Content area
Full Text
Ruth j. Dean with the collaboration of Maureen B. M. Boulton, Anglo-Norman Literature: A Guide to Texts and Manuscripts, Anglo-Norman Text Society Occasional Publications Series 3 (London: Anglo-Norman Text Society, 1999). xviii + 553 pp. ISBN 0-905474-38-4. £35.00 for ANTS members; £49.00 for non-members.
All medievalists will rejoice at beginning the new millennium with this longawaited volume at their disposal. Let no one be misled by the word 'literature' in the title, which must be taken sensu lato to mean all that has been committed to writing in Anglo-Norman, save only documents of record. Nor should the generic description Guide suggest that coverage is partial or simplified, for what we have here is a pretty well exhaustive catalogue of Anglo-Norman works and their manuscripts, with details as follows: 'Each entry in the catalogue has a serial number, a title, a brief description of the form and content of the piece, and any information available about author, patron and date of composition. Next, an incipit identifies the text further by its opening words. The manuscripts are then listed alphabetically by city, with library, shelf-mark, folios, and a date for the script' (p. xi). From its conception in the 1930s the gestation of what came to be known as the 'new Vising' has attracted the solicitous and eager attention of scholars on five continents, many of whom have contributed to its growth and development until Maureen Boulton, acting as scholarly midwife, assured its safe passage into the brave new world of modem information technology, and, after an understandably protracted labour, the once modest embryo emerged as fully formed and as perfect a specimen of health and vigour as one could wish for. The number of works here listed is close to 1,000, that is, over 500 more than are recorded in Vising, and the number of manuscripts in which they are found exceeds 1,100, whilst Vising lists a mere 419. This is a colossal advance, made all the more impressive when it is considered that Ruth Dean has personally examined most of the MSS (see exceptions on p. 9), whereas Vising's listings were almost wholly derived at second hand from published catalogues. As a student in Oxford Dean had a thorough training in palaeography and her datings...