Poets and Prophets

Professor T.A. Shippey writes in his introduction to the present volume: `Speaking personally, Geoffrey Shepherd had a claim to being more influential on other medievalists than any other Englishman of his generation.' His former pupils testify to his intelligence and subtlety, yet he never wrote a full-length book, and his scholarship survives in a handful of articles and in his work as an editor. This volume therefore represents the tangible testament of a major figure in English literary scholarship. The focus of the pieces reprinted here is on Anglo-Saxon religious verse, on Chaucer and on Piers Plowman, and in them Geoffrey Shepherd's highly original and often paradoxical approach is evident; he was equally interested in poetic vision and the value of grammar as a discipline, in the theory of storytelling and in the minutiae of textual editing. These rich and subtle pieces have much to offer, and their reissue will be widely welcomed.GEOFFREY SHEPHERDwas Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Birmingham.