>The Auchinleck Manuscript: New Perspectives, ed. Susanna Fein. York: York Medieval Press, 2016; paperback 2018, xi, 6 b/w ill.

Even if non-English scholars might not be familiar with the Auchinleck Manuscript (Edinburgh, NLS, MS Advocates 19.2.1), the studies dedicated to this extraordinary collection of English romances and religious narratives from ca. 1330 or 1340 deserve very close attention because of their high scholarly level and their far-reaching implications. The original papers were orally presented at a symposium held at the University College in London in July 2008. It is not clear why it took until 2016 for the volume to appear in print. The present review is based on the paperback edition of 2018.

Killing the King

This chapter argues from the premise that ‘romance’ is a mode of thought, a discourse structuring narrative expectations, which interacts with all the competing discourses surrounding it. It considers the historical accounts of King John’s death, examining the late-thirteenth-century appearance of a new story, clearly derived from oral tradition and structured by the conventions of romance, which has John righteously poisoned for his crimes against the people. It is argued that the expectations of romance enable the Prose Brut chronicler to present the poisoner as a self-sacrificing hero for the English people, in a manner which exposes the possibility of the rightful destruction of a ruling king. Comparisons are drawn with the account in a monastic Latin chronicle, and in the Short English Metrical Chronicle in the Auchinleck manuscript, as well as with the romance of Havelok. It is argued that romance is an inherently political and politicizing discourse.

INSULAR SOURCES AND ANALOGUES OF THE OTHERWORLD IN THE MIDDLE ENGLISH SIR ORFEO

The Middle English Sir Orfeo presents a medievalized version of the classical myth of Orpheus that shows the influence of Celtic lore. Modern scholars seem to have accepted the views of A. J. Bliss, the editor of the Middle English romance, who argues that the English text is a translation of an Anglo-Norman or Old French version. Since we have no textual evidence that can positively support Bliss’s hypothesis, this article tests the possibility that the Middle English romance actually represents an insular tradition of the Orpheus myth that originated in Anglo-Saxon times with King Alfred’s rendering of the story and continued evolving by means of oral-memorial transmission until the fourteenth century, when the English romance was written down in the Auchinleck manuscript.