Printing the Middle Ages by Siân Echard (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 283 ture. Her discussion of the episode early in the saga in which Cú Chulainn is late to defend the borders of Ulster because he has been trysting with Fedelm (or her maidservant, according to a gloss that has made its way into the text at this point) suggests that what is at stake in this narrative is not simply misogyny : Fedelm is a key figure in pseudo-historical genealogical tradition, and her presence here ties this episode to the narrative and politics of the Tara kingship via her husband Cairpre. Here, Dooley finds a political/historical narrative beneath the misogyny of the recensions. Chapter 7, “The Sense of an Ending,” turns to the closing episodes of the saga. Raising points of comparison with other sagas, Dooley considers questions of genre and creativity within the tradition. She also reads the well-known double (and contradictory) scribal colophons from LL. Dooley’s “Epilogue” turns once again to the nature of her study, indirect and complex (on the model, she seems to imply, of the Táin itself). While the complexity of the Táin surely merits a complex study, the roundabout nature of this study may frustrate readers, especially non-Celticists. Ultimately, however, Dooley raises many provocative and important questions here. REBECCA BLUSTEIN, Comparative Literature, UCLA Siân Echard, Printing the Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 2008) xvi + 314 pp., 83 ill. This book argues that our encounters with medieval texts rely on and are conditioned by a variety of visual cues. The chapters outline the ways in which we desire and need the images, particular typefaces, and evidences of reliable facsimile that accompany medieval texts in their postmedieval manifestations. Echard names these visual cues collectively “the mark of the medieval” (4), and she explores the ways in which they work together to cultivate a particular “aura” about the text. The book opens with a discussion of the images we associate with Piers Plowman, and thus provides a compelling instance of the broader argument. The focus on the visual is unusual and provocative. Published as part of the University of Pennsylvania Press’s series “Material Texts,” Printing the Middle Ages’ title leads the reader to expect a broader study of the postmedieval production of medieval texts—perhaps with attention to the book as a whole, or the practices of printing more specifically. Within the study of the history of the book, Echard’s innovation is to elevate the visual as an aspect of the book’s materiality, or perhaps to invite scholars to draw more liberally on vocabularies of visualization in the study of the materiality of texts. This consistent emphasis on the visual also equips the reader to evaluate new and emerging approaches to medieval texts. In the final section of the book, on digitized manuscripts, Echard explores the conventions that govern the most recent web-based reproductions or visualizations of medieval texts. In Chapters 2 to 5, Echard takes up a series of texts and explores the visual aspects of their postmedieval lives. Each chapter’s text exemplifies a particular mode of the “mark of the medieval.” The book’s first chapter is unique, however , because it does not focus on a particular text; instead it explores the use of special archaic typefaces in the transmission of various Old English texts. In this chapter, Echard first draws examples from the early days of printing, but her discussion then ranges to maps, portraits and historical dictionaries from the REVIEWS 284 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The examination of typeface in dictionaries is a memorable highlight. It is unfortunate that the typographical theme of this chapter resurfaces rarely in the remainder of the book—this is the only strand of Echard’s study that tends not to be woven in throughout an otherwise cohesive book. Chapter 2 traces the practices of illustration in two romances—Guy of Warwick and Bevis of Hampton—and demonstrates to great effect the impact of particular woodcuts on the survival of medieval texts. Chapter 3 examines the marks of authenticity in practices of copying and later facsimile creation, in the context of British aristocrats’ medieval genealogical claims. The fourth chapter turns to adaptations of...