Medieval Writers and Their Work: Middle English Literature 1100-1500. 2d ed

Abstract

John Burrow published first edition of this little (currently 156 pp.) volume in 1982, noting in Preface: present book is designed as a introduction. At risk of giving an exaggerated impression of strangeness of Middle writings, I have concentrated on some of chief differences which confront a of modern when he or she first approaches them: differences in notion of itself (Chapter 1), in circumstances under which writings were produced and received (Chapter 2), in types of writing produced (Chapter 3), and in kinds of meaning be found in them (Chapter 4). Chapters 1 and 5 also attempt characterize Middle period in relation earlier and later periods of literature. In addition providing a clear view of its purpose—an introduction, and aimed not specifically at undergraduate students as most of such books are, but rather at any reader of modern literature upon first encounter with medieval writing--the preface thus succinctly outlines book's contents. Commentary on Gower thus predictably runs throughout, tailored suit larger context of each chapter. Although this second edition is more than a quarter century more recent than first, it remains in most ways a very similar presence. The bibliography, for example, has been updated by only nine citations post-2000. Yet Burrow himself remains one of most sensitive and perceptive of readers, and his views of Gower here are profoundly worth knowing. His insight into the contradiction . . . in which Chaucer, Gower and their immediate successors found themselves, is a case in point. These writers . . . found themselves partially alienated from their native literary heritage (e.g., adapted . . . practice or oral delivery), in so far as that heritage represented conditions that were recessive in their day (56). The different ways Chaucer and Gower found respond what Burrow calls features (57) stand for him as representative of major writers of period: in CantT Chaucer came terms with that heritage by incorporating addresses audience, oaths, asseverations, redundant phrases, speak 'ful brode' when he wants to (57), while Gower looked French and Latin literatures for better models than minstrelisms, ultimately achieving a purged (though at cost of a certain debility) of minstrel features (57). Burrow sees apogee of English narrative verse in work of Gower, Chaucer, and Gawain-poet (71). And consider Burrow on of interpretation that arise with some of tales in CA: Sometimes it seems that [Gower] has simply failed find a suitable story illustrate this vice or that virtue, as required by his scheme; but on other occasions we can recognize a deliberate finesse in relation between tale and context . . . . When scale of narrative is increased, complications . . . may arise . . . . [Yet] in as in life, events often appear less simple more you know about them. Most stories, if they are told with any richness of human detail, tend forfeit their straightforward relationship exemplified truth. In light of such a story, 'truth' may come seem complicated, or doubtful, or simply irrelevant. (118, 119) Few more sensible words have been written, perhaps, answer complaints about Gower's narrative failures. For many now, in new age of Brexit, most interesting chapter may be last in which Burrow ponders future of writers like Chaucer and Gower, when poetry of that kind, in that kind of and that kind of metre, and printed in that kind of book--will face increasingly strong challenges from rivals who do not recognize language of Authorized Version as their English. The tradition of Chaucer, Milton, and Tennyson can hardly fail suffer such challenges in an age where is a world language and England no longer a world power (138). Reading that--written in 2007--one can dodge its eerie clairvoyance in new reality of Brexit. Burrow's is still a book from which learn much--and ought, perhaps, be on every Introduction Middle Ages reading list. [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 35.2]

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