The BBC’s Merlin (2008) borrows elements of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in two of its early episodes, adjusting the thematic content of the poem to appeal to its audience of parents and children by placing the family rather than the court at the center of conflict. (EC)

Reviewed by: Transforming Work: Early Modern Pastoral and Late Medieval Poetry by Katherine C. Little Martine Van Elk katherine c. little, Transforming Work: Early Modern Pastoral and Late Medieval Poetry. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013. Pp. ix, 256. isbn: 978–0–268–03387–3. $38. When Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale moves from the Sicilian court to the Bohemian countryside, the genre of pastoral is problematized immediately. Florizel and Perdita represent classical pastoral, centered on otium (idealized leisure) and love, and they highlight the traditional contrast between a corrupt court and an ideal countryside. But they are accompanied on stage by the comically realistic Old Shepherd and his son, who witness violence, know the habits of bears, count money, and are tricked by a wandering vagrant. Whereas Florizel gladly dresses up as a shepherd to court his love, the real shepherds abandon their sheep as soon as they find the baby Perdita and her riches—for these men, sheep herding is not an idealized profession but a life of hardship. Shakespeare’s juxtaposition of two types of literary shepherd resonates with Katherine Little’s recent study of early modern pastoral and its relationship to medieval literature. The usual critical approach to pastoral, she explains in the introduction, is to see it as a genre that did not exist in the Middle Ages; Virgil’s Eclogues, the central inspiration for pastoral poetry, were not imitated until the sixteenth century, the story goes, and when poets did turn to Virgil for inspiration, they made a clean break with the literary past. By contrast, Little finds that medieval literary traditions ‘haunt’ early modern pastoral. By approaching pastoral from the perspective of rural labor, she sheds light on the socio-economic, political, and religious significance of shifts in representations of the shepherd and rural labor more generally. For medieval writers, shepherds were workers like plowmen or they were used to symbolize priests in ecclesiastical pastoral; it did not occur to these writers to associate shepherds with leisure or love. Since labor was central to good works, shepherds often figured positively as models for human penance and morality, which gave them a potentially radical, reformist charge. The medieval shepherd contrasts with the Virgilian class-less shepherd, who was a poet and figure of otium. Yet, Little argues that the turn towards Virgil did not mean that pastoral erased the shepherd as rural laborer. Situating pastoral in the context of political and economic shifts of the period, including enclosures, rural rebellion, and the emergence of a proto-capitalist economy, she shows that the pastoral shepherd continued to be troubled by a his medieval counterpart. Little’s book moves chronologically from medieval literature to Spenser. After exploring rural labor in the mystery plays and works by Geoffrey Chaucer, William Langland, and others, Little discusses the first English uses of Virgilian eclogue by [End Page 148] Barnabe Googe and Alexander Barclay, for whom the shepherd could be both a figure of leisure and a laborer. The anti-enclosure movement complicated matters further as the shepherd gained a new identity as a figure for proto-capitalism and came to be contrasted, rather than associated, with the plowman. Moreover, the Reformation would radically change how rural labor was represented. For Protestant thinkers like William Tyndale and Hugh Latimer, good works were not a means to salvation, so labor was emptied of its positive moral meaning and even denigrated. At the same time, sixteenth-century texts in the Piers Plowman tradition continued to represent work positively, revealing a wider ambivalence about Protestant transformations in perceptions of labor. Little’s study ends with two chapters devoted to Edmund Spenser. She shows that a variety of incarnations of the shepherd are present in his Shepheardes Calendar, leading to a deliberate generic ‘instability…due, at least in part, to the incompatibility of the Langlandian tradition with the eclogue’ (169). The Faerie Queene takes a step in a more radical direction: in Book Six, the shepherds are captured, taken into slavery, and eventually killed. The dangers of pastoral’s mystification of rural labor and its origins, then, are paradoxically expressed in a text that also celebrates pastoral. Moving deftly from Langland...

Reviewed by: Traditions and Innovations in the Study of Medieval English Literature: The Influence of Derek Brewer ed. by Charlotte Brewer and Barry Windeatt Yin Liu charlotte brewer and barry windeatt, eds., Traditions and Innovations in the Study of Medieval English Literature: The Influence of Derek Brewer. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2013. Pp. ix, 317. isbn: 978–1–84384–354–2. $90. This collection assesses the influence of Derek Brewer on the study of medieval English literature by presenting ‘a sequence of conversations with, and developments from, aspects of Brewer’s work’ (16). Charlotte Brewer and Barry Windeatt choose to impose no controlling structure on the volume, preferring to let the diversity of voices generate its own unities. If, five years after Brewer’s death, these voices describe the shape of his influence, then the core of that influence has been in Chaucer studies. Derek Pearsall outlines Brewer’s Chaucerian work in the first half of his career. Alastair Minnis extends Brewer’s defense of Chaucer’s Knight to a similar defense of Theseus in ‘The Knight’s Tale’ and Arveragus in ‘The Franklin’s Tale’ as paragons of chivalric virtue. A.C. Spearing shows how Brewer’s rejection of the ‘narrator theory of narration’ (61) opens up complex readings of time in Troilus and Criseyde. Indeed, Chaucer’s Troilus becomes a center of gravity for the Chaucerian essays in this collection. Mary Carruthers defends the lovelorn Troilus against imputations of spineless emotionalism by arguing compellingly that his very weepiness is a reasoned rhetorical position. Jill Mann picks up one of Brewer’s observations about the variety of courtly loves to explore [End Page 167] the question ‘was falling in love in the Middle Ages different from falling in love today?’ (88). Jacqueline Tasioulas, acknowledging Brewer’s 1955 article on ‘The Ideal of Feminine Beauty in Medieval Literature,’ argues that Chaucer very deliberately does not represent Criseyde as the ideal of feminine beauty. Continuing a pervasive interest in Brewer’s work, Barry Windeatt considers Chaucer’s representations of Venus in comparison to his sources. Other essays with wider concerns also turn out to have connections with Chaucer. Thus Christopher Cannon uses Brewer’s discussion of ‘Class-Distinction in Chaucer’ (1968) as a framework to explain the social and cultural impact of the French of England. R.F. Yeager’s essay on ‘Gowerian Laughter’ ends, inevitably, by considering the posthumous laugh with which Chaucer’s Troilus leaves the world. And Charlotte Brewer shows how Derek Brewer’s intuitions about Chaucer’s language are supported by the Middle English Dictionary and successive editions of the Oxford English Dictionary. We are reminded, nevertheless, that Brewer’s interests extended beyond Chaucer to Middle English literature more generally, and especially to Malory and the romances. Readers of Arthuriana should note in particular Elizabeth Archibald’s essay, which outlines Brewer’s contributions to the study of Malory and discusses ways in which contextualizing Malory’s work as late medieval ‘cycle’ narrative informs issues of unity and structure that Brewer raised. Corinne Saunders continues Brewer’s discussions of male friendship by exploring that relationship in Amis and Amiloun and in Malory. James Simpson explains, critiques, and commends Brewer’s structural definition of the romance genre. Helen Cooper carries Brewer’s argument in Symbolic Stories (1980), that stories are intrinsically significant, into an exploration of storytelling confronting mortality. Although Brewer was not primarily known as a textual scholar, A.S.G. Edwards reminds us that what he did accomplish in that area (for example, his Scolar Press facsimile of the Lincoln Thornton manuscript, or the series of facsimile editions published by Boydell & Brewer) tended to lead, rather than follow, the developing field of manuscript studies. Although many of the essays are worth reading in themselves, the whole that is greater than the sum of its parts is valuable here chiefly for the insight it provides into Brewer’s ideas and critical approaches. The collection is framed by an editors’ introduction that details Brewer’s academic career and by E.G. Stanley’s brief and personal afterword. The editors establish a convention, applied throughout the volume, of referring to ‘Brewer’ when discussing his scholarship and to ‘Derek’ when reflecting...

This article examines the places in Le Morte Darthur where interior monologue occurs. Each example of self-talk and the character’s subsequent response individualizes that character; more importantly, the audience can analyze the complex and sometimes diametrically opposed elements of chivalry revealed by such self-talk.

Eminent Arthurian: P.J.C. Field K.S. Whetter All Malory scholars, and a good many Arthurian scholars in general, are familiar with the work of Professor P.J.C. Field. Peter is a former President of the International Arthurian Society, former host of a successful Society congress, winner of the North American Branch’s Lacy Award and, most significantly, author of an impressive array of publications exploring various aspects of many different Arthurian (and non-Arthurian) texts and topics. He is certainly an eminent Arthurian. The photograph that accompanies my tribute to Peter was taken at the formal launch of his edition of Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur, a launch that took place at the September 2013 meeting of the British Branch of the International Arthurian Society, by happy coincidence held at Bangor University, where Peter has made his home for the past fifty years.1 The appearance of this much-anticipated edition is an appropriate occasion to reflect upon Peter’s many accomplishments and his deserved eminence, not just in terms of his scholarly achievements, but also in the regard and affection of those who know him, worldwide. Peter has published interesting and convincing studies of (inter alia) Nennius, Arthur’s battles, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the alliterative Morte Arthure, Chaucer, and The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell. Obviously, however, it is Peter’s work on Malory and the text of the Morte which has won him the most renown. Many of Peter’s textual studies were revised and published together in his Malory: Texts and Sources, but other Malorian highlights include his Romance and Chronicle, a well-regarded monograph on Malory’s prose style, an edition of Tales VII and VIII of the Morte published initially in 1977, the revision of Vinaver’s three-volume critical edition, and the authoritative biography, The Life and Times of Sir Thomas Malory.2 It is a testament to Peter’s integrity that he revised Vinaver’s text in accordance with Vinaver’s principles; that is, he confined himself to correcting manifest errors and updating the notes but refrained from modifying the text or apparatus in any of the substantial ways Peter’s own scholarship had revealed should be done. Thus for many years Malory scholars could glean Peter’s textual-critical conclusions from his own publications, but it is only now, with [End Page 5] the much-anticipated complete edition of the Morte before us, that the scholarly community can at last see the text as Peter reconstructs it. In my opinion, that reconstruction is marvelous. For one thing, the edition itself is very attractive, including the endpapers with the arms of King Arthur juxtaposed against those of Thomas Malory. For another, we have the entire text in one very clean volume, with none of Vinaver’s various brackets detracting from Malory’s words. Finally and most substantially, there is the text itself. Peter has not been shy of modifying readings in either Winchester or Caxton; this is especially so in the contentious Roman War section. Not all textual scholars will agree with such emendation, just as not all scholars agree that the Newbold Revel Malory penned the Morte Darthur; but anyone who disputes the authorship question must rebut the considerable and convincing evidence marshalled by Peter. Likewise, there are also those who still feel that the Caxton Morte Darthur is at least as valid as the text contained in the Winchester manuscript—but anyone who upholds this view must deal with the collective weight of Works, Texts and Sources, and Peter’s introduction to the new edition. The apparatus and commentary are equally authoritative, detailing significant variant readings or scribal corrections, and—to take but one example—managing to offer a clear path through, and some new insights about, the critical debate regarding possible sources for the ‘Healing of Sir Urry.’ Peter’s text of the Click for larger view View full resolution P.J.C. Field with his New Edition of Malory. Photograph Courtesy of Samantha Rayner. [End Page 6] Morte is convincing, even Malorian, and I believe it will rightfully become the standard edition for scholars now and long into the...

This essay discusses how Geoffrey of Monmouth on the one hand utilizes marriage alliances in the Historia Regum Britanniae in order to expand Arthur’s lands and how, on the other hand, Geoffrey expresses anxiety regarding the threat that bringing foreign blood into Arthur’s kin group poses to his narrative.

Reviewed by: Chaucer’s Feminine Subjects: Figures of Desire in the Canterbury Tales by John A. Pitcher Giselle Gos John A. Pitcher, Chaucer’s Feminine Subjects: Figures of Desire in the Canterbury Tales. The New Middle Ages. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2012. pp. 214. ISBN: 978–1–4039–7322–1. $85 Pitcher engages deconstructionist and psychoanalytic theories of the subject to study the presentation of female characters as subjects of desire in four tales and their prologues. Pitcher contends that Chaucer’s use of figurative language and the [End Page 119] resulting ‘rhetorical instability’ are ‘the very matrix for his presentation of decentered subjectivity’ (p. 3). In other words, Chaucer’s construction of the self is not the liberal, humanist individual but the decentered, unstable, even contradictory subject of poststructuralism and psychoanalysis. Chapter One, on identity and desire in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale, suggests that Chaucer capitalizes on the ‘indeterminacy of reference’ (p. 36) of several multivalent signifiers (the city of Bath, the incubus and Midas) to ‘demystif[y] the self as a linguistic effect’ (p. 36). Ultimately Pitcher sees Alison’s desire not as a desire for mastery, but a desire ‘to be the other’ (p. 42), thereby explaining her submissiveness in response to Jankyn’s obedience. The chapter ends with a discussion of Jankyn as an exemplary masculine subject whose abuse of the Wife is a symptom of the ‘production of masculine identity in relation to an ideal image’ (p. 57) of a rival lover that is the preferred object of women’s and the Wife’s desire. At times thought-provoking, this chapter could benefit from more careful consideration of the following issues. Pitcher observes that ‘Chaucer has made the witness of the truth of violent antifeminism: a woman accomplished in the art of rhetoric and deception’ (p. 40), but despite his investment in Chaucer’s sexual politics, he does not discuss the important political implications of this observation. Nor does he address the fact that his theorization of masculine subjectivity—identification with an imaginary rival—encodes misogynistic violence as its inevitable by-product. Finally, despite Pitcher’s insistence that Chaucer intentionally demystifies feminine difference (pp. 44–45), in his discussion, masculine subjectivity (as exemplified by Jankyn) appears to be formed through a straightforward identification with an idealized image, whereas feminine subjectivity (exemplified by Alison) is a rhetorical construct that that does not ‘coalesce around a core of identity’ (p. 36). This unheralded distinction between masculine and feminine subjectivity recurs in the second chapter, in which Pitcher discusses Dorigen in the Franklin’s Tale as a ‘divided subject.’ He argues that Dorigen’s rash promise to Aurelius, clearly intended as a rejection, nonetheless implies her latent, repressed desire for him. Pitcher justifies this reading via reference to Freudian psychoanalysis, namely that ‘an individual’s self-understanding is not likely to be a reliable guide to unconscious motivations’ (p. 69). The problem is that these alleged unconscious desires of Dorigen have no textual expression, so Pitcher has to co-opt evidence of the opposite to support his point. The resulting logic is circular: her identification with the ideal of a faithful wife is exactly what provides the motivation for her repression: ‘any hint of desire for Aurelius would be forced into just the realm of fantasy offered by her promise’ (p. 69). Again, Pitcher portrays feminine desire and subjectivity as contradictory and decentered, whereas masculine subjectivity appears straightforward and unified. The chapter is as much about Arveragus and Aurelius’ desire as Dorigen’s, but these male characters are not psychoanalyzed in such a way as to isolate and alienate them from their reported desires. The third chapter is dominated by a concern to disentangle the Clerk’s intentions in telling the tale of Walter and Griselda through attention to the Clerk’s ‘rhetorical nuances’ (p. 84), and to psychoanalyze Walter’s desire to test his wife. Griselda’s desire [End Page 120] and subjectivity take up only a little more than a third of the chapter. Pitcher finds that the Clerk’s motivation for telling the tale is to problematize unconditional submission and adherence to a vow as ‘self-destructive’ (p. 107). Walter’s...

Although Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was first printed in 1839, it drew little attention from the reading public until the early twentieth century. Today it is the most familiar of the romances, with manifestations ranging from new translations to films, novels, and comics. This article traces the story’s journey from the province of early Arthurian scholarship to comtemporary popular culture.