Traditions and Renewals: Chaucer, the Gawain-Poet & Beyond. Marie Borroff. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003. Pp. xii + 275. $35.

Marie Borroff's Traditions and Renewals contains ten essays of which three are new and the remainder re-publications. The essays are divided into three sections: Chaucer, The Gawain-Poet, and Philological. In her introduction Borroff describes her interests as reflected in the volume, which have much to do with the trajectory of her career: her study with the "Chicago Critics," her Yale experiences which involved the history of the language but also a critical focus on the meanings of Middle English words, and then subsequently her turn to metrics. More recently, she says, she has directed her "attention to sound symbolism as an essential feature of poetic language" (p. xi). The essays do not address themselves to social or political issues or those of gender (pp. xi-xii).

Lawrence M. Clopper
Indiana University