While many books of essays present articles whose connections to each other occasionally seem tenuous, this collection provides readers with an extremely cohesive exploration of the Guy of Warwick texts and their material contexts. This is a collection that can be read cover-to-cover, and that will reward the scholar who does so. Indeed, the format works particularly well to address the variety and complexity of the Guy of Warwick tradition given the many different versions of the narrative that circulated in French and English, manuscript and print, during the late medieval and Early Modern periods. The editors are to be commended for the cohesion and comprehensiveness of the study presented. The title signals an audience of scholars working on Matter of England romances, but the collection also engages larger issues about the romance genre, the problematic categorization of "elite" and "popular" literature, the connections between medieval and Early Modern literature in England, and the material circulation of widely read vernacular texts. As such, the book may well be of use to medievalists who work on these issues in contexts other than Matter of England romances.
The collection is structured to explore the Guy of Warwick narratives in roughly chronological order and to engage, at multiple points, what the editors identify as "four crucial issues: the 'popularity' of the tradition; Guy's 'Englishness'; the ancestral- baronial interest in the story; and the passage of the medieval legend into the Renaissance" (xvi). After an "Editorial Introduction," Judith Weiss's article "Gui de Warewic at Home and Abroad: A Hero for Europe" presents readers with a detailed analysis of the early thirteenth-century Anglo-Norman romance's portrayal of the Holy Roman and Byzantine Empires. Weiss examines historical connections between English nobles and the Byzantine emperor, the unflattering portrayal of the Holy Roman Empire and Emperor in the text, and the ways in which these Empires are both the site of most of Guy's adventures as well as dangerous foreign spaces that craft a vision "of England as ultimately the best and safest place to be" (11). Marianne Ailes ("Gui de Warewic in its Manuscript Context") continues the consideration of the Anglo-Norman Gui by offering a thorough and up-to-date survey of the manuscripts and their contents. Ivana Djordjevi? ("Guy of Warwick as a Translation") addresses the relationships between Anglo-Norman and Middle English versions of the text, pointing out the problems caused by "linguistic segregation" in the study of insular romances (42). She also demonstrates how print editions of both Anglo-Norman and Middle English versions of the Guy romance have led to the privileging of certain manuscripts over others, and have thereby prompted some erroneous judgments about what is "translated" versus what is "original" in Middle English versions. She calls for careful attention to manuscript variety and for a linguistically integrated approach to the study of insular romance, particularly regarding its formulae and narrative stereotypes. Rosalind Field's article ("From Gui to Guy: The Fashioning of a Popular Romance") rounds out the extended discussions of the Anglo-Norman Gui and again considers the connections between this text and its Middle English counterpart. Field's article offers a thoughtful discussion of notions of "popular romance" and audience that both dispels myths about the radical literary differences between Anglo-Norman and Middle English romances and challenges simplistic ideas about how readership, textual sophistication, and language of presentation intersect in late medieval England.
The next three essays focus more fully on Middle English versions of the Guy narrative. Alison Wiggins' article, "The Manuscripts and Texts of the Middle English Guy of Warwick," offers scholars a thorough overview of the Middle English manuscript tradition, but also combines precise philological details with thought-provoking analysis of the different manuscript versions of Guy and their varying engagements with the text. The reader ends up with a rich sense of the ways in which the narrative could be presented so as to address the specific interests of different reading communities in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century England. A. S. G. Edwards examines Middle English texts about Guy that are not romances, illustrating the adaptability of this romance knight to varying agendas. Edwards offers some consideration of the devotional and hagiographic potential of the Guy narrative as well as an introduction to less well-known texts and their manuscript traditions ("The Speculum Guy de Warwick and Lydgate's Guy of Warwick: The Non-Romance Middle English Tradition"). Robert Allen Rouse's "An Exemplary Life: Guy of Warwick as Medieval Culture-Hero" explores the issue of heroic identity, considering recent scholarship on the topic and suggesting that Guy is "a figure who embodies a number of different identity groups" (95).
The collection next moves to more extended consideration of the visual and historical/baronial dimensions of the Guy of Warwick tradition. David Griffith's article, "The Visual History of Guy of Warwick," introduces readers to the extensive and diverse collection of images and artifacts of Guy in late medieval England. Griffith shows how images of Guy indicate the romance's early and widespread appeal to the English populace before exploring the fourteenth- and fifteenth- century "refashioning of the legend [and its images] by the Earls of Warwick" for political and familial ends (132). Martha Driver elaborates upon this historical and material context, and examines how fifteenth-century versions of the narrative are connected to Beauchamp family patronage and might have engaged issues pertinent to "the often difficult and demanding realities of the lives of women readers and patrons for whom these later legends were reshaped and retold" (133). Driver focuses on the depiction of Felice in texts she identifies as "commissioned by or written specifically for the Beauchamp family circle, including Lydgate's poem, the Irish Life of Sir Guy...the Rommant de Guy de Warwik of c. 1445," the Guy of Warwick found in Cambridge University Library Ff. 2. 38, and the Latin and Middle English Rous Rolls (133-34). Driver's article offers a fascinating examination of the ways in which the depiction of Felice changes in the fifteenth century so as to speak to documented historical concerns about female inheritance during the Beauchamp tenure of the earldom of Warwick ("'In her owne persone semly and bewteus': Representing Women in Stories of Guy of Warwick"). Sin Echard's contribution, "Of Dragons and Saracens: Guy and Bevis in Early Print Illustration," continues the collection's consideration of the visual aspects of the Guy of Warwick legend and moves the chronological framework into the Early Modern period. She compares early print illustrations of Guy of Warwick with those for Bevis of Hampton. Echard argues for recognition of the differences between these two texts and suggests, with some necessary qualifications, that early print illustrations emphasize Guy's role as monster-slayer for audiences of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries while Bevis becomes better known as a Saracen-killer. These three articles explore the rich visual and material culture surrounding Guy of Warwick and are a valuable reminder of this aspect of the legend. The editors have helpfully provided fifteen plates to illustrate the discussions of Guy's visual legacy and these are well referenced by the contributors. The plates' placement, however, might be more effective. Rather than being interspersed among the articles that reference them, or even placed all together between two of those articles, the plates appear all together in the middle of Rouse's essay, which does not reference the plates. While this placement may be an unavoidable exigency of publication (I don't know), it disrupts Rouse's argument and unhelpfully severs the plates from their discussion.
The final two articles, those by Andrew King and Helen Cooper, complete the consideration of Early Modern engagements of the Guy of Warwick tradition. King's "Guy of Warwick and The Faerie Queene, Book II: Chivalry Through the Ages" makes a convincing case for Spenser's familiarity with the Guy tradition and his serious consideration of the complex issues raised therein. King offers a thorough examination of the Middle English Guy's chivalry and religious commitments, and presents a thought-provoking portrait of the ways in which Spenser's Guyon can be seen to respond to these concerns in a manner reflective of Spenser's period and Protestantism. King's article illustrates the literary value and complexity of the Middle English text, and its ability to engage later generations. Helen Cooper's article ("Guy as Early Modern English Hero") similarly shows how the Guy narrative offered writers, readers and theatre-goers of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries opportunities to ponder anew the issues of religion and heroism raised in the earliest Guy romances. Her article continues the volume's challenge to re-think oppositional constructions such as "elite"/"popular" and to recognize a diversity of cultural experiences of the Guy text.
Guy of Warwick: Icon and Ancestor is a well-structured collection of essays which repeatedly addresses the four crucial issues its editors identify: "the 'popularity' of the tradition; Guy's 'Englishness'; the ancestral-baronial interest in the story; and the passage of the medieval legend into the Renaissance" (xvi). Any scholar working on a Guy of Warwick text or image will derive much benefit from reading this volume, but it should be noted that there is no separate bibliography to provide a list of works referenced in the footnotes and this would have been immensely helpful for scholars. There are also a few typographical errors (pp. 13, 24, 67, 69, 71, 74, 76, 108, 116, 178 and notes on pp. 9, 62, 69, 107, 125, 126, 163). Nevertheless, the book presents many rich ideas for consideration and is overall a pleasure to read. Scholars interested in insular romance will find in this collection a wide-ranging consideration of the historical and literary importance of insular romance and of the complexity of its material contexts. Scholars who do not work on romance may find less to engage them, but a helpful synopsis of the Guy narrative is provided for those unfamiliar with the narrative, and anyone interested in questions of "popular" versus "elite" medieval literature and the validity of these categories will find articles of interest, as will those who work on questions of literary patronage, textual circulation, and material culture in the period.