Transcript
342 M EDIUM Æ VUM LXXVI. 2 Catherine A. M. Clarke, Literary Landscapes and the Idea of England, 700 – 1400 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2006 ). x + 160 pp. ISBN 1 – 84384 – 057 –X.£ 45 . 00 /$ 80 . 00 . The debate over the extent o Latinate infuence on Anglo-Saxon literary culture is one that continues unabated within the ranks o Anglo-Saxonistsand their Anglo-Latinist colleagues. Catherine Clarke’s Literary Landscapes and the Idea of England represents an intelligent, erudite, and thought-provoking engagement with such issues o Latin literary infuence on medieval insular writings. Beginning with Bede, and moving on to other early insular writers suchas Gildas, Clarke traces the use o the moti within the Anglo-Latin tradition toconstruct the image o the ‘delightul island’, an Edenic space upon which the various histories o the insular peoples are mapped by their respective authors.In the second chapter, the investigation o the place o the locus amoenus isextended into the vernacular literature o the Anglo-Saxons. It is in these rst two chapters that Clarke seems most in command o her material, discussing the use o the locus amoenus within the Anglo-Saxon period. Addressing the issuethat ‘[m]any studies continue to approach Old English poetry without the sameassumptions o literariness, sophistication and intertextuality which are typically brought to early medieval Latin texts’ (p. 49 ), Clarke convincingly puts the casethat Old English poetry should instead be understood to operate in a similarliterary context to contemporary Anglo-Latin texts. In the second hal o thebook Clarke considers the continuing importance o the locus amoenus in post-Conquest literature, dealing rst with the appropriation o the imagery o Bede’sdelightul island or the purposes o institutional identity construction in themonastic houses o Glastonbury, Ramsey, and Ely. In the nal chapter we areled rom the countryside into the city, where the pastoral trope is transormedinto the rhetoric o the ‘delightul city’.One o the minor shortcomings o the study is the somewhat unsophistic-ated nature o the discussion o the refexes o national identity. While the caseor the locus amoenus acting as a ‘key image in the invention and promotion o English national and cultural identity’ (p. 66 ) is cogently argued, the nature o what this identity might be, or o the wider cultural discourses that it may beintertwined with, are subjects largely let unexplored. In Literary Landscapes and the Idea of England , Clarke has o ff ered us a timely and illuminating reminder o the complexities o geographical representation within medieval literary culture. At a moment when the geographical turn in medieval studies – and the culturalturn in geography – is in ull swing, it is a salient reminder that an awareness o classical rhetoric remains an essential weapon in the critical armoury. Vancouver ROBERT ALLEN ROUSE
