than the 'framework for conceptualising narrative' similar to that in the Latin rhetorical treatises, claimed by Rockwell, Kelly says: Representative kinds of amplification and abbreviation do recur in romance, [but] the catalogues of tropes and figures that demonstrate this are of dubious value.[...] This is because the close relation between the topical intention and a specific device used for amplification or abbreviation is lost w h e n the latter is divorced from its narrative place and purpose. The language of the book unfortunately does not emulate the clarity of Kelly's and displays a tendency to overwrite, as the following examples show: 'The metaphor of "rewriting" . . . becomes problematic when invoked as guarantee of the genealogy of a specific intertextual echo' (p. 14); ' i t behooves us to consider' (p. 16), and as for Chretien, involved in 'rewriting' the Arthurian past, his jointure has been 'reinscribed and 'refigured' (p. 90). The overuse of the prefix 're-' Short Notices 293 becomes progressively more irritating. Finally, there are the needlessly cryptic subtitles. Chapter T w o in Part I, T w i n Mysteries: Ceci n'est pas un Fresne', is an interesting comparison between Marie de France's lai, Le Fresne, and the later romance, Galeran de Bretagne, but it doesn't need the subtitle. The subtitles in Part II reveal the evolution ofthe term 'rains' from the branch of the Forbidden Tree of Paradise which, planted in the world by Eve, becomes the Tree of Life, to the golden bough which allows forgetfulness in the Virgilian epic. This process of evolution similarly can be seen in the changes in the story of the Grail (the subtitle of Rockwell's book) until in the prose version the Grail has a 'semblance de calice'. The 'semblance', however, is not the Grail, for 'language is incapable of describing the ineffable truth of the GraiT (p. 227). Would that the language of this book was more capable of describing the author's premise. Margaret Burrell Department of French University of Canterbury Sermons on Joshua, 2 vols. (Plain Texts Series 12 and 13), ed. Tony London, Birkbeck College, Anglo-Norman Text Society, 1998; paper; pp. 31 and 38. Free to A N T S members, not for sale to public. The five sermons edited in these two volumes are adapted from the first eight homilies on Joshua by Origen. These homilies would have been known through the Latin translation of the Greek by Rufinus. While following the basic framework of Origen's homilies in the choice of episodes and Scriptural quotations, the Anglo-Norman author composes an independent commentary which, Tony Hunt points out, shows some signs of having an English origin. The first sermon, which is the longest and forms something of an introduction to the others, is concerned with the Mystery of Jesus. It is based on the events of Exodus 17.8ff, and the commentary deals with the allegorical significance of various names of persons and places, including the linguistic ambiguity Joshua-Jesus, before...