Nation, Court and Culture: New Essays on Fifteenth-Century English Poetry by Helen Cooney
2003; Modern Humanities Research Association; Volume: 98; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/mlr.2003.0370
ISSN2222-4319
Autores Tópico(s)Scottish History and National Identity
Resumo424 Reviews of the reviser. Illingworth is convinced that the text as we have it is the work of one author and explains the inconsistencies as the result of the reviser introducing his own themes and motifs. The text was prepared for publication by Stewart Gregory and represents a major contribution to Beroul studies. Jane Taylor mounts a spirited defence of Tristan de Nanteuil, arguing with conviction that the blending of romance and epic motifs in the late chansons de geste is not a sign of a genre sinking into sterility and decay, but rather indicates the vitality and energy of a genre in the process of recreating itself. Carleton W. Carroll and Maria Colombo Timelli are co-authors of an interesting study ofthe work of La Curne de Sainte Palaye, which sheds some wel? come light on both the scholarship of this early medievalist and the growing interest in the work of Chretien in the eighteenth century. Raluca Radulescu demonstrates the importance of the Arthurian legend in fifteenth-centuryEngland, showing how Malory brought together two disparate traditions, focusing his narrative on political issues which would appeal to a politically aware reading public. Julia Marvin studies in detail the episode of Albine in the Anglo-Norman prose Brut Chronicles, and then compares the fictional queen with Queen Isabella, whose attempt to replace Edward II ended in failure. She includes an appendix containing the Prose Prologue to the Long Version of the Chronicle with a facing translation. There is, then, some? thing for almost everyone in this volume, which is expertly produced. There is one misprint on p. 238 ('of' for 'on'), and Thompson omits the details of one novel by Bernard Cornwell which is mentioned in the article on him. University of Reading Peter Noble Nation, Court and Culture: New Essays on Fifteenth-Century English Poetry. Ed. by Helen Cooney. Dublin: Four Courts Press. 2001. 191pp. ?55. ISBN 1-85182-566-5. The title of this collection of essays constitutes a challenge to those who continue to believe that fifteenth-centuryEngland had no coherent sense of nationhood, no great courts until the accession ofthe Tudors in 1485, and no literary culture worth noting. Such beliefs have been propagated by sixteenth-century specialists keen to promote their own era's 'Renaissance', but they stem of course from Johan Huizinga's influential essay The Waning of the Middle Ages, published in 1924. Huizinga's view that fifteenth-centurypoetry was worn out, valueless, and lacking in novelty was adopted by subsequent critics such as C. S. Lewis, and until quite recently it has been de rigueur to describe the fifteenthcentury and its literature as dull and decay ed, a veritable literary wasteland. But for some years now such criticisms have been deemed unacceptable, and the new critical orthodoxy is to gesture instead towards the rehabilitation of the affiictedera and its cultural products. This is no easy task. Previous attempts to convince us that the long fifteenthcentury was rather better than we had thought, have achieved only partial success. Why is it that these arguments do not convince? Is it because their proponents do not seem convinced themselves, or be? cause the fifteenthcentury is just too alien to our modernized concept of the literary shape of a century (that is, lacking major figures or movements), or is it that the poets (especially Lydgate), are, as we have always known, inadequate? The present collection often essays, most of which were originally aired at a confer? ence in 1998 at Trinity College Dublin, does a rather better reconstruction job. The editor tries to pretend that the factthat the contributors do not encompass or work to? wards a 'single point of view or anything like a conclusion' is a virtue, and reflectsthe lack ofcultural homogeneity thatcharacterized the century under discussion. Perhaps, but such diversity may be taken too far,and in a collection of essays is more typically MLRy 98.2, 2003 425 regarded as a weakness. In fact there is some nice overlap in the collection, and ifany? thing, only Helen Cooney's own essay on Skelton seems slightly adrift from the rest. The firstthree essays, by Derek Pearsall, John Scattergood, and Phillipa Hardman, consider the...
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