Arthuriana

One of the more notable characteristics of medieval romance is its obsession with names and naming. Withheld names, pseudonyms, naming rituals, disguises, and searches for names are so common in medieval romance as to constitute one of the genre’s defining themes. This is the argument put forward in Jane Bliss’s Naming and Namelessness in Medieval Romance, which—as the author takes pains to point out—‘is about how names mean, rather than about what they mean’ (2, emphasis in original). Bliss’s study offers not only a survey of the astounding range of different kinds of ‘name’ in English, French, and Anglo-Norman romance between 1100 and 1500 but also valuable insights into the complexities of the theme in medieval romance.

Naming and Namelessness is divided into two parts. Part I, ‘Context and Content,’ begins with a chapter that considers the genre of medieval romance and the characteristics it shares with other medieval genres. Although the theme of name may be found in a number of other medieval genres, Bliss observes that ‘only in romance do we encounter the full range of naming functions and significances: from texts with nobody named [The Squire of Low Degree, for example] to texts with everybody named’ (10, emphasis in original). She also contends, however, that it is not simple ‘density of naming’ (10) that constitutes a genre-indicator for romance, but rather the way that naming underlies and intersects with long-recognized romance themes such as adventure, love, chivalry, quest, honor, and magic. Name or identity may be the objective of a hero’s quest (as in Lybeaus Desconus), as may name-recognition—glory, worship, or fame is a typical knightly goal in the Morte Darthur. Female names can also play key roles in medieval romance: in Amadas et Ydoine, for example, the name of the hero’s lady acts as a healing charm to cure his madness. This kind of thematic interplay becomes more apparent in Bliss’s survey of romance’s many different categories of name, naming, and namelessness in Chapter 2, which highlights links between name and other romance tropes and motifs.

Part II of the book consists of five chapters that explore ‘Themes and Meanings’ in twenty-one different narratives, from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae to Malory. Chapter 3 considers ‘The Power of Name’ to effect and advertise shifts in the language, form, or genre of particular narratives. The fourth chapter examines the potentially disturbing unknown quality of heroes and heroines in ‘The Fair Unknown’ stories, analyzing naming for its own sake rather than simply as a function of identity. In Chapter 5, Bliss takes a closer look at texts that feature [End Page 136] ‘Unknown Women’—named women ‘whose names are lost, changed, or interrogated’ (134). She returns to stories whose heroes are unknown in her sixth chapter, pointing out the range of ways that the unknown quality of heroes can be treated in different romances. Bliss’s seventh chapter focuses on narratives about naming women, drawing attention to the way that authors and characters employ and manipulate the names of female characters. Following her conclusion (which reiterates her contention that naming should be recognized as a distinguishing theme of romance), Bliss supplies helpful contextual material in two appendices, including information about manuscripts and editions of the narratives she discusses in Chapters 3–7, as well as a useful timeline along which these narratives are arranged.

The main frustration that readers may experience with this book may be attributed to the nature of the study: it is a first step rather than a final destination, a much-needed careful analysis of the range of name-themes treated rather than a study that sets out to examine any of these themes in great depth. One such theme is the frequent namelessness of female characters in medieval romance. At a number of points throughout the study, Bliss observes that the fact that so many female characters go unnamed in medieval romances...