The Legend of Charlemagne in Medieval England is the third book in a planned series of seven which investigates "the appropriation of the matter of Charlemagne across Europe" (vii). The first two, both collections of essays, respectively looked at Charlemagne in Early Spanish and Medieval Latin texts. The present co-authored monograph considers Charlemagne and the Matter of France in the late medieval insular vernaculars of Anglo-Norman and Middle English. Within, Hardman and Ailes offer comprehensive coverage and analysis of the insular manuscript evidence, the various relationships (textual, historical, and formal) between these texts, as well as the insular poets' and translators' preference for conscious adaptation and the "instability of the medieval manuscript text" (21), which combined result in a "particularly dynamic approach to translation" (20) in both vernaculars.
Hardman and Ailes open by discussing the insular context in which Charlemagne tales circulated from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, the transmission from continental French to Anglo-Norman and Middle English texts, and the potential interests of scribes and readers throughout these periods and languages. The first major question Hardman and Ailes explore is why the Anglo-Norman Matter of France texts are considerably more reduced in subject matter in comparison to the over one hundred Old French chansons de geste, and secondly, why the Middle English Matter of France texts present an even greater curtailment from the Anglo-Norman corpus. It was not an issue of availability or interest. Drawing on extant Anglo-Norman texts, medieval library inventories, and wills and bequests, the authors identify "a great deal of chanson de geste material available in England through the Middle Ages" (68), including not only gestes du roi concerning Charlemagne and the Twelve Peers, such as La Chanson de Roland, Fierabras, Otinel, and Aspremont, but also separate Matter of France texts, such as La Chanson de Guillaume; geste de Mayence texts such as Gormond et Isembart and Renaud de Montauban; and Crusade texts such as Baudoin de Constantinople.
Despite the range of material available, insular writers and audiences seemed to prefer specifically those texts dealing with Charlemagne, drawing most often from the cycle du roi texts and related historical material from the Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle, resulting in a total of eighteen texts, from the twelfth-century La Chanson de Roland (Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Digby 23) to the 1572 print copy of The Taill of Rauf Coilyear, a Scots romance dating from the end of the fifteenth century. Hardman and Ailes contend that this narrowing of the corpus is a result of three particular areas of interest to insular audiences (31), who seem to prefer those texts which: describe single combat between Christian and Saracen heroes; narrate stories of Saracen incursions into Christian lands, rather than traditionally-oriented Crusade narratives set in the Holy Land; and proliferate in Middle English throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
These stories were ready to be appropriated by scribes across three significant stages of textual evolution: the creation in Anglo-Norman or translation from continental French of Charlemagne texts in the thirteenth century, the copying of these Anglo-Norman texts and their translation into Middle English in the fourteenth century, and the creation of new Middle English texts and further copies of Anglo-Norman material in the fifteenth century. The first stage of textual history is concurrent with a series of Crusades marked by popular interest and religious fervor, as well as political infighting and religious disputes. For example, Gregory IX excommunicated Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in 1227 after Frederick broke a treaty obligation with the Papacy to lead a crusade and before a decade of wars between the two powers. Hardman and Ailes speculate that the pairing of La Destruction de Rome and Fierabras in insular texts encourages a unified Christendom with a free Rome against external enemies (308-311). The second stage, marked by the appearance of Middle English material, might initially be surprising, given the background of the Hundred Years' War. Instead, the authors identify a recurrent theme of the English appropriating Charlemagne and seeing the Plantagenet kings as his natural successors. Further, such a heritage held the promise of a new dual monarchy of England and France as a potential Christian force against the increasing Muslim successes in the East. This hope is expressed in the heraldic devices linking Charlemagne with early kings of England which are pictured in London, BL MS Egerton 3028, containing La Destruction de Rome and Fierabras, alongside a version of Wace's Brut. Finally, the fifteenth century is marked not only by continuing anxiety over attacks on Christendom, as seen in the London Thornton Manuscript (London, BL MS Add 31042), which contains The Sege of Melayne and Roland and Otuel, but also by a concern to address orthodox belief in light of the persecution of Lollardry, as in the fifteenth-century Fillingham MS (London, BL MS Add 37492), which contains Firumbras and Otuel and Roland.
The combination of these particular insular concerns and the narrative material popular to scribes and audiences thus results in a collapsing of the corpus around three major figures from the gestes du roi: Roland, Fierabras, and Otinel. For each literary strand, the authors identify that insular literary production was marked by strong intertextual connections, in which Anglo-Norman authors would rely, more often than not, on multiple continental French texts, and Middle English translators would use both Anglo-Norman and continental French texts as their sources. To address the multitude of research questions that might spring from such a careful framework of textual development, Hardman and Ailes organize the book into three parts: chapter 1 discusses the insular literary context; chapters 2 and 3 discuss, in turn, the Anglo-Norman and Middle English traditions, with each chapter first providing an overview of themes present in the texts, and then a description of the manuscript contexts of each. Finally, chapters 4, 5, and 6 consider the textual traditions of Roland, Fierabras, and Otinel.
The multi-faceted consideration of the texts is highly rewarding, and the authors' analysis of the Firenbras-tradition is but one example of the particularly fine attention to detail and insight that this study offers. Across multiple chapters, Hardman and Ailes point out the ways in which an apparently simple program of abbreviation in the insular texts becomes a series of careful and judicious choices by insular remanieurs to emphasize culturally contextual issues in the story of the conquest of Rome by the Sultan Balan (or Laban), the defense of the Holy City by Charlemagne, and the eventual conversion of both the Sultan's children, Firenbras (or Ferumbras) and Floripas. For example, the insular texts abbreviate the continental chanson de geste by eliminating a section in the introduction, wherein the seizure of relics of the Passion by the Saracen emir Balan and their recovery by Charlemagne leads to several lines discussing their transfer to Saint-Denis and their display at the annual Lendit fair in Paris. The Egerton Fierabras also adds the lance that pierced Christ's side to the crown of thorns and nails identified in the continental tradition, possibly referring to an insular tradition in which Charlemagne gifted the lance, with other Passion relics, to King Athelstan in the ninth century. Thus, in turn, the insular texts gesture to a shared religious identity and disassociate the relics from their specifically French locus.
Another area for adaptation is the figure of Firenbras, a noble Saracen who undergoes conversion after a duel with Oliver. As the authors note, the tradition "offered an opportunity to stage a conflict between unequivocally offensive Saracens and defensive Christians" (277). While simultaneously condemning the Saracen antagonists, insular texts also present a startling degree of parallelism between Saracen and Christian. Laban, like his son, is introduced in both the Middle English Sowdone of Babylone and the Egerton Fierabras not with condemnation, but in courtly celebration, hunting or feasting with his noblemen: no wickedness is ascribed to either titular figure until considerably later in the narratives. Most notably in Sowdone, Laban is first spurred to attack Rome after opportunistic Roman pirates seize a treasure ship en route to him in Spain, and Charlemagne in turn responds to Laban's capture of the Passion relics. Sowdone also presents parallelism of religious practice with an almost anthropological consideration of Muslim customs, reproducing fragments of (imagined) Arabic speech and describing funeral practices. As Hardman and Ailes identify, this parallelism is, however, ultimately superficial, even when Christian behavior is problematized as in Sowdone, or even more markedly in The Sege of Melayne, when Archbishop Turpin lets loose an abusive tirade at the Virgin Mary. Regardless of Saracen nobility or Christian flaws, the ultimate triumph of Charlemagne and the conversion or death of his enemies shows that "the only issue that differentiates 'us' in the text from 'the Other' is faith, but that this is the total difference: salvation or damnation" (386).
The organization of the book, while probably the best, if not the only, reasonable way to manage a study of such scope, can at times be limiting, since certain themes can be traced through manuscript context as well as textual heritage. This is mostly an issue for those single-text manuscripts whose descriptions in chapters 2 and 3 seem at times deliberately limited when it comes to thematic analysis, which is more often found in chapters 4, 5, and 6. For example, The Taill of Rauf Coilyear (214-220), not bound with any other texts, is treated rather lightly in chapter 3's consideration of manuscript contents. Hardman and Ailes note in these pages that other texts from the same printer include Robert Henryson's Moral Fables, Blind Harry's Acts and Deeds of the Illustrious and Valiant Champion Sir William Wallace, and Barbour's Actis and Lyfe of Robert Bruce, thus allowing an opportunity for a Scottish nationalistic theme of being "master in his own house" (216). These pages also include an engaging discussion of the woodcuts which begin and end Rauf, of a well-dressed man and woman (presumably Rauf and his wife) and a king gesturing with a scepter (Charles), leading to the conclusion that the pictorial agenda focuses on the domestic farce and Rauf's transformation more than the later battle between Roland and Rauf against the Saracen Magog. However, the moment of conversion in Roland's battle with Magog can also be read as a moment of transformation, but this scene is not discussed by Hardman and Ailes until chapter 6, "The Insular Otinel Tradition" (397-399), over 175 pages later.
One other area where the book's organization potentially leads to some difficulty for readers is in the authors' consideration of the Shrewsbury MS (London, BL MS Royal 15 E vi), a gift to Margaret of Anjou on the occasion of her marriage to Henry VI. This manuscript is cited extensively, despite being a continental French production, due to its role in "the story of the reception of the material in England" (40). This hybrid identity is apparently an organizational challenge: Hardman and Ailes discuss only one text from Shrewsbury, Fierabras, in chapter 5, and only briefly (271-272). A reference here directs the reader to the single sentence partially quoted above, where the manuscript's provenance is discussed. Being closer to Anglo-Norman than Middle English, the Shrewsbury MS is also discussed in chapter 2 (146-148), but the analysis here is confined only to heraldic depictions therein, rather than the manuscript contents more broadly, as is the case for the other manuscript descriptions found in chapters 2 and 3. The contents of the Shrewsbury MS can in fact only be found on page 44, as a subsidiary discussion of other non-Charlemagne chansons de geste found in England. A footnote there does, however, refer the reader to pages 146-148. Cross-references are employed regularly, but most often retrospectively, rather than referring to later material on the same text. The book is also very well-indexed, so with only slight effort, a reader can easily find all analyses of a text, even if spread across multiple chapters. In the case of the Shrewsbury MS, the index serves a reader well, but for at least one missing reference on page 329. Overall, some repetition of key points such as manuscript contents would be helpful. The granularity of these critiques should illustrate the otherwise exhaustive attention to detail found throughout the book, which seems to be entirely free from typographical error and only the slightest of omissions in the index. These critiques are intended here only as gentle advice for potential readers of this important and meticulously prepared text.
In the final chapter, Hardman and Ailes note that the insular Charlemagne romances suffered considerably in the transition to post-medieval culture; "unlike Guy of Warwick or Sir Isumbras, Roland and Oliver did not have their heroic victories over Saracen opponents perpetuated in print" (402). By the time early nineteenth-century antiquarians began producing editions of verse romances, popular historical texts for young British readers had become separated by national boundaries: John Ashton's Romances of Chivalry "selected romances that 'give us wonderful insight into the manners and customs of our own country'" (405, n. 13; emphasis mine), while Andrew Lang's The Book of Romance retold the story of Roland but highlighted "how English Robin [Hood] is, how human, and possible [...] while the deeds of the French Roland...are exaggerated beyond the possible" (406, n. 14). What Hardman and Ailes do, in direct refutation of these nationalistic claims of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, is demonstrate that a "Franco-English rivalry is quite contrary to the ethos of the medieval texts and manuscripts, where the Charlemagne myth is used to unite Europe, and particularly England and France" (408-409). The appropriation of the Matter of France by insular poets and translators is complex, dynamic, and creative, and Hardman and Ailes' study is essential to any future work on the subject.