Blindness and Therapy in Late Medieval French and Italian Poetry by Julie Singer

Abstract

writing, or the connection between description, visual evidence, and painting. Here Schöch covers eighteenth-century theories of language in Condillac, Rousseau, and others, ultimately showing that painting is a model for descriptive writing. Passages of the type described in the second section represent only one aspect of descriptive writing in this period. An entire esthétique picturale begins to emerge at the narrative level in the novels of this period:“Cet enjeu concerne l’ensemble de l’écriture descriptive , passages descriptifs inclus, mais tout particulièrement la modalité de l’écriture descriptive que j’ai choisi de désigner comme le discours descriptif” (214). As this study demonstrates, we should not consider description or narration as abstract, transhistorical practices, but rather view them within specific historical frameworks. This typology of novels will certainly form a useful basis for comparison with other novels of the period, or with descriptive practices in other periods. Boston University Gillian B. Pierce Singer, Julie. Blindness and Therapy in Late Medieval French and Italian Poetry. Cambridge: Brewer, 2011. ISBN 978-1-84384-272-9. Pp. 238. $99. Situated at the junction of medieval studies and disability studies, Singer’s book combines literary analysis and cultural history to offer an insightful examination of the interaction between rhetoric and medicine in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century French and Italian poetry. Singer focuses on the role of eyesight and blindness in love at a time when lyric explored—and at times, challenged—medical concepts. After presenting her project, Singer turns to the overlap of medical and poetic discourses in the love-imprint. She discusses the evolving view of the eye, which became an active participant in creating love, and demonstrates that the eyes served as a site of sex difference, with love darts or rays emanating from women’s eyes and being received by men’s.Anti-medical discourse is at the heart of the second chapter.While emphasizing Italian lyric, Singer explains that Petrarch’s justification of rhetoricians’ borrowing of medical language prepares the way for later French poets to treat blindness. The rest of the volume examines four rhetorical strategies: irony, metaphor, metonymy, and synecdoche, each analyzed in a separate chapter. Singer places irony in the context of the humors and restoring balance through contraries. She defines medieval irony and outlines two main models before focusing on works by Petrarch and Jacques Bauchant. The use of medical metaphor, particularly in Machaut’s Remede de Fortune, reveals that verse may distract from pain and that form can offer a cure: Singer provides a fascinating investigation of the reflection of the narrator’s lovesickness in the fixedform poems, arguing that the lover can ultimately heal himself. Singer also considers metaphor in Christine de Pizan’s Avision Christine,Alain Chartier’s Livre de l’Espérance, and the work of Gilles le Muisit, a blind abbot. Form continues to play an important role in the chapter linking metonymy and prosthesis. Machaut’s Livre du Voir Dit takes 232 FRENCH REVIEW 87.4 Reviews 233 center stage, with Singer proposing that the lyric insertions compensate for lacks. She sees the use of ‘round’ fixed forms such as ballades, virelais, and rondeaux as supplementing the defective eye’s role in love. Ultimately, she concludes, the lyric prostheses fail because they stand out from the surrounding text instead of concealing their difference. Singer devotes her final chapter to synecdoche, concentrating on images of blindfold Fortune in French poetry. Studying works by Machaut, Charles d’Orléans, Villon, Martin Le Franc, and Pierre Michault, she uncovers the therapeutic potential of blindness itself. Singer’s work is a model of the interdisciplinarity that she sees in her texts,which intermingle poetic and medical language.There are rare inconsistencies (Michault’s title is given as both“Dance”and“Danse” aux aveugles), and occasionally, Singer provides more background information than necessary for her arguments whereas at other times—particularly for authors besides Petrarch and Machaut—I wished for greater detail. Moreover, the volume could explore further the issue of how ‘real’ the effects of rhetorical remedies are. Those minor quibbles notwithstanding, Singer’s innovative approach raises important questions about lyric’s power, inviting us to view blindness...