Bestsellers and Masterpieces: The Changing Medieval Canon ed. by Heather Blurton and Dwight F. Reynolds (review)

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Reviewed by:

• Bestsellers and Masterpieces: The Changing Medieval Canon ed. by Heather Blurton and Dwight F. Reynolds
• Katherine Oswald

heather blurton and dwight f. reynolds, eds., Bestsellers and Masterpieces: The Changing Medieval Canon. Manchester Medieval Literature and Culture. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2022. Pp. 288. isbn: 978–1–5261–4748–6. $130.

This collection of nine essays plus introduction has at its core a 'paradox in the modern study of medieval European and Arabic literature' (p. 1). On the one hand, many of the works that are most widely studied and taught survive today in a single copy, which suggests that they were not widely transmitted during the Middle Ages. On the other hand, many texts that survive in numerous manuscripts and have been translated to multiple languages are largely absent from undergraduate syllabi, anthologies of medieval literature, and academic scholarship.

Heather Blurton and Dwight F. Reynolds' detailed introduction lays the foundation for the studies that will follow. They provide several examples of works that fit into either side of the paradox and offer possible explanations for why such works have either been hailed as masterpieces or relegated to the margins of scholarship. They recognize modern literary preferences and acknowledge that texts that enjoyed wide dissemination and translation present challenges to those seeking an authoritative version. Similarly, those 'wandering texts' (p. 7) are difficult to attribute to a particular national literature, which is still the overarching framework that most often determines which texts are taught in literature courses.

After a thorough presentation of the issue at hand, the editors divide the collection into two sections. The first, 'Hanging by a Thread: Unique Manuscripts and Their Place in the "Modern" Medieval Canon,' addresses texts that exist in single manuscripts yet have a significant presence in modern scholarship and classrooms. Paul M. Cobb gives a detailed history of the life of Usáma ibn Munqidh's Book of Contemplation from 1880 on, noting that Usáma was an author whose persona modern scholars could reinterpret according to their own cultural contexts. Daniel C. Remein and Erica Weaver address Beowulf's journey in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, noting the more well-known history of 'Oxford dons seeking to legitimate English as a serious scholarly discipline' (p. 55), but centering their attention on the lesser-known critical history of Beowulf. Specifically, they bring to light the important role that scholars from elite women's colleges and historically Black colleges and universities in the United States have had in Beowulf's transmission. In his essay on Tawq al-hamáma (The Neck-Ring of the Dove), Boris Liebrenz briefly addresses the work's rediscovery in the early twentieth century and then turns to the first three centuries of the manuscript's life, tracing the text's journey using notes left by owners [End Page 65] on the first and last pages of the codex. Ryan D. Giles' contribution on the Poema de mio Cid details the anti-Jewish imagery of the text and highlights the role that late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century scholarship had in downplaying such imagery in the quest to elevate the Poema to the status of national epic and its eponymous protagonist to an 'internal model of Spain's essential values and transhistorical identity' (p. 128). To conclude the chapter on unica manuscripts, Sharon Kinoshita examines the transmission of Roland's deeds, considering first the unique Chanson de Roland in relation to the vast medieval Roncevaux tradition as well as the notable preoccupation with the transmission of Roland's deeds that is found in the Chanson itself. She then addresses the manuscript's rediscovery in the nineteenth century and the subsequent appropriation of the poem as a symbol of French nationalism and, lastly, the Chanson's more recent role in studies on race.

The second section, 'Medieval Bestsellers: Reading the "Medieval Canon"?', addresses texts that enjoyed wide dissemination in the Middle Ages yet have little presence in scholarship and undergraduate syllabi. In the first half of Daniel L. Selden's essay on the Life of Ahìqar, he expounds on the concept of distributed authorship and modern notions of world literature, which he then ties directly to the Life of...