Old English Wisdom Poetry (review)

Reviews 261 One quibble I had was with the choice of illustration for the front cover (Fra Filippo Lippi's Portrait ofa Man and a Woman at a Casement). When there are abundant pictures of Christine available in manuscripts, why not use one of them? The British Library's Harley manuscript illustrations spring immediately to mind (and one tiny portrait of Christine from Harley 4431 is provided on the back cover), though there are many others in the Bibliotheque Nationale's Pizan manuscripts. When w e k n o w that Pizan commissioned some of these extant manuscripts editions containing her portrait, w e can conclude that visual representation was an important part of her authorial selfrepresentation . W h y not include, at least as the cover illustration, her own choice of authorial portrait? It m a y seem a minor point, but such an inclusion would go some w a y towards recognising the importance of alternative or marginal aspects of text presentation with which authors were also concerned. This collection is a worthy contribution to studies of Christine de Pizan and her works. It provides affordable access to valuable material which reflects the diversity of Pizan's appeal, demonstrating her literary talents as well as providing a wealth of primary source material for historians. O n e can expect that through this reader Pizan will be increasingly included in history, literature and French studies course syllabi. Susan Broomhall c/-School of European Languages University of Western Australia Poole, Russell, ed., Old English Wisdom Poetry. (Annotated Bibliographies of Old and Middle English 5), Cambridge, D. S. Brewer; cloth; pp. xi, 418; R.R.P. £55.00, $US95.00. The present volume is the fifth to be published in the scholarly seri Annotated Bibliographies of Old and Middle English. It offers a remarkably comprehensive introduction to the scholarship published between 1800 and 1990 on Old English wisdom poetry, appraising in all more than 1100 items, the bulk of them representing learned articles, but many of the relevant insights into the stances taken on these poems 262 Reviews occur in various more standard literary histories and the like. The genre of wisdom verse is itself defined much as in the AngloSaxon Poetic Records, and so it includes the Metrical Charms, the Metrical Proverbs (all), the Exeter Book Riddles, as well as the ten poems normally grouped here. Both the opening chapters, concerned with bibliographies, are arranged chronologically, as are the following thirteen concerned withtexts.Full identification of items is afforded, as well as salient content in precis, and appropriate characterising and evaluative comment. Each of the main chapters, numbers three to thirteen, contains a brief introduction, in which an overview of published research from m a n y languages on the relevant text is provided. These introductory sections discuss: the manuscript provenance; editorial policies and controversies; datings, localisations and attributions; sources and analogues; genre type and/or affiliations; literary-critical evaluations; (present) place/'genre' in the content of Anglo-Saxon poetry; and contribution to our better understanding of Anglo-Saxon culture. The indices treat separately the Scholars and Subjects. Quite certainly this is a powerful reference tool likely to generate and refine the thought of numerous studies in the next generation and beyond. The General Editor, T. L. Burton, has here commented justly on the use of annotated bibliographies, of which this is a shining example. He has also stressed the chronological arrangement of items as an important feature of the compilation, and the non-intrusiveness of the compiler and reporter. But, very properly, Burton also draws our attention to the introductory sections, stressing that these show the major trends of scholarship, the most influential approaches, and those aspects in need of further development. As the compiler himself has told us in his 'Acknowledgements' and elsewhere, he has been able to embrace certain overviews of the field of wisdom texts, focusing on a core type of item that is 'secular, impersonal, and non-narrative', such a consideration thus excluding Soul and Body, Deor, and Beowulf, among many others. Yet narrative creeps in, as does Christian doctrine,—as in Solomon and Saturn—while a personalised speaker is to be found in the...