Proceedings of the Patristic, Mediaeval and Renaissance Conference (review)

Abstract

146 Reviews a dislike of play-texts where the notes are printed on the left-hand page of an opening and the text on the right. This may be irrational, but I am fairly sure that it does have the effect of fragmenting the play, and typographicdly it is ugly. Nevertheless it dlows editors far more scope in their annotations than notes at the foot of the page, while avoiding the difficulty of annotations placed at the end of the volume - which are dways in danger of being left unread. The greater scope of this arrangement, then, is welcome, for it dlows careful and well-considered annotations. It does, nevertheless, invite prolixity, which these editors avoid on the whole, though they do occasiondly indulge themselves, as in the 12-line note on the passing reference to Roger Bacon in line 183. Elsewhere, the ampUtude of the notes is weU justified, given that m o d e m readers of the edition are likely to have much less access to the theologicd and philosophical questions discussed in the play than readers of an earlier generation. A similar observation may be made about the Introduction. In length it rivds those to be found in the Arden series of Shakespeare plays. Yet, while many Arden editors use those introductions for barely disguised ego-tripping, Ormerod and Wortham provide genuinely helpfd materid for the m o d e m reader in a graceful, clear but by no means unscholarly manner. The long section on Renaissance numerology may be thought by some to be rather tangentid to the play's concerns and materid, and yet it is, I think, apposite, and it does provide as lucid an account of the subject as readers are likely to find anywhere. I welcome this edition, therefore, dmost without reservations - and, as a closing thought, it is worth remarking that it is the work of scholars working in Australia and that it is published by that most endangered, if not extinct of species, a university press. A.P. Riemer Department of EngUsh University of Sydney Proceedings ofthe Patristic, Mediaeval and Renaissance Conference (Augustinian Historicd Institute, Villanova University), Vol. 11 (1986); pp.186. This volume offers varied fare unrelated to any particular theme. The following summary may help readers to locate material germane to their interests. Seven papers provide carefully delimited discussions in the area of Latin philosophical or theologicd thought L. Verheijen (The Confessions of Saint Augustine: two grids of composition and of reading) examines 113 passages in the Reviews 147 Confessions contdning the words confiteor or confessio and speculates on the purpose and motives behind the text (incorporating some curious words: 'homogeneousness' p.6, 'maticd' p.13). M . B u n o w s (Another look at the sources of the De consolatione philosophiae: Boethius' echo of Augustine's doctrine of Providentia), J. Cavadini (Claudius of Turin and the Augustinian Tradition), and S. Davis (The unity of the virtues in Abelard's Dialogues)findunnoticed traces of Augustinian influence from the 6th to the 12th centuries. C.T. Eby (Nicholas of Cusa and medievd cosmology: an historical reassessment) finds that Cusa 'behaved very much like a typicd medievd astronomer who relied heavily upon the classicd authorities for support rather than observed factud evidence ... yet at the same time [he provides] one of the most comprehensive syntheses of God and the physicd universe in the late medievd world'. G. Echard (The string untuned - anti-Reformation aspects of Guillaume Bud6's De transitu) discusses a humanist defence of the church, and C. Gross (Wiltiam of Conches: a curious grammaticd argument agdnst the eternity of the world) comments on the importance of grammar for a twelfth century cathedral school magister and establishes that, despite the paper'stitle,'William's grammaticd argument exceeds the merely curious'. Three papers expldn that idiosyncrasies to m o d e m readers in medievd vernacular texts are, in fact, not so idiosyncratic if one understands the appropriate structures, oral contexts, textual attitudes, and expectations that apply: G. Berlin (Grendel's advance on Heorot: the functions of anticipation); S. Clark (Sdd and unsdd, m d e and femde: Leaving, Left and Left Out in Heinrich von Veldecke's...