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The two versions of Malory's Morte Darthur: Multiple negation and the editing of the text . By Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade. (Arthurian Studies, 35.) Woodbridge, Suffolk: D. S. Brewer, 1995. Pp. 169. Hardcover. $53.00.

The present book by Tieken-Boon van Ostade analyzes multiple negation in the Winchester Manuscript (henceforth W) and Caxton's version (henceforth C) of Malory's Morte Darthur, and discusses the textual relationship between them. It is in many ways an excellent work, based upon the author's thorough and accurate investigations of multiple negation in the two texts. According to the introduction, the objectives of the book are threefold: (1) to describe multiple negation in Malory's Morte Darthur; (2) to analyze the mechanism of the decline of multiple negation from standard English; and (3) to discuss the textual relationship between W and C of the Morte Darthur (p. 4). Tieken's main interest lies in the last of the three objectives, which she discusses within the framework of the history of English negation. Hence the first and the second objectives. Indeed, it is one of the virtues of the present book that historical perspectives of English negative constructions are incorporated into the discussion. Chapter 3 makes a fairly detailed survey of multiple negation in general and focuses upon the Morte Darthur within this framework. Tieken, for example, refers to Fries (1940:35), who maintains that in OE, "less than 35 per cent of the total of negative statements occur with multiple negative particles" (p. 17). Moreover, she herself makes a random analysis of the Morte Darthur, showing that the proportion of multiple negation in the Morte Darthur is around 15 per cent (p. 17). Multiple negation is already much on the decline in the text. The proportions given here are of great importance, since the rest of the present book concentrates upon the discussion of multiple negation only, and does not deal with single negation. Tieken also discusses the disappearance of multiple negation in detail (see chapter 9). She is particularly concerned with certain social