Julian of Norwich: A Book of Essays ed. by Sandra J. McEntire (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS133 Hyland also briefly considers hunting in the Orient, in Byzantium, in the Mongolian empire, among the Mamluks, the Turks, Persians, Syrians, and the Indians. Moreover, the author also closes in on the tournament and discusses many ofits features involving the hotse. The large number of illustrations helps the reader to gain a significantly better understanding of key factors and provides references to individual types of horses and their equipment. These visual sources include tapestry, sculpture, seals, paintings, woodcuts, book miniatures, carvings, photos ofconcrete objects, drawings, and others. The book's greatest strength—its astonishing level ofdetailed information—might also be its drawback as too many aspects are considered here and cannot be covered thoroughly enough. On the one hand the reader will be pleased to notice that many eastern European and Middle Eastern cultures have been consulted for this monograph, but this also implies that too little attention has been spent on subtle but important differences. Nevertheless, Hyland has at least made the effort to open various windows toward neighboring countries where often the most valuable horses had come from during the Middle Ages. And it needs to be added that she commands a very concise and clear style with which she is able to communicate all the essential information necessary to gain a reasonably well founded picture. This study on the medieval horse is impressive because Hyland succeeds in combining socio-economic with biological, military, agricultural, medical, and cultural aspects. ALBRECHT CLASSEN University ofArizona Sandra j. McEntire, ed., Julian ofNorwich: A Book ofEssays. New York: Garland, 1998. Garland Medieval Casebooks 21. Pp. xvii, 341. Bibliography, index, isbn: o— 8153-2529-0. $70. Professor McEntire adheres to Julian of Norwich's Short Text as written first, the LongText later, and all the LongText manuscripts written ca. 1650, from not knowing that the Paris Manuscript is Elizabethan, ca. 1580, and holding the Westminster Manuscript to be by a male editor for a lay audience. Nicholas Watson's important contextual querying ofthe dates of the Long and Short Texts is ignored. Though Sandra McEntire, Denise Baker and Nicholas Watson base their interpretations ofJulian largely upon Augustine, a deeper insight into the writings of the two theologians' lectio divina is to be found in Christopher Abbot's Julian of Norwich: Autobiography and Theology. Baker's essay observes that Julian's use of Augustine is deeper than that ofHilton, that they develop that influence in antithetical ways, not influencing each other. Baker concludes that Julian's Revelation is from God, Hilton's the result of priestly study. Watson notes the Augustinian distinctions concerning corporeal, imaginative and intellective visions as present in Julian and in Alfonso ofJaen's EpistoU Solitarii. Susan Hagen's essay could have benefited from knowing that the Cardinal of England and Norwich Benedictine Adam Easton's titular basilica in Rome was Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, and by 1413, the stated date ofthe Amherst Manuscript, he was 134ARTHURIANA buried in a tomb by hers. St. Cecilia was cited by lay men and women to justify their teaching theology under Arundel's Persecution of Lollards. St. John of Beverley may be an interpolation into the Long Text, of a saint revered by Henry V and Syon Abbey, which preserved this text, following Agincourt. Feminist studies by men outweigh those by women in this volume. Brad Peters, like Abbot, sees the need to study Julian through lectio divina, requiring sensuous love and desire, linking the ancient mode of reading with Lacan. He sees Christ as maternal, as (m)Other, while the 'Feend' is clearly male. Cynthea Massons essay is excellent on time and space, on 'point' and 'touch,' continuing on to Julian's use of chiasmus. (She cites Geoffrey de Vinsauf, but ignores John ofGarland, whose works the Lynne author of Promptorium Parvulorum used. Both Englishmen discussed ordo naturalis and ordo artificialis.) Jay Ruud, in a chiasmus, returns to the theme of the Feend as male, and as Other, as rapist, as Muslim, as Jew, while seeing Christ not as (m)Other, but Lover. DavidTinsley studies 'Julian's Diabology' with German mystics' writings, such as Henry Suso and Elsbeth Stagel, not knowing that Suso s Horologium Sapientiae is excerpted in the Amherst Manuscript...