Review of Douglas Gray, 'Simple Forms: Essays on Mediaeval English Popular Literature' (Oxford: University Press, 2015). Pp. ix, 267, with about 10 blanks end papers, for notes, references, etc., to be added, if so desired.

Abstract

This quietly but elegantly presented and apparently gently argued but clearly deeply reflective survey of the English and England-linked culture, story and better known books, is a work which appeals enormously to the present reviewer, and, indeed, it should also do so to most with an interest in (comparative) folklore on many grounds. For it was written by a man, born in Melbourne, and first trained at the feet of Professor Ian Gordon, in the Victoria University of Wellington, in New Zealand. He had then been a student at Merton College in Oxford in the time of J.R.R. Tolkien, and long taught at Pembroke College there, before being appointed, also in Oxford, to the Foundation post of the Tolkien Professor of English Language and Literature, as located in Lady Margaret Hall. Shortly before the book was released, he had retired on age.