Mediaevalitas: Reading the Middle Ages ed. by Piero Boitani and Anna Torti (review)

Abstract

PiERO BOITANi and anna TORTi, eds., Mediaevalitas: Reading the Middle Ages. The J.A.W. Bennett Memorial Lectures, Ninth Series, Perugia 1995. Cambridge, Brewer, 1996. Pp. x, 183. isbn: 0-85991-488-7. $71. In recent years the term 'reading' in medieval studies has been redefined and expanded to act as a kind ofshorthand for the processes oftextual transmission and reception, as well as intertextuality and literary influence. Employing this shorthand, Piero Boitani and Anna Torti present Mediaevalitas: Reading the MiddleAges, a collection ofpapers from the J.A.W. Bennett Memorial Symposium in 1995. In this anthology they broach the rather broad subject of how medieval texts and culture have been 'read' and represented on an international scale, from the Middle Ages to the present. The title, perhaps, is a shade misleading. Although the collection does, as the title suggests, involve material from avariety ofliterary traditions, the anthology isweighed very heavily towards medieval and modern English texts, particularly Chaucer; it is scholars ofEnglish who will find the collection most useful. The first half of the book supplies four interesting readings of Chaucer and his contemporaries. Lisa J. Kiser demonstrates how Chaucer, Alain de Lille and Jean de Meun present three significantly different views ofa single medieval trope, Nature as a female figure. Adding another layer of reading, she brings to the discussion the philosophy ofecofeminism and examines its (somewhat dangerous) association with the Dame Nature tradition. In the second discussion of Chaucer as a reader, Robert R. Edwards discusses how Chaucer's hermeneutics respond to Boccaccio and Petrarch in the Clerk's Tale. The collection then switches from Chaucer reading to reading Chaucer as Julia Boffey deftly negotiates the tricky business oftrying to ascertain his impact on Charles ofOrleans, while exploring the issue ofinfluence and intertextuality amongst French and English medieval authors generally. Sheila Delany presents a somewhat more restricted example ofreading Chaucer in theAugustinian friar Osbern Bokenham's pious re-appropriation of Chaucer's Legend of Good Women, his reclamation ofthe hagiographie genre in his genuine collection offemale saints lives, Legends ofHoly Women, from Chaucer's courtly parody. The fifth essay in the collection makes the transition from medieval to modern readings ofmedieval texts. In it, Carol Meale considers how books and texts moved through the life of one woman, Alice Chaucer, and how her reading habits can be interpreted as a part of female participation in medieval literate culture. The latter halfofthe anthologyshifts to the subjects ofpost-medieval authors and critics reading medieval texts and, more broadly, medievalism in general. Leading this section is Thomas P. Roches effort to correct what he considers to be critical misreadings of Spenser's allegorical use ofthe Four Daughters of God to refashion political history in theFairie Queene. Next, Stefania D'Agata D'Ottavi provides arefreshingexpansion beyond the literaryfocus ofthe anthologyin her discussion ofBlake's artisticrendering ofChaucer's pilgrims in the image ofhis own (perhaps regressive) 'scholastic' world view. Angelo Righetti provides a more general discussion ofBrownings medievalism, in particular his readings of Dante in Sordello. Reading medieval culture is brought into the twentieth century in the last two contributions to Mediaevalitas, where ARTHURIANA 8.1 (1998) ARTHURIANA Toshiyuki Takamiya and Joerg O. Fichte examine Japanese and German reworkings of the Arthurian tradition. Aside from the aforementioned bias towards English literature, Boitani andTorti's collection does an adequate job of fulfilling its mission statement of 'reading the middle ages.' Still, given the broadness of the subject matter, not to mention the vagueness of the title, the book might have benefited from a more detailed introduction, including an elaboration of their understanding of the concept of 'reading' (it contains only avery briefpreface). Similarly, some selections in the volume use the term 'reading' simply as a hook for basic textual criticism without considering the concept carefully—although some ofthis criticism is interesting as such. Only a few contributors (Edwards, Boffey and Meale especially) demonstrate true sensitivity to the way 'reading' as a concept folds in on itself—enveloping the reception, interpretation and representation of texts or ideas. Nevertheless, whether by good fortune or good design, this anthology does a decentjob oflinkingvarieties ofreading regarding the Middle Ages, however loosely. JANINE ROGERS McGiIl University ...