Writing War: Medieval Literary Responses to Warfare

Modern Language Review, The, July, 2005 by Andrew Breeze

Writing War: Medieval Literary Responses to Warfare. Ed. by CORINNE SAUNDERS, R01208 FRANCOISE LE SAUX, and NEIL THOMAS. Cambridge: Brewer. 2004. x 235 pp. 45 [pounds sterling]; $75. ISBN 0-85991-843-2.

A Companion to Gower. Ed. by SIAN ECHARD. Cambridge: Brewer. 2004. x 286 pp. 60 [pounds sterling]; $110. ISBN 1-84384-000-6.

The English Prose Treatises of Richard Rolle. By CLAIRE ELIZABETH MCILROY. (Studies in Medieval Mysticism, 4) Cambridge: Brewer. 2004. x 212 pp. 40 [pounds sterling]; $70. ISBN 1-84384-003-0.

War, love, religion: these three volumes together cover a wide area. They also differ in their approaches. Writing War is a collection of papers by historians and literary scholars. A Companion to Gower also assembles essays by different writers, but more systematically, in a comprehensive account of Gower and his work. The English Prose Treatises of Richard Rolle, in contrast, is a study by one author of Rolle's vernacular texts on the religious life. So we might expect these three books to light up large tracts of England's medieval literary landscape.

And so they do. Writing War is naturally the most diffuse of the three. Ranging from the philosophy of Aquinas (concepts of the just war) to technological innovation (the cannon astutely positioned by Joan of Arc to liberate Orleans) and war profiteering, it encompasses a vast subject. It also deals with literature beyond England. Nine of its papers were read in 2001 at a Durham conference on medieval and Renaissance responses to war, with two others (on Arthurian chronicles and Malory) appended. Christopher Allmand outlines the medieval and Renaissance fame of Vegetius, a civil servant who tried to save the declining Roman Empire with a book on the training of recruits, tactics, strategy, and fortification. Marianne Ailes informs us of the Norman chronicler Ambroise's slightly stinted admiration for Richard Coeur de Lion and other heroes of the Third Crusade. W. H. Jackson analyses warfare in the poetry of Rudolf von Ems, with its emphasis on the need for planning, discipline, and negotiating skills among the officer class. Georges Le Brusque reports on what fifteenth-century chroniclers said of the Hundred Years War, including the Bourgeois de Paris, who described the terrible winter of 1422-3, when wolves came each night to the gates of Paris. Francoise Le Saux discusses war and knighthood in Christine de Pizan's Livre des faits d'armes et de chevallerie, noting her pacifist opinions and emphasis on war's violence against women. The a Summerfield sets out how Barbour in a tract for the times allocated a Messianic role to Robert the Bruce. Andrew Lynch looks at war in Arthurian authors from Geoffrey of Monmouth to Malory, most of whom (with the exception of La Jamon) he typifies as unthinking militarists. Simon Meecham-Jones writes on Chaucer's depiction of warfare, here quoting long passages of Vaclav Havel (given in English translation and the original Czech). K. S. Whetter details Malory's obsession with fighting. Corinne Saunders addresses herself to women and warfare in English writing from Judith to the Paston letters, concluding that women's general attitude to war was one of passivity. Helen Cooper ends with a piece on the role of war in French pastoral poetry.

What picture emerges from this? Traditional and modern themes alike concern the eleven contributors. Chivalry, nationhood, and the morality of the just war jostle with questions of gender, body, psyche, and women. Writing War thus deserves a warm welcome for containing much with in little space, on a subject of fundamental importance. If one has a regret, it is that its contributors all apparently lack military experience. None of them seems to have felt the weight of a pack, still less heard a shot fired in anger. First-hand contact with dubbin and cordite, as opposed to medieval texts, might have added bite to their deliberations.

A Companion to Gower is a substantial and welcome addition to D. S. Brewer's series of compendia on medieval authors, aiming to summarize what we know of them. It has a distinguished range of contributors, who provide fifteen items. It begins with a survey by the editor Sian Echard (of UBC, Vancouver) of Gower's reputation. Citing growing academic interest in Gower since the 1970s, she sturdily defends him against J. R. Lowell's gibe of raising 'tediousness to the precision of science'. In the first chapter proper, John Hines, Nathalie Cohen, and Simon Roffey offer an up-to-date and information-rich piece on the material records of Gower's life in Southwark and elsewhere, including his house, tomb (a typical medieval hybrid of humility and pride), and coat of arms. Robert Epstein continues this emphasis with an account of London, Southwark, and Westminster in Gower's time. He contrasts what Chaucer and Gower do and do not say of London. Both are selective. Gower says almost nothing of the goings-on of his Southwark neighbours. But he says emphatically much of the 'common little people' in a phantasmagoric description of the Peasants' Revolt, which Epstein calls 'libellously' inaccurate (p. 53) and certainly no reportage. Jeremy Smith of Glasgow gives an expert report on Gower's Mischsprach-English, with a crisp account of Suffolk and Kentish elements in it. Derek Pearsall discusses with expected authority the eighty-two manuscripts of Gower's work, as also their scribes, illustrators, and owners. He provides an indispensable list of them, together with three others respectively containing early Portuguese, Spanish, and English translations of Gower. Helen Cooper considers what Greene, Shakespeare, and their contempories said of Gower. Sian Echard chronicles Gower in print, particularly the stately editions of nineteenth-century collectors. R. F. Yeager informs us on Gower's French writings, A. G. Rigg and E. S. Moore inform on his Latin ones. The latter with reason focus (pp. 156-9) on his famous description in Vox clamant is of the Peasants' Revolt. They note that, if it is not a realistic account of events, it is certainly a realistic account of a nightmare. Ardis Butterfield refers Confessio amantis to the French tradition; Winthrop Wetherbee relates it to classical writing, including the work of Boethius; Diane Watt confronts its views on gender and sexuality. Russell Peck sets out Gower's opinions on royal authority and government, commenting on his constant fascination with kingship and shifting loyalty to kings. John Burrow analyses Gower's style. Finally, Sian Echard and Julie Lanz provide a thorough bibliography of Gower criticism from 1778 to 2003.