REVIEWS 69 Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Edited with an introduction by A. C. CAWLEY and J. J. ANDERSON. Pp. xxviii+258 (Everyman's University Library). London: Dent; New York: Dutton, 1976. Cloth, £4-50; paper, £1-50 net. , This edition of the poems of B.L. MS. Cotton Nero A.X comprises Professor A. C. Cawley's original edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Pearl, Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/res/article/XXIX/113/69/1522425 by guest on 29 September 2021 which was published in Everyman's Library in 1962, together with new texts of Cleanness and Patience edited by J. J. Anderson (who published a scholarly edition of Patience in 1969). Gawain and Pearl are presented unchanged from Cawley's original edition, and Cleanness and Patience have been adapted to the same format. As far as the texts are concerned, this means that obsolete letters (P, }) are removed and replaced by their modern equivalents, while 1 and j, u and v are differentiated as vowel and consonant according to modem usage. The apparatus consists mainly of on-the-page translations: individual hard words are glossed in the margins, while difficult lines and passages (sometimes very long passages, e.g. Pearl 185-220, Cleanness 1452-98) are translated in full at the bottom of the page. There are no textual notes, and no record therefore of emendations introduced, and the explanatory notes are confined to a few very brief comments on Gawain and a few biblical references for Pearl and Patience. The Introduction (pp. vii-xxvi) contains summary critical comment on each poem. The book thus provides, in simple, convenient, and cheap form, the texts and basic apparatus which will enable students to read four of the best Middle English poems. They will find it particularly useful to have now a text of Cleanness so readily available. Their needs will be well satisfied by the manner of textual presentation, and they will not be much perturbed by the illogicalities and inconsistencies concealed in the process of modernization (e.g. the difficulty of making a decision between kagker and haxoer for kajer in Gawain 352, 1738, and the impropriety of having to do so). They will also find all their problems,in understanding the text circumvented by the careful and comprehensive strategy of glossing. The pragmatic value of providing short cuts is obvious, especially with texts of such intrinsic linguistic difficulty, though there is always the danger of course that one may miss some of the best parts of the journey if one always takes short cuts. Most students will be prepared to settle for this kind of limited experience of the poems, and they will find it hard to come to any other in the present book, since no other apparatus is provided. Some students, however, will certainly find themselves frustrated by the blandness of the diet here offered, for systematic on-the-page glossing acts to interpose an opaque film between the reader and the poem, to eliminate problems before they have been properly understood to exist as problems, and to dissipate and obscure, in these poems particularly, the extraordinary wit and daring which has gone to the making of the poetic vocabulary. Another cause of frustration will be the almost total absence of explanatory notes, which will leave many passages in the poems wrapped in haze and obscurity. These are all limitations on the usefulness of such an edition which will be 70 REVIEWS readily recognized by the editors and publishers, and which they will be pre- pared to accept in consideration of the advantages that students will gain. In one respect, however, the editors have neglected an obvious opportunity to make the volume more useful, an opportunity which they could have taken without com- promising the simple basic function of the edition. Dr. Anderson's brief intro- ductions to Cleanness and Patience are marvellously succinct, and pack a great deal of information into a bare half-dozen pages, but Professor Cawley has Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/res/article/XXIX/113/69/1522425 by guest on 29 September 2021 chosen to reprint his introductory comments on Gawain and Pearl substantially unchanged. No account, therefore, is taken of the very substantial developments in the understanding of both poems which have taken place since 1962. The general comments on the alliterative revival, for instance (pp. vii-viii), should have been brought up to date, and it is particularly unfortunate that the one short paragraph devoted to the subject should contain a reference (and it is the only reference given) to an article by Hulbert which, however stimulating originally, has proved to be without foundation. The sharp distinction drawn between the alliterative poets and 'poets of the royal court1 cannot now be accepted without qualification, and the characterizing phrases applied to the poetry of the former—'ancient metre, archaic diction and rustic dialects'—are neither very accurate nor very encouraging for the student. The brief intro- duction to Pearl is rich in suggestion, but it would surely have been a simple matter to bring it up to date: to have replaced, for instance, the comment that no one since Osgood has thought it worth while to mention the resemblances to Dante (p. xii) with some mention of the important books of Kean and Bishop (which are listed in the short new bibliography) where the matter is fully dis- cussed; and to have referred to the short note of Norman Davis (R.E.S., N.s. xvii (1966), pp. 403-5) on line 1208 which has presumably ended the 'tiresome controversy' referred to on p. x. As for Gawain,' much work has been done recently on originals and analogues, which is referred to neither in the intro- ductory comment nor in the bibliography, while the revolution in the critical approach to the poem which has taken place over the past fifteen years remains here unremarked. The comment on the role of the Green Knight would seem now to be unduly influenced by the early essays of Speirs and Berry, which are the only works alluded to in the text of the introduction. Some revisions here would have benefited students and improved the usefulness of the book. Nevertheless, it is, as it stands, an extremely useful student reader, and it will be difficult for existing editions to compete with it in terms of the student's pocket. Perhaps a small bouquet should be reserved, finally, for whoever was responsible for choosing a detail from Altdorfer's 'St. George and the Dragon', exquisitely irrelevant as it is, for the dust-jacket and paperback cover. DEREK PEABSALL