Of Love and Chivalry: An Anthology of Middle English Romance.

Blamires, Alcuin

These two books represent a further extension of Everyman's excellent policy of publishing new scholarly editions at moderate prices, so bringing texts that were previously inaccessible on account of rarity or cost within the scope of academics' and students' budgets.

Dr Fellows offers six complete romances: King Horn, Florys and Blauncheflour, Amis and Amiloun, Syr Tryamowre, Syr Launfal and The Erle of Tolous. It is a sensible, representative selection with good potential for thematic exploration: for example, of calumniated wives or, indeed, of calumniated knights. Texts are freshly and sympathetically edited and supplied with both marginal and foot-of-page modern English glosses. The brief introduction and fifty-two pages of notes gradually develop the reader's understanding of romance strategies, while zealously detailing divergences from Anglo-Norman antecedents where relevant. Although the anthology's selection criteria are rather vaguely identified in the title 'Of Love and Chivalry' and a reference to 'several shared motifs' on p. viii, this volume is a professional addition to Everyman's two existing anthologies by Maldwyn Mills. But the resulting abundance -- on top of the chunky Sands anthology still available from Exeter -- is perhaps ominous, for it will be merveilleux if teaching texts of verse romance can be sustained in print on this scale. Fellows's book deserves a long run, but Everyman must be in danger of saturating a smallish market.

Although the proportions of apparatus (222 pages) to text (149 pages) in Dr Barr's book are unusual for an Everyman, the result is a triumphant edition of Pierce the Ploughman's Crede, Richard the Redeless, Mum and the Sothsegger and The Crowned King. It certainly supersedes earlier editions of each poem (offering, for instance, cogent restorations of manuscript readings previously emended). It justifies the juxtaposition of these texts in terms which go beyond conventional observation of their reformist and stylistic indebtedness to Piers Plowman: for Barr shows how the poems tend to construct a religious, social or governmental critique grounded in natural ordinance -- i.e. in the key Langlandian concept of kynde. She deals commandingly with the political and religious currents pulsing through these 'vivacious' productions, clarifies their alliterative technique, and is even so bold as to reinstate a single author for Richard and Mum. Such politically engaged poetry demands, and here receives, comprehensive elucidation. Not only should every mediaeval English scholar (historians, too) snap up this book: in the climate created by 'New Historical' criticism it also has fascinating potential as a course text, though whether it could easily accommodate students not reading Piers Plowman will be a matter for exploration.