Understanding Scholastic Thought with Foucault by Philipp W. Rosemann (review)

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1?6ARTHURIANA device? Or, as is suggested, a negative way ofresponding to conditions in the world (the 'uninventive' mind)? Can we not give the author ofthis play more credit than this? This play, shot through as it is relentlessly with details ofsocial and economic relations, offers much more to the audience than an allegory that leads to a mind that can readily grasp 'divine nature in created reality' (151). Ifthis was all the Master had in mind then what is the audience supposed to think about the state ofworld affairs at play's opening, not to mention in Yorkshire? Purdon's analysis of the plays is here at cross-purposes with his claim that he wants the Wakefield Master to take his place alongside Chaucer and as a precursor to early modern English public theater. To do this, and I think it worth doing, he would need to attend more closely and sensitively to the Masters dramatic art as one not of 'conservative' purpose as a therapeutic experience of learning what amounts to proper Christian behaviour, but rather that spiritual iniquity and social inequality are inextricably linked in human being in the world. What theWakefield Master offers in his drama is an appeal to his audience's experience ofthe world and its many injustices and demands upon them for faith, perseverance, skill and character (in the Greek sense of ethos) through the promise of Christ's message of salvation through brotherly love and the rejection ofmodes ofbeing that ignore or attack this. BRAD GREENBURG Northeastern Illinois University Philipp w. rosemann, Understanding Scholastic Thought with Foucault. The New Middle Ages. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999. Pp. xiv, 256. isbn: 0-312-21713-7. $65. A recent and widely recognized trend which has come to be named the 'New Medievalism' combines sophisticated awareness of methodological theory with meticulous attention to historical detail in examining selected aspects of medieval culture, society, and institutions. Rosemann applies the post-structuralist theory of history developed by Michel Foucault to a survey ofscholastic intellectual history as an attempt to show how significant new insights are to be gained from the application ofa postmodern approach in the study ofmedieval intellectual history. He prefaces his work with a definition ofthe New Medievalism and a survey of its roots in the work of M.-D. Chenu and Fernand Van Steenburgen, then makes a brief review of some of the scholarly work in which a new approach to medieval studies can be observed. Examples include Alain de Liberas Penser au Moyen Age, new trends in the study ofJohn Scottus Eriugena, and the series Studia Artistarum founded by Olga Weijers and Louis Holtz. Rosemann notes the decline of Neoscholasticism and a general waning of interest in medieval sources after the Second Vatican Council, but urges a re-appropriation ofscholastic thought through recognition ofits affinities to the theoretical bases ofpostmodern thought. The book is divided into a series ofsix 'Studies' beginningwith a basic introduction to Foucault's philosophy of history, and its foundations in Nietsche's Die Geburt der Tragödieausdem Geiste derMusik. Special attention is given to Foucault's concept REVIEWS107 of the 'historical a prions' which are, in Rosemann's words, 'the set of cultural (economic, social, political, philosophical) presuppositions' (p. 37) that govern any given culture's experience ofits realities. Foucault's 'archaeological analysis,' therefore, can be applied to establishing the historical a priori ofthe middle ages, and then to analysing its intellectual practices, or the activities that Foucault defined as the culture's 'rules of formation.' In the second study, Rosemann compares the great medievalists De Wulf, Grabmann, and R. W. Southern on the doctrinal tradition ofthe Middle Ages, before applying a Foucauldian analysis to the tensions between Greek and Christian thought which characterized the patristic and medieval periods. Turning in the third study to the intellectual practices ofthe Middle Ages, Rosemann juxtaposes the techniques and technology of medieval writing with high Gothic architecture, the institutional structures of the universities, and the reading techniques ofscholasticism, thereby bringing to light the surprising interconnections that make up a new and distinctive set ofhigh medieval cultural a priori. Six black and white plate illustrations are included to support his presentation...