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Language and Imagination in the Gawain-Poems. By
J. J. Anderson. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press,
2005. Pp. viii + 247. $24.95.
Drawing on his more than four decades of sustained scholarly engagement
with the Middle English poems in british Library MS. Cotton Nero A.x,
J. J. Anderson has written the latest in a series of recent studies designed
to provide “readable” introductions to these much-studied texts. More
detailed than J. A. burrow's very brief The Gawain-Poet, in the
Writers and their Work series (2001), and less idiosyncratic than Ad Putter's
An Introduction to the Gawain-Poet (1996), Anderson's
book is an especially good candidate for course adoptions. Its language
and structure are appropriate for advanced undergraduates, while its formalist
methodology makes it a natural complement to A Companion to the Gawain-Poet,
edited by Derek brewer and Jonathan Gibson (1997), as supplementary reading
for graduate seminars.
Martin J. Camargo
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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