A bold statement at the opening of this volume announces, “This book is about matters of language and about how language matters”; the volume aims “to explore the current intersection of...literary study and linguistics” (3). However, despite the fact that all of the contributors write on topics in Middle English (several of them on Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales), and despite the presence of two introductions and the pairing of contributions under thematic subheadings, overall, this volume struggles to make its components cohere under this rubric. There is also considerable unevenness in quality among the contributions and in the editing of the volume as a whole.
Elizabeth Allen’s introduction, “Karla Taylor’s Philology,” surveys the work of the volume’s honorand. Catherine Sanok’s introduction discusses “recent methods,” especially “language-oriented approaches to literature” (18) and the place of philology in relation to them. Bizarrely, Sanok’s piece is sometimes referred to as if it is the work of both editors (e.g., “[f]inally, we offer a survey of the volume’s chapters” [21]). This is one of several instances in the volume of under-editing and signs of unsolved problems of conception and organisation. Another is inconsistency of reference to the contributions. Sanok uses “essay” (35) as well as “chapter”; contributors use, inter alia, “chapter” (42), “paper” (116), and “essay” (195). The editors have worked hard but problems remain. I shall return to this at the end of this review.
Contributions by Chris C. Palmer and Colette Moore are paired under the rubric “The Special Affordances of Literary Texts for the History of English.” Palmer argues that Middle English verse texts can provide insights into processes of word-formation despite the wariness of linguists concerning the evidential value of poetry for language study. He offers a case study of the suffixes -ness, -ite, -cion, and -age in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Gower’s Confessio Amantis, Hoccleve’s Regement of Princes, and Lydgate’s Reson and Sensuallyte. Lydgate is at the head of the pack for frequency of use of three of the suffixes, with Gower narrowly overtaking him only with the frequency of -ite words. When the density of different words of these types is measured, then Hoccleve and Lydgate are strikingly ahead. Palmer proposes that the wider the range of words used of a given type, the more likely it is that readers would have come to see the suffix as a separate element of a word, available for further deployment to make new words. Use in end-rhyme position might have further encouraged readers and listeners to think of these suffixes as word-building blocks. This is one of many interesting propositions that Palmer suggests need more research.
Colette Moore’s contribution examines words for social gatherings in Middle English, with a particular focus on their connotations. This approach builds on Karla Taylor’s claim that Chaucer’s Melibee “create[s] new connotations for words of civic gathering” (74). Moore harnesses resources and methods not available to Taylor, including the electronic Middle English Dictionary and the Historical Thesaurus of English. The study reveals that in the later fourteenth century “a disproportionate number of references to assemblies occur in negative contexts” (90). The study demonstrates that quantitative work with corpora can provide a robust evidential underpinning for intuitions. Qualitative analysis is still required, however, to interpret the examples thrown up by electronic searches. Admirably clear and careful, this splendid piece of work models methods of investigation that bring together literary and linguistic scholarship.
Two contributions are paired under the rubric “The Lexis of Middle English Literature” (Moore’s contribution would perhaps have fitted better here). David Lavinsky explores language and form in Chaucer’s Melibee, including “the question of Melibee’s formal supplementarity” (97). The term “supplementarity” is one of several critical terms here that are hard to pin down and the “question” at stake is not defined. The concept of “lexis” plays a part in the analysis of form when Lavinsky argues that Melibee uses “[l]exically specific proverbial English” (109). The study relies heavily, and not always accurately, on the classic dictionary of English proverbs, Bartlett Jere Whiting with Helen Wescott Whiting, Proverbs, Sentences, and Proverbial Phrases from English Writings mainly before 1500 (Cambridge MA, 1968). For example, Lavinsky describes “[i]n long tarrying is noys” as a “fragment of proverbial speech” (102), when in fact it is an editorial distillation of a number of quotations (Whiting T 44). This contribution’s lack of rigour and deployment of vaguely-defined critical terms frustrated this reader.
“Buddha and the Grail: Speaking of the Unstable World in Barlam and Iosaphat and Malory's Le Morte Darthur” by Kenneth Hodges is the second of the two contributions in the “lexis” section. Here the word unstable provides an entry-point for revisiting the problem of Lancelot’s failure in the grail quest in Malory’s Le Morte Darthur. Hodges proposes that reader responses to Malory’s treatment of instability are illuminated by comparison with the theme’s handling in a closely contemporary version of Barlam and Iosaphat, the story of the conversion of the Indian prince Iosaphat by the Christian ascetic Barlam. The study’s analysis contributes to work on Malory and romance-flavoured hagiography, though its examination of “the place of a loaded word in a late medieval literary system” (119) is disappointingly confined to a brief summary of the main senses of unstable given by the Middle English Dictionary. The approach modelled by Moore might have proved fruitful here.
“The Aesthetics of Language in Middle English Literature” is the rubric for two furtherCanterbury Tales studies. Stephanie L. Batkie focuses on “Reason, Resonance, and the Tragedy of the Local” in the Reeve’s Tale. “Reason” and “resonance” and an epigraph from Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia frame the analysis. “Resonance” describes internal rhymes and echoes in the passages about the empty cask and Simkyn’s hopes for Malyne’s marriage, and confusing pronouns in the fight scene. “Reason” describes the Reeve’s entrapment in social structures and geographical locality. The Reeve emerges as a tragically divided character with unfulfilled potential represented by a linguistic sonority that is “unexpected to get from the Reeve” (155). Well yes, but does Chaucer ever fit language so straightforwardly to any tale-teller? Entrapment arises from the Reeve’s social placement: he is “localizable...famously identified by his dialect as a northerner” (144). Again, yes...but. Unlike the students in the tale, whose speech reflects their origin “far in the north,” the Reeve is neither a northerner nor clearly localised by his dialect. He hails from Bawdeswell, a village in East Anglia, and his puzzling first-person pronoun ik, may well—as argued by Phil Knox (Chaucer Review, 2014)—be a literary mark of class rather than an East Anglianism.
Ashby Kinch turns from sound to visual image, focusing on images of the soul in flight in the tales of the Summoner, Merchant, and Second Nun. Like most Canterbury tales, these are associated with a dense critical literature, but Kinch draws our attention to neglected details in each to illuminate Chaucer’s art. In the Second Nun’s Tale, Maximus sees the souls of converts Tiburce and Valerian glide to heaven accompanied by angels. In the Summoner’s Tale, the friar claims to have seen the soul of Thomas’s late child borne to heaven. In the Merchant’s Tale, Justinus jests that January’s marriage to May might be a purgatory that will ensure a speedy flight of his soul to heaven. Examining each of these examples with close attention to vocabulary, Kinch suggests that as a group they reveal Chaucer’s reflections on the inescapable role of language in authenticating visions. This is a strong contribution: it reads less well-known passages, brings together tales not usually discussed together, and is lucid and readable.
The final pair of contributions proceed under the ungainly rubric of “Language between Texts: Intertextuality on the Level of Language.” Andreea Boboc discusses a continuation of Chaucer’s Squire’s Tale by the early seventeenth-century poet John Lane. She argues that Lane’s representation of Canace, who intercedes on behalf of her brother who has been accused of treason, draws on “medieval discourses of prudence as put forth by the Tale of Melibee” (193). Several comparisons between Melibee’s Prudence and Canace are offered, but it is hard to find any clinching linguistic evidence for Lane’s direct engagement with Melibee in this contribution.
Elizabeth Allen’s splendid contribution on Troilus and Criseyde is about one of Chaucer’s frequent sources, Ovid. It focuses on a single stanza about the tears shed by the lovers because Criseyde is to be traded to the Greeks. Their tears are compared with myrrh and other bitter medicines, and Chaucer alludes to the Ovidian story of Myrrha who deceives her father into incest and who is turned into the myrrh tree. Allen’s exploration of the stanza engages closely with its metrical features, syntax, and discourses, and the study builds on this close reading to reflect on the theme of Criseyde’s betrayal. This contribution provides a model of critical practice that should prove extremely valuable in classes on Chaucer, sources, metaphor, and so on.
Festschriften such as this have long been viewed as problematic. How should editors of aFestschrift balance the claims of individuals for a place in a volume against the requirements of publishers for intellectual coherence? How should authors weigh the opportunity to pay tribute to a colleague against the risks of their work not receiving specialist peer-review or suffering less-than-optimal findability? Is it time for publishers and scholars to think again about the conventions of the Festschrift? Would a more successful model be the pre-planned edited collection, where the editors set a firm intellectual agenda and commission essays within tightly-drawn parameters? Alternatively, should publishers prioritise contribution quality over volume coherence? Perhaps it is time to reopen these questions.