Textual Situations: Three Medieval Manuscripts and Their Readers by Andrew Taylor

REVIEWS Andrew Taylor. Textual Situations: Three Medieval Manuscripts and Their Readers. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002. 296. $55 (U.S.) cloth. At the centre of Andrew Taylor’s energetic book are three me­ dieval manuscripts, each including divergent material, each from a different century.1 Although the contents of the three are dis­ tinct, Taylor in each case assumes a purpose in the binding together of the particular pieces. Prom that point he goes on to consider who might have been the readers and what was the social context when the selection and the binding occurred. He wants us to work at envisioning the real people — reading, being read to — responding both to the individual manuscript pieces and to the resonance between them: thus, they will lead us to the “complexities of human behaviour and human desires” (10). So Taylor’s first premise is compelling. He insists on the importance of recognizing these volumes as artifacts and of scrutinizing their contexts: both the physical manuscripts and the social and intellectual forces that produced them. He quite rightly points out that in the case of the most famous canoni­ cal works of the Middle Ages (here specifically the Chanson de Roland and the Lai's of Marie de Prance), the texts with which they were bound have too often been disregarded. The opening quote in his first chapter, by Roger Chartier, in fact argues that there is no such thing as an “abstract text [...] no text exists outside of the support that enables it to be read” (1). Prom this position Taylor, taking aim at what he presents as some of the follies of earlier scholars and schools of editing, moves into some less convincing territory. He argues that until the modern period there really is no such thing as a reliable text, and that the search for the original “pure” version of me­ dieval works must necessarily be a vain enterprise. Further, he urges us to turn away from the “‘solitary genius immanent in the text’” (12)2 because, he claims, “the ultimate goal of recapE S C 28, 2002 ESC 28, 2002 turing a single authorial origin [...] is increasingly recognized as a chimera” (12). To make his case he cites the several versions of King Lear, which are without doubt problematical. But this is tendentious evidence, as the case of plays that were often in production is surely a special one. And as surely, the fact of the several versions does not mean that one ought to deny Shake­ speare or his intention; or that, more generally, the search for “authorial origin” is an outdated enterprise that ought to be abandoned. All of this is not to say that Taylor does not have a legiti­ mate point. The social and historical context in which a work is received will certainly affect its significance to each discrete audience or reader, and in this way, of course, its meaning is not fixed. But it is not a question of either/or: both can be true: reactions will shift over time; varying readers will be drawn to different aspects of a work; and still there can have been an originating “solitary genius” who had a particular intention for which it is not futile to search. This is the main limitation of this otherwise often brilliant book. Taylor seems to need to support his position not only with his meticulous scholarship and his infectious enthusiasm for his subject, but also by treating the “oldsters” with something like disdain. So to those who adhere to the school of “conserva­ tive” editing are attributed a slew of base motives: they defend their turf because that is how they make their living; they are patriarchal and classist; they desire immortality; they fear the physical; they create fantasies about their texts that they call scholarship (12 passim). The early generations of Roland scholars — Michel, Gau­ thier, Paris, Faral — come in for a rough ride. They are generally presented as a romantic lot — ecstatic at the idea that Prance finally had its own epic; irrationally attached to the idea that bits of their new-found national epic were sung at the Battle of Hastings; and enamoured of...

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