Storytelling may be one of the very oldest human activities after the acquisition of language. Language is a symbolic process that produces signifying sounds as a substitute for the things themselves; story allows those sounds to be linked to describe a sequence of events that are not present as fact but that have their existence in the mind, as memory or conjecture or imagination. The very earliest cave paintings or rock art suggest pre-existing stories of some kind behind them. Studies of memory formation and of childhood psychology suggest that it is the ability to form narratives, to shape random events into the syntax of a story, that enables an infant to make sense of the world it finds itself in.

Derek Brewer was increasingly fascinated by story and storytelling – not just in particular stories, though his delight in those masters of narrative Chaucer and Malory makes that evident, but in the principles underlying story itself. That is apparent even in the titles of some of his publications, in his Symbolic Stories: Traditional Narratives of the Family Drama in English Literature (1980), or in the collection of articles he entitled Chaucer: The Poet as Storyteller (1984b). That contains a reprint of his earlier Gollancz lecture, delivered in 1974, ‘Towards a Chaucerian Poetic’, which is perhaps his most concise and detailed consideration of the principles underlying story as such, and of the importance of story – especially traditional forms of narrative, folk-tales, fairy-tales and many medieval romances – over whatever meanings might be attached to them.

The trajectory of Derek Brewer's academic career does not invariably reflect trends of modern scholarship. Relatively few of his many publications are directly concerned with the topics of this chapter. But his activities in these areas of manuscript and textual study show that his sense of the potential for new forms of scholarly enquiry in medieval English studies was often remarkably prescient. By the time of his death, Middle English manuscript study and editing had come to enjoy positions of importance in which their historical and cultural significance were increasingly acknowledged. Brewer's own roles in these developments warrant some exploration, not least for what they suggest about the changing climate of Middle English scholarship in these areas over the course of his long careers as scholar, publisher and teacher.

Brewer's interest in manuscript study can be traced back to his uncompleted BLitt thesis, which he began at Oxford in 1948. Some of the research from this period was published in an early article that described Gloucester Cathedral, MS 22, a collection of sixty-six fifteenth-century sermons, some associated with Mirk's Festial, bound with a fragment of the Gesta Romanorum, in a different hand, all in Middle English. Brewer's article is perhaps less interesting for its substance than for some aspects of its method, particularly his consideration of the whole manuscript itself as a proper object of study.

Having completed his studies at Oxford after military service in the war, Derek Brewer took up a lectureship at the University of Birmingham in 1949. He joined there with Geoffrey Shepherd and, two years later, Eric Stanley to form a remarkable medieval triumvirate. During the years in which they worked together, Birmingham was a power-house of Old English and Middle English Studies, perhaps second to none in its day. Derek Brewer, who left for Cambridge in 1964, taught across the medieval syllabus, including Anglo-Saxon, but Chaucer, even in those earliest days, was the principal focus of his interest. He soon took over the Chaucer lectures from Margaret Galway, a scholar of the old school whose principal interest was in speculations about the details of Chaucer's life at court and the identity of his ‘Muse’. Derek Brewer's ambition, by contrast, was to share with students his love and understanding of Chaucer, not as a subject of biographical speculation nor as a repertoire of linguistic data, nor as a ‘set text’ to be hammered through remorselessly and translated line by line, but as a full member of the European community of poets and of the English poetic tradition. It was a revelation to those of us who were privileged to be his students at that time to hear Chaucer talked about as if he were important to us now, and important in the same way as Shakespeare or Milton or T. S. Eliot. We had heard of the New Criticism: we thought this was it.

My title carries an implicit question: was falling in love in the Middle Ages different from falling in love today? The question reflects the still widespread belief that medieval lovers adhered to a systematized ‘code’ of ‘courtly love, a special, artificial variety of romantic love that obliged the lover to act in strange and exaggerated ways – to love without necessarily revealing his love to the lady concerned, to remain her devoted slave for years without seeking so much as a kiss by way of reward, to obey her every whim, however humiliating, to faint, to weep, to adore her as if she were a goddess rather than a woman.