REVIEW

DAVID MATTHEWS (ed.). In Strange Countries: Middle English Literature and its
Afterlife: Essays in Memory of J. J. Anderson. Pp. xii +170. (Manchester
Medieval Literature and Culture). Manchester and New York: Manchester University
Press, 2011. Cloth, 55.
With this Festschrift, colleagues and friends honour the memory of John Julian Anderson
(19382007), an internationally known medievalist and co-founder (with Gail Ashton) of
the Manchester Medieval Literature and Culture book series. The two nal contributions to
the volume, short eulogies by Ralph Elliott and Alan Shelston, summarize Andersons
achievements in the critical editing and study of the Gawain-poems, Beowulf, and early
English drama as well as in shaping and promoting the study of medieval literature during
his 40 years as a committed academic teacher at the University of Manchester. The other
eight essays seek to connect with Professor Andersons work by investigating texts in his
areas of expertise, often enough taking his studies and views as inspiration and points of
departure.
The Gawain-poems are the focus of two of the contributors: Gillian Rudd (The Green
Knights balancing act) takes a fresh green look at Sir Gawains Green Knight, an uneasy
gure or guration of nature, whether one capitalizes nature or not (p. 25). Her ap-
proach, albeit one that could not have been articulated by a fourteenth-century reader,
reveals that it is not only the Green Knight himself who challenges Gawains sense of self,
but the very landscape in which Gawain and the reader encounter him. Thus, Gawains
anxiety might not simply be rooted in his fear for his reputation and self-image as an
Arthurian knight, but depict a deeper-seated fear that the anthropomorphized non-animal
world surrounding him might be capable of agency (p. 40). Susan Powell (For ho is
quene of cortaysye: the assumption of the Virgin in Pearl and the Festial) teases out a
number of signicant similarities between the Maiden in Pearl and the Virgin Mary in John
Mirks Festial. She argues convincingly that the Pearl poet, who had meditated on the
postulant nun in her role as bride of Christ, on the Virgin Mary in her bodily assumption
into heaven, and on the mass for virgin martyrs (p. 85), creates a role for his protagonist
that is unique in late medieval literary texts.
Two other essays, Alexandra Johnstons Making yourself er present: Nicholas Love
and the plays of the passion and Peter Merediths Reading a procession: Bishop Blase at
Bradford discuss medieval and postmedieval plays and performances. Johnstons compari-
son of the features of the Northern Passion with Nicholas Loves translation of the
Meditationes Vitae Christi conrms the observations made in codicological studies on the
N-Town and Towneley plays: Many of these collections of plays are not actually dramatic
units, but anthologies of plays with eclectic staging demands, gathered together for some
other purpose and that purpose seems to have been to function as meditation texts
(p. 105). Meredith presents the fascinatingly medieval-like 1825 celebration/procession
in honour of Bishop Blase in Bradford. He then muses about how the details of this
performance might help scholars reect on similar medieval plays and performances
(Corpus Christi plays) and, conversely, how what we know about medieval plays and per-
formances might ll in the blanks when it comes to a more complete understanding of the
early nineteenth-century event in Bradford. Merediths statement that there is no direct
The Review of English Studies, New Series
The Author 2011. Published by Oxford University Press 2011; all rights reserved
The Review of English Studies Advance Access published May 23, 2011

b
y

g
u
e
s
t

o
n

A
p
r
i
l

5
,

2
0
1
4
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
r
e
s
.
o
x
f
o
r
d
j
o
u
r
n
a
l
s
.
o
r
g
/
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m

connection between the [Bradford] processions and the Middle Ages (p. 124) should
provoke scholars of medievalism to dig even deeper into the vaguely (dis)connected
longue duree of the medievalist celebrations of Bishop Blase. Considering the unique con-
tinuity that often characterizes the reception of medieval culture in the British Isles, this
particular regional tradition, similar to the Kentish Gavelkind, might be another complex
example of such continuity.
Three essays, Stephen Knights Robin Hood versus King Arthur, Rosamund Allens
Broad spears broke, shields clashed, men fell: how Latamon and Tennyson deal with the
problem of combat, and Carole Weinbergs Recasting the role? Brutus in Latamon;s Brut,
have Arthurian connections: Knight offers a brilliant comparison of outlaw and king in a
reception history that travels from the medieval appearances of both gures all the way
through contemporary representations in movies. He concludes that both gures, originally
conceived as apparent opposites, have grown closer, transformed by the combined forces
of moralist individualism and liberal banality into empty heroic signiers, neither king
nor outlaw (pp. 2122). Allen nds close correspondences, perhaps even inuence,
between the ways in which both Latamon and Tennyson deect human aggression in
their rhetorically and metrically masterful battle scenes on to the weapons their various
protagonists yield. Because of their distancing of the most destructive details of war, she
absolves both authors from any accusations of violent warmonger[ing] (p. 69). Weinbergs
reading of the famous episode on the foundation of Britain by the Trojan Brutus in
Latamons Brut suggests that Latamon was less dependent on his main source, Waces
Roman de Brut, than is often assumed. Wace depicts the Britons as a degenerated tribe
whom God will no longer entrust with ruling the land. Latamon, however, sees a future for
the island in which differing communities will continue to compete for dominion. For
him, the land itself is a sacred trust between God and the legendary Brutus, and all of
Brutus successors, whether British, English, or Norman, will need to govern it in accor-
dance with Gods laws (p. 55).
Kalpen Trivedi, in Trewe techyng and false heritikys: some Lollard manuscripts of
the Pore Caitif, seeks to establish that the Pore Caitif, a late fourteenth-century manual of
doctrine and devotion, was not, as has been commonly held, uncontaminated by heresy, but
originated from within an incipient Lollard movement. In Trivedis nuanced reading and
meticulous evaluation of codicological evidence, the Pore Caitif emerges as a text that
complicates simplistic demarcations between so-called heretical and orthodox late medieval
literature. He shows the text as connected to what he variously terms the proto-Lollard
(p. 133), nascent (p. 133), and early Wyclifte (p. 152) movement, a time before Wyclifs
ideas were subsumed into the invention of Lollardy by ecclesiastical authorities (p. 152).
Trivedis careful evaluation might well offer a productive intellectual gradation for the
application of the too mutually exclusive labels of trewe techyng and false heritikys to
religious texts from the same period.
The editor deserves praise for avoiding the sempiternal weakness of the Festschrift or
Melanges genre in which, more often than not, the only unifying feature turns out to be that
all contributions were written in honour of a deserving colleague. With the exception of
Kalpen Trivedis essay, which is only generally linked to the books honoree by its late
medieval English subject matter, all essays include and expand upon Professor Andersons
scholarship and ideas. Expertly edited, this collection of essays is a worthy tribute to his
memory.
RICHARD UTZ Western Michigan University
doi:10.1093/res/hgr044
2 of 2 REVIEW

b
y

g
u
e
s
t

o
n

A
p
r
i
l

5
,

2
0
1
4
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
r
e
s
.
o
x
f
o
r
d
j
o
u
r
n
a
l
s
.
o
r
g
/
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m