The Erotic in the Literature of Medieval Britain ed. by Amanda Hopkins and Cory James Rushton (review)

Abstract

122ARTHURIANA attention to medieval women's writing and experience. However, Arthurians will find scant discussion oftheir topic. Despite these idiosyncrasies, this will be an engaging textbook for many beginners and courses on medieval British Litetature. PETER H. GOODRICH Northern Michigan University AmandaHopkins andCORYjAMES rushton, eds., TheEroticin theLiteratureofMedieval Britain.Woodbridge,Suffolk: D.S. Brewer,2007. Pp. iv, 182. isbn:978-1-84384-1197.$80. Hopkins and Rushton's edited collection offers insights into the role ofsexuality in the medieval English literary and social imagination. Their introduction complicates the prevailingapproach to the topic, Foucault's theories ofsexualityas a function ofpower structures, by introducing Leo Bersani's less-cited arguments for the importance of desire and submissiveness in the sexual relationship. The collection as a whole tends towards a theoretical balance between Bersani's emphasis and Foucault's idea. Eschewingan explicit rubric, the editors overlap essays to create topical intersections across thevolume. In one cluster, Sue Niebrzydowski, Margaret Robson, and Kristina Hildebrandtake up textsthattheyreadasvalidatingfemalesexual desire. Niebrzydowski argues that the Wife ofBath's emphasis offemale enjoyment simultaneouslyvalidates the male role in the sexual relationship. In her essay, Robson reads Sir Degarre as 'a female fantasy,' made so by 'the possibilities for sexual adventure' in which women's sexual experience is rendered acceptable and the male body is treated as 'an erotic object' chosen by the woman (93). Hildebrand contributes an analysis of fifteenthcentury letters between spouses which reveal gendered voices evoking 'an erotic subtext employing tetms ofdominance and submission' (138) that play on the tension of the empowered woman of Courtly Love and the dominant man of matriage. Essays by Cory J. Rushton, Corinne Saunders, Jane Bliss, and Michael Cichon address examples of threatening sexuality. Rushton broadly surveys the tradition of Gawain as philanderer to claim that problematic moral position is contained by the repeated emphasis on political alliance between men. In one of the volume's strongest essays, Saunders examines the threat manifested in magical women of medieval romance to discover that their powet is often linked with romantic desire, and though still constrained bygender, offsets the prowess ofmen, therebyinstilling both excitement and fear. Bliss's study ofthe subtle hints ofillicit desire in theAncrene Riwle reveals the rule authot's anxiety over lesbian acts and implies (though does not develop) the notion ofauthor as voyeur ofthe sexual acts he fears. Cichon takes up the trasgressive sexual acts in the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi to argue that the redactot of the tales 'uses the erotic potential ofhis tale to moralise' (112) about 'the negative sociopolitical connotations suggested by forbidden sexual acts' (115). Anthony Bale, Thomas H. Crofts and Simon Meechan-Jones examine the use of the erotic in religious and socio-political causes. Bale claims that the eroticized body of the Jewish daughter in later medieval exempla becomes a site of religious REVIEWS123 conflict and conversion in which Judaism is humiliated and Christian masculinity affirmed. Crofts argues that the poet of the alliterative Mort Arthure heightens the horrific sexuality and dietary appetites of the giant of Mont St. Michel over their presentation in either Wace or Layamon to indicate that the defeat of the giant reveals Arthur's limitations: he cannot save, but only avenge, rendering himself all too similar to the giant—a conclusion Crofts applies to U.S. actions in Iraq. Meecham-Jones analyzes the Arundel lyrics, specifically addressing 'Grates ago Vereri.' He suggests its poet uses the erotic physical relations of a male narrator with his lady to assert the abstract truth of the patadoxical incarnation theology. Amanda Hopkins, RobertAllen Rouse, and Alex Davis constitute a final group of essays that explore the differences between the medieval and the modern. Hopkins contends that the modern predilection for nakedness was not necessarily shared by medieval readers, since romances indicate an ambivalent association between clothing, nakedness, and the erotic. Rouse, in another ofthe collection's most interesting essays, endeavors to solve the riddle ofwhat makes Chestre's Triamoure erotic, since breasts were often perceived as utilitarian. He employs the medieval sciences ofthe seasons and humors to argue that summer was understood as a rime ofinordinate lust, similar to the choleric woman whose heat drove her to provocative sexuality. Davis concludes the book...