Women and Literature in Britain, 1150–1500 ed. by Carol M. Meale

Abstract

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER plains how knowledge of the position of the moon and other bodies in the zodiac will aid the physician in determining both fortunate and perilous days not only for medical treatments but also for the initiation of such endeavors as a journey. The division of "Horticulture" displays one text: "A Middle English Treatise on Horticulture: Godfridus super Palladium," edited by David G. Cylkowski from Bodleian Library manuscript e Musreo 116, part 1, folios 49vb-61vb. The text, which is a translation of the fourth-century Opus agriculturae of Paladius Rutilius Taurus }Emilianus and which instructs a gardener how and when to plant, to harvest, and to make good wine, like others in this volume depends strongly on the zodiacal placements of the moon and other major heavenly bodies. The final division is "Navigation," and its single text bears the title "The Earliest English Sailing Directions." Edited by Geoffrey A. Lester mainly from the fifteenth-century Pierpont Morgan Library manuscript 775, folios 131-138v, with guidance from three other manuscripts, the text is con­ cerned with sailing directions along the coasts ofEngland, Brittany, Spain, and Ireland. The diversity of the many scientific disciplines contained in the manu­ scripts examined in this volume must have been a challenge to the general editor, who has wisely insisted that each editor make a point of describing the particular science under consideration as well as his, her, or their base manuscript and other manuscripts used for collation or comparison pur­ poses. Each text has been given line numbers, and the uniformity among the twelve entries is welcome. Yet the various sciences presented here, although differing in their purposes, have a common root in their depen­ dency on astrological configurations. The book is valuable in that it gives a boost to our knowledge of medieval science and as such should be wel­ comed by all those with an interest in medieval texts. SIGMUND EISNER University of Arizona CAROL M. MEALE, ed. Women and Literature in Britain, 1150-1500. Cam­ bridge Studies in Medieval Literature, vol. 17. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Pp. x, 223. $49.95. This collection of chapters on aspects of the relationships between women and books in post-Conquest England and Wales represents the pioneering 236 REVIEWS work being done in the field by a generation of women scholars in British universities, all in one way or another committed to feminist research into medieval culture. Unlike most of the medieval feminist scholarship ema­ nating from North American literature departments, with its focus on sophisticated readings of texts, the emphasis in most chapters here is on primary research of a traditional historicist kind, where issues of literary or feminist theory seldom raise their heads. But if the frequent appeals to "women's experience," a "female perspective" and "independence" can be problematic in their expression of unexamined assumptions about the ex­ tent to which such categories can be reified, the results are on the whole well worth it. Many of these chapters succeed in combining impressive amounts of detailed archival work with suggestive analyses both of medi­ eval culture itself and of problems of historical methodology. If this is not quite a landmark book, it is surely a harbinger of the way our thinking about literary culture in the Middle Ages is destined to be transformed by the kind of painstaking exhumations of women's lives and roles attempted here. After a brief introduction, the book contains nine chapters, two of them on Anglo-Norman romance and hagiography (respectively), two on Middle English romance, three on religious women as readers and book owners, and two on surviving works by women (respectively) in English and in Welsh-the inclusion of Welsh and the proper emphasis given to Anglo­ Norman being especially welcome. The three studies of romance with which it begins-"The Power and the Weakness of Women in Anglo­ Norman Romance," by Judith Weiss; "Women as Lovers in Early English Romance," by Flora Alexander; and "Mothers in Middle English Ro­ mance," by Jennifer Fellows-are in some ways the least innovative in the book, usefully mapping out the fields with which they are concerned but not asking hard enough...