Carleton Brown (1869–1941)

Carleton Brown was one of those scholars who changed the field of medieval English literature. First and foremost, it was because of his work on the Index of Middle English Verse with Rossell Hope Robbins -- a work now formally superseded by the online Digital Index of Middle English Verse, but still alive in spirit and in hundreds of thousands if not millions of citations. But Brown was also a great influence because of his three Religious Lyrics volumes, one each for the thirteenth, show more fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. These works are highly esteemed because, while they don't print all short religious poetry of the era, they print a very thorough selection, with quality texts, descriptive titles, notes, glossary, and index of texts. The Index of Middle English Verse is out of date. These three books really aren't.

If there is any defect, it lies in the notes. Brown lists source manuscripts (generally in the body of the work, but variant sources are in the notes) and modern editions (the latter list of course long out of date), along with occasional comments on the meaning of or history behind particular lines. But there is no overall commentary on the pieces. A random example: Brown gives his #88, from the famous MS. Sloane 2593, the title "Balthazer, Melchior, and Jasper," although the first line is "Out of the blosome sprang a thorn." The blossom is probably the Virgin Mary, the thorn is Jesus (by a long complicated analogy to the branch of David, which was a title of the Messiah), and the three men of Brown's title are the three Magi who visited Jesus. But the Magi have no names in Matthew's gospel (indeed, there is no evidence that there were three of them; all Matthew says is that they gave three gifts). Tradition made them Balthasar, Gaspar, and Melchior, or some such names. Are there sources for the spellings in this poem? Brown's notes don't offer any help on this point.

An index of manuscripts/sources would be nice, too.

The poetry itself is, not surprisingly, a mixed bag, some very beautiful, some very clever (I particularly liked "Every One Finds His Match"), most very pedestrian -- there are only so many ways to say the same thing, after all. So it's not a perfect book. And the poetry is all religious, and often very Catholic, and all Middle English; for those who aren't used to it, some of these poems will be difficult to understand. So this book is not for everyone. But if you are interested in this sort of thing, there is no better book. show less