Manuscript Holdings Research Articles

Manuscript Treasures from Najaf in Carl Brockelmann’s Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur

Abstract In the 1890s, Carl Brockelmann (d. 1956) embarked on a mission to compile single-handedly a bibliography of the entire extant Muslim literary tradition in the Arabic language. Though the task proved impossible to accomplish in full, the supplement volumes (published in 1937, 1938, and 1942) and the second edition (published in 1943 and 1949) that eventually replaced the original Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur (GAL) remain an indispensable tool for Arabists and Islamicists today, especially for the mid-fifth/eleventh century and later. Little is known about how Brockelmann went about his work in the decades between the publication of the original GAL and the late 1930s and 1940s, when he was preparing the supplements and the second edition. Access to the relevant primary and secondary material proved challenging and variable over the course of Brockelmann’s career. The difficulties he encountered in consulting the relevant materials were partly alleviated by the support he received from colleagues, especially Hellmut Ritter (d. 1971), who was based in Istanbul and had access to the rich manuscript holdings of the local libraries. However, the importance of Ritter’s contributions to Brockelmann’s work goes beyond these manuscripts. For example, Ritter provided Brockelmann with two documents concerning the manuscript treasures of Najaf: a letter he had received in March 1936 from a young scholar in Najaf, ʿ⁠Alī al-Khāqānī (d. 1400/1979 or 1980), in which the latter described a selection of locally held manuscripts, and a handwritten catalogue by one Najafābādī. Eventually Brockelmann also had access to the first two volumes of Āghā Buzurg al-Ṭihrānī’s (d. 1389/1970) al-Dharīʿ⁠a ilā taṣānīf al-Shīʿ⁠a, his third important source for the manuscripts of Najaf. The present study analyses Brockelmann’s usage of these three sources.

Eastern Christian and Islamic Manuscripts in Minnesota: Handwritten, Microfilm, and Digital

Abstract: This article is a brief overview of Eastern Christian and Islamic collections in Minnesota, with a focus on the holdings of the largest such collection, located at the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library (HMML) in Collegeville. Minnesota's manuscripts are largely defined by their digital presence and physical absence, as HMML has amassed the world's largest collection of digital manuscript images while the digitized manuscripts remain in libraries around the world. However, HMML holds a (relatively) small collection of physical manuscripts as well, which is the focus of this survey. The collection includes Islamic manuscripts in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, along with Christian manuscripts in Amharic, Arabic, Armenian, Church Slavonic, Coptic, Geʻez, Georgian, Greek, Russian, and Syriac. Highlights include twenty-one Geʻez magic scrolls, three copies of Muḥammad al-Jazūlī's Arabic prayer book Dalāʼil al-khayrāt , late antique Coptic and Greek texts on papyrus and wood, and a Georgian palimpsest fragment with two Syriac undertexts. The article describes the history of the institution and its manuscript holdings and gives an outline of the collection's contents.

Victoria Moul. A Literary History of Latin and English Poetry: Bilingual Verse Culture in Early Modern England

The Latin poetry of early modern English writers has typically been the preserve of classical reception studies; scholars of English literature have tended to regard it as tangential, inferior, or merely derivative. Moul’s groundbreaking study insists upon the inseparability of early modern English and Latin poetry and the impossibility of reading one without the other. Drawing extensively on her own recent investigations of early modern Latin manuscript holdings in English collections—the first such survey in modern times—as well as on early printed texts, she argues forcefully for the bilingualism of early modern English verse culture, demonstrating the constant counterpoint between the respective strands of Latin and vernacular poetry. For English literary scholars, the book’s most striking achievement is to demonstrate, as Moul puts it, ‘how English verse culture as a whole looks, feels, sounds and makes sense differently if we stop pretending that all that Latin is not there’ (p. 2). She shows not only the extent to which early modern readers and writers were steeped in classical literature but also how the classical canon as taught in humanist grammar schools differed from that of the modern curriculum and the generic, lexical, and thematic implications of that difference. In a valuable correction to a conventional view of Renaissance writers as determinedly ‘classicizing’, she demonstrates the importance of medieval and later Latin literature, as well as the biblical and vernacular traditions. By showing how the neo-Latin tradition feeds into the vernacular, and by setting vernacular poetry in its contemporary neo-Latin context, she is able to provide some new and arresting readings of familiar texts. Both Latinists and English scholars will welcome the array of virtually unknown authors who appear at every turn, offering tantalizing prospects for further study.

Advertising and marketing archives and ephemera at the Harvard libraries: discovery and opportunity

Purpose A series of online searches of the Harvard University Library System – which includes the Baker Library, Houghton Library and the Radcliffe Institute’s Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library – on the History of Women in America revealed nearly 1,000 archive and manuscript holdings on advertising and related topics. This paper aims to investigate the extent of these holdings, to assess their value to advertising and marketing historians and to explore their potential for encouraging future research on under-investigated topics and questions. Design/methodology/approach Described are the extensive and valuable special collections and other holdings related to advertising, business and marketing of the Harvard Library System. Also described are the availability of the holdings and recommendations for accessing and studying the collections and artifacts. Findings The research reported here supports an overall conclusion that the Harvard Library System holds an important place among the world’s repositories of valuable historical advertisements and marketing ephemera. The research also supports four specific conclusions regarding the historical value of Harvard’s collections and archives. First, some of the collections offer access to artifacts and items from an under-investigated period – the first half of the 19th century. Second, many of the collections are international in scope. Third, the collections represent a wide array of 19th century non-periodical advertisements and ephemera, such as trade cards, posters and theatrical playbills. Fourth, and most important, the collections offer significant potential for addressing, among other under-investigated topics, the important role of women in the development of modern advertising theory and professional practices. Originality/value A prior search for the world’s largest and most historically significant archives and collections of advertisements and marketing ephemera (promotional objects or media executions created for a one-time, limited purpose) revealed a handful of library and museum collections of exceptional size or topical importance meriting further investigation. This paper adds to an extensive line of research published in the marketing and advertising historical literature exploring and describing the breadth, depth and historical value of the world’s important collections of historical advertisements and ephemera.

The Abteilung für Sondersammlungen of the Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Tirol in Innsbruck: a brief introduction on history, status quaestionis and ongoing projects

This article outlines the history of the Universitats- und Landesbibliothek Tirol (University and Provincial Library of Tirol at Innsbruck, ULB Tirol) in Innsbruck from the initial idea for its establishment arising in 1731 through its actual foundation in 1745, as well as its connection, shaped by various interactions, with the Leopold-Franzens-University in Innsbruck founded in 1669. The text also provides general information on the modern-day ULB Tirol, including data on its general tasks and mission, its holdings and numbers of users, and the individual departments of the library. The main focus of the article lies on the Department of Special Collections and its manuscript holdings, however. It offers an overview of the cataloguing projects conducted over the past fifty years and the status quo of those projects, as well as discussing their boundaries and the possibilities they have opened up. Finally, three specific projects are presented that are either currently being implemented or will be undertaken in the coming years and will substantially expand existing knowledge on the department’s manuscript assets. A bibliography lists all modern manuscript catalogs published between 1987 and 2017 as well as the essential literature on the history of the library’s holdings from 1874 to 2019.

Malay Manuscripts and Early Printed Books at The Library of Congress

This article has two purposes.Its primary purpose is to describe the Library of Congress holdings of Malay manuscripts and early printed books in terms of their provenance and contents and to highlight the role played by the nineteenth-century missionary Alfred North in acquiring most of the collection. The second purpose is to begin to suggest the significance of the documents for Malay studies. The Library's holdings of Malay manuscripts, although limited in extent, concern the history and literature of the Malay world in the first half of the nineteenth century. Unlike twentieth-century imprints, which are generally accessible in North America and elsewhere, these early volumes may be the only copies extant.

Первая постановка «Братьев Карамазовых» на русской сцене в зеркале прессы (На материале фондов Государственного музея истории российской литературы имени В.И. Даля)

The first Russian theatrical production of Dostoevsky's novel The Brothers Karamazov premiered on the eve of Dostoevsky’s 20th death anniversary on January 26 (February 7) 1901 at the Theater of the Literary and Artistic Society (Maly Theater) in St. Petersburg as a benefit for Nikolay Seversky. The novel was adapted for the stage by K. Dmitriev (Konstantin Nabokov). The role of Dmitry Karamazov was performed by the famous dramatic actor Pavel Orlenev, who had received recognition for playing the role of Raskolnikov. The play, the staging, the actors’ interpretation of their roles became the subject of detailed reviews of the St. Petersburg theater critics and provoked controversial assessments and again raised the question about the peculiarities of Dostoevsky’s prose and the possibility of its presentation on stage. The production of The Brothers Karamazov at the Maly Theater in St. Petersburg and the controversy about it became an important stage in the development of Russian realistic theater and a reflection of the ideas of Dostoevsky’s younger contemporaries about the distinctive features and contents of his art. The manuscript holdings of the Vladimir Dahl State Museum of the History of Russian Literature includes Anna Dostoevskaya’s collection containing a set of documentary materials (the playbill, newspaper advertisements, reviews, feuilletons), which makes it possible to form a complete picture of the play and Russian viewers’ reaction to it. The article provides a description of the performance, and voluminous excerpts from the most informative press reviews. The published materials have not previously attracted special attention of researchers.

Первая постановка «Братьев Карамазовых» на русской сцене в зеркале прессы (На материале фондов Государственного музея истории российской литературы имени В.И. Даля)

The first Russian theatrical production of Dostoevsky's novel The Brothers Karamazov premiered on the eve of Dostoevsky’s 20th death anniversary on January 26 (February 7) 1901 at the Theater of the Literary and Artistic Society (Maly Theater) in St. Petersburg as a benefit for Nikolay Seversky. The novel was adapted for the stage by K. Dmitriev (Konstantin Nabokov). The role of Dmitry Karamazov was performed by the famous dramatic actor Pavel Orlenev, who had received recognition for playing the role of Raskolnikov. The play, the staging, the actors’ interpretation of their roles became the subject of detailed reviews of the St. Petersburg theater critics and provoked controversial assessments and again raised the question about the peculiarities of Dostoevsky’s prose and the possibility of its presentation on stage. The production of The Brothers Karamazov at the Maly Theater in St. Petersburg and the controversy about it became an important stage in the development of Russian realistic theater and a reflection of the ideas of Dostoevsky’s younger contemporaries about the distinctive features and contents of his art. The manuscript holdings of the Vladimir Dahl State Museum of the History of Russian Literature includes Anna Dostoevskaya’s collection containing a set of documentary materials (the playbill, newspaper advertisements, reviews, feuilletons), which makes it possible to form a complete picture of the play and Russian viewers’ reaction to it. The article provides a description of the performance, and voluminous excerpts from the most informative press reviews. The published materials have not previously attracted special attention of researchers.

Mississippians in the Great War: Selected Letters ed. by Anne L. Webster

Reviewed by: Mississippians in the Great War: Selected Letters ed. by Anne L. Webster Chester M. Morgan Mississippians in the Great War: Selected Letters. Edited by Anne L. Webster. (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2015. Pp. xvi, 231. $65.00, ISBN 978-1-4968-0279-8.) This volume is a welcome addition to Mississippi historiography. Though World War I provided the Magnolia State’s first wholesale encounter with some of the modern forces shaping the outside world, scholars have had little to say about that encounter. As the book’s back cover blurb notes, “Even Mississippi textbooks rarely mention the part Mississippi men and women played” in the conflict. Anne L. Webster, the former longtime director of reference services for the Mississippi Department of Archives and History (MDAH), has contributed a valuable first step toward filling that void. Playing to her strength, Webster has gleaned from the MDAH’s manuscript holdings and newspapers around the state letters home from servicemen and volunteer workers engaged in various aspects of the war effort. Following an introduction that briefly but adequately recounts the phases of American involvement are four chapters—“Americans Enter the War,” mostly about military training; “Crossing the Pond and Getting Ready”; “Over the Top and into Battle,” the longest and most gripping section; and “All Quiet on the Western Front”—and an epilogue that summarizes the impact of the war. The letters portray an amazing array of experiences, from the boredom of camp life to the exhilaration and terror of combat. They encompass an equally diverse range of topics: censorship, disease and quarantine, ubiquitous racial prejudice, patriotism, homesickness, the wonders of the wider world (“The ocean is a beautiful place but there is entirely too much of it. It is much larger than the ponds I have been used to fishing in”) and the carnage wrought by war (“As we walked along we saw the dead, heaps on heaps. Our own and the Germans”) (pp. 101, 203). Some letters are eloquent: one remarks, “How quickly events move; and how insignificant we all are, blown about like leaves on the winds of fate!” (p. 63). Others are poignant, as shown by the plea of a training camp commander to Governor Theodore G. Bilbo that he urge “mothers, wives, and sweethearts” to refrain from begging their soldier loved ones to come home, because those sincere and well-intentioned words “engender homesickness and discontent in the hearts of the boys” (pp. 48, 49). The letter writers are likewise diverse: college-educated and barely literate, noted (William Alexander Percy and Harris Dickson) and obscure. They include farmers, planters, merchants, doctors, lawyers, and factory workers, in addition to an automobile salesman, a livery stable operator, a deputy chancery clerk, a former head of the state insane asylum, and the son of lumber baron Edward Hines. Webster has added a humanizing touch by laboring, no doubt tediously, to identify the correspondents, to note those who perished during the war and the circumstances of their deaths, and to unearth some essential details of the postwar careers of those who survived. She also [End Page 207] supplies a useful list of World War I terminology and notes popular songs, books, poems, and other contemporary allusions mentioned in the letters. One can hope that publication of this splendid collection will arouse among scholars a renewed interest in the story of Mississippi and the Great War. If so, they will find here much that will enhance their labors. Chester M. Morgan University of Southern Mississippi Copyright © 2017 The Southern Historical Association

Two French or Flemish Manuscripts and their Scandinavian Fate

The Nordic countries suffered great losses in their holdings of medieval manuscripts after the Reformation in the sixteenth century. Some were reused for other purposes; thousands of manuscripts were dissembled and reused in the bindings of the account books of the royal administrations of Denmark and Sweden, which has resulted in large fragment collections reflecting the medieval book holdings of the different countries. Two manuscripts, probably with a French or Flemish origin, are among those reused as binding material by Danish officials. Fragments from these two manuscripts have been found in archives both in Norway and Denmark, in a process of reconstruction which has been ongoing for a century. These two fragmentary manuscripts are important witnesses to the relationship between Norwegian and Danish fragment material, as well as to the international contacts of Denmark in the Middle Ages.

Directory of Collections in the United States and Canada with Pre-1600 Manuscript Holdings

1. Seymour de Ricci and W. J. Wilson, Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada (1935; repr. New York: Kraus Reprint Corp., 1961), and C. U. Faye and W. H. Bond, Supplement to the Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada (New York: Bibliographical Society of America, 1962). For background on the production of the Census and Supplement see: Herbert Putnam and J. F. Jameson, Introductory Note,

Spätmittelalterliches Kirchenrecht: Vier Anmerkungen zur Forschungslage

This paper consists of four sections: 1) What does the term Classical canon mean: In this case is no more than a colloquial label lacking scientific justification. The end of the so called classical period remains disputed as falling between 1234 and the Council of Trent. - 2)Mass transmission: The chronological uncertainty results from a dramatic proliferation of al! types of canon law records caused by the general increase of written culture since the 13th century.Whereas recent research has made considerable progress in limited areas, a synthesis transferring and integrating partial research into a general picture of 14th and 15th century canon law is still missing. The critical review of all manuscript material concerning papal legislation and canon law literature is far from being complete. - 3) Foggy history of literature: Research for the large group of texts, which are arbitrarily classified as popular literature, auxiliary tools, operaminora etc. is particularly unsatisfying. The historical significance of these texts will be completely missed if they are juged according to criteria of originality or scientific value which are notoriously poor. They do, however, reveal their considerable historical importance when appreciated as vehicles and intruments of the geographic and social penetration of Europe by the ius commune.This important historical function is manifested by the great numbers of surviving manuscripts. - 4) numerare et ponderare: From this perspective it seems appropriate to resume previous systematic and critical approaches to the manuscript holdings (Sehulte, Seckel). Indeed, a thorough review of the manuscripts is the inevitable basis for the appreciation of any text; even a simple counting of the manuscripts, if reliable, may yield surprising insights.

Antonio García y García, O.F.M. (1928–2013)

Antonio Garcia y Garcia, O.F.M, died on July 8, 2013, after a decade of suffering from an agonizing form of Alzheimer's disease, in the Franciscan convent of Chipiona (Cadiz). Born in Bretona (Lugo, Galicia) on January 7, 1928, he joined the Order of St. Francis at the age of eighteen and was ordained a priest in 1952. He received his doctorate in canon law at the Pontificium Athenaeum Antonianum in Rome in 1956 and was appointed professor for History of Canon Law at the Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca in 1959, where he taught until his retirement.With the death of Professor Garcia, the profession has lost one of the last founding fathers of modern scholarship in medieval canon law. He belonged to the group of canonists led by Stephan Kuttner. These canonists were associated by friendship and pointed the way to a manuscript-based research of canon law. They were at the same time great scholars and true gentlemen. He was an amazingly prolific writer, with a scholarly output that surprises in quantity as well as in its wide range of content and interest. His oeuvre includes thirty-two books and almost 300 articles (see his bibliography published in Studia Gratiana 28,1998). The topics of his publications, which appeared in a large variety of Spanish, Portuguese, and international journals, stretch geographically from his own little hometown in Spain to Latin America and chronologically from the sixth to the seventeenth centuries. He critically investigated texts from the canons of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) to the Tractatus de legibus of Francisco Suarez (1612); he analyzed problems of legal history from the fidelity oaths in Visigothic councils to the human rights of the indigenous people of Latin America; and he discussed the history of the European universities as well as that of the colonial conquests by Spain and Portugal. Among the innumerable findings of his research, two farsighted endeavors stand out, assuring that the international community of historians will remember Father Garcia forever with respect and gratitude. First is the monumental Synodicon Hispanum, which he conceived, directed, and partly compiled. Progressing at a steady pace since 1981, it has produced eleven volumes to date and covered a large number of Spanish and Portuguese dioceses in a systematic fashion, thus placing the two Iberian countries in a leading position within the international scholarship in synodal texts. The second invaluable accomplishment of Father Garcia results from his tireless and most successful efforts to highlight the treasures of medieval manuscripts in Spain. Fifty years ago, the manuscript holdings of that country were regarded, even by native scholars, as a kind of wonderland-immensely rich, but mysterious and practically inaccessible. If this situation has definitely changed by now, at least as far as medieval legal manuscripts are concerned, this is almost entirely due to Father Garcia, who acted as a very efficient access manager to Spanish libraries, operating on two different fronts. …

A Catalogue of Western Book Illumination in the FitzWilliam Museum and the Cambridge Colleges eds. by Nigel Morgan, Stella Panayotova, and Suzanne Reynolds (review)

Reviewed by: A Catalogue of Western Book Illumination in the FitzWilliam Museum and the Cambridge Colleges eds. by Nigel Morgan, Stella Panayotova, and Suzanne Reynolds Linde M. Brocato Morgan, Nigel, Stella Panayotova, and Suzanne Reynolds, eds. A Catalogue of Western Book Illumination in the FitzWilliam Museum and the Cambridge Colleges. Part II: Italy and the Iberian Peninsula. Illuminated Manuscripts in Cambridge, II. London and Turnhout: Harvey Miller Publishers, an imprint of Brepols, 2011 (2012). 712 pp.; 900 color illustrations. ISBN:978-1-905375-85-1 (2 vol. set) €200.00 ($265.00) The present catalog is volume II from the ongoing series “Illuminated Manuscripts in Cambridge”, comprising Italian and Iberian manuscripts from the Middle Ages through the seventeenth century, with pride of place given to the much richer Italian holdings (nos. 1-361). Vol. I, The Frankish Kingdoms, the Netherlands, Germany, Bohemia, Hungary and Austria (2 vols.) appeared in 2009, with France (III) and England (IV), plus Illuminated Incunabula (V) to follow. Inclusion in these geographic categories is by origin of the manuscript, but they are cross-referenced by early provenance and annotations as well (e.g. 364 below). The illuminated manuscripts of Cambridge University Library are being cataloged in a separate project and are not included here. The Iberian illuminated manuscripts are entries 362-395 in volume 2 (i.e. less than 10% of the catalog), and largely consist of entire texts of one sort or another, with some 12 entries for fragments. Alas, the editors maintain a close focus, and nowhere relate the quantity of illluminated manuscripts to the total holdings of early manuscripts at Cambridge. The latter are largely from liturgical manuscripts, primarily from the nineteenth-century collection of cuttings amassed by Charles Brinsley Marlay; for those who want further information on Marlay himself and this shocking practice, see “The Bequest of Charles Brinsley Marlay” in the FitzWilliam Museum’s web exhibit “‘I turned it into a palace’: Sir Sydney Cockerell and the FitzWilliam Museum.”. Indeed the FitzWilliam Museum website has many resources related to these catalogs, including images that can be accessed via their “Collection Explorer”. Standard entries for the entire project are detailed and description is technical but concise. Entries begin with a heading containing the number in this catalog, the library or museum holding the manuscript with its shelf mark, followed by [End Page 212] a brief characterization of the manuscript, for example “Religious miscellany | In Latin | Spain, mid-twelfth century”. Next is a physical description of the object, the composition of the volume and the dimensions and features of the page, with a description of the binding, and identification of the secundo folio, of named scribes and identified artists, and of the script. There are sections for contents, decoration, and ornamentation; the latter are quite technical and are an inventory of significant features and salient individual decorative and ornamental elements, often illustrated. When the decoration includes a coat of arms, the blazon is rendered in English heraldic style (for example, “or six fetterlocks sable, on a pale gules two fetterlocks sable”; 365). A “Provenance” section details all the indications of ownership, and traces the manuscript’s history as much as possible; many Cambridge colleges still hold their own medieval collections. The comments discuss more fully the details in the descriptive sections, relate the manuscript or fragment to others whether at Cambridge or in other collections, and discuss differing judgments on the particulars of the manuscript, including citations to the literature. Entries close with references to catalogs of exhibitions of the item, and to the literature discussing it, referring to the bibliographies at the end of Volume Two. For many items, only some of these categories of information apply, and only relevant sections of each entry are included. In the following, I will give an overview of the features of the Iberian collection(s) cataloged here, by groupings of various sorts, with a more detailed discussion of some few individual manuscripts, identifying them by catalog entry number, with a list of entries so discussed and their location and shelf mark at the end of my review. Arranged chronologically within geographical area (Portugal with one entry, then Spain), the manuscripts are largely fifteenth- and sixteenth...

A Manuscript History of Ethiopic Enoch

While many scholars of the Bible and Second Temple Judaism have an at least passing acquaintance with 1 (Ethiopic) Enoch, few recognize the developments that led to and undergird the editions and translations upon which they rely. This article attempts to rectify this in part via a brief historical survey of the growth of the Ethiopian manuscript tradition of the book as it has become available to Western scholars. The first half focuses on manuscripts previously studied in the context of Enochic scholarship, primarily with respect to the acquisition of these exemplars and the various means by which they made their way into libraries and collections in the West since the eighteenth century. The second part offers descriptions of more than twenty further copies of Ethiopic Enoch, most of which are located in Ethiopia today and which represent the rich living heritage of the Ethiopian Orthodox Täwaḥәdo Church. Given the large number of manuscript holdings in Ethiopia's monasteries and churches yet to be examined, this discussion underscores the need for further efforts towards the digitization of additional important witnesses of Ethiopic Enoch for the study of the text.

The Feast and the Pulpit: Preachers, Sermons and the Cult of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, 1235–ca. 1500 by Ottó Gecser (review)

Reviewed by: The Feast and the Pulpit: Preachers, Sermons and the Cult of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, 1235–ca. 1500 by Ottó Gecser Katherine L. Jansen The Feast and the Pulpit: Preachers, Sermons and the Cult of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, 1235–ca. 1500. By Ottó Gecser. [Collana della Società internazionale di studi francescani, Saggi 15.] (Spoleto: Fondazione Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo. 2012. Pp. xvi, 462. €58,00 paperback. ISBN 978-88-7988-589-8.) In this study, a revised version of his dissertation, Ottó Gecser examines the cult of St. Elizabeth of Hungary (also known as Elizabeth of Thuringia), who died at the [End Page 783] age of twenty-four in the odor of sanctity in 1231. At her death she was already recognized as a saint. One of her hagiographers recorded the frenzy that took place as her body lay in state, when the crowd ripped pieces from her clothing, and others made relics by cutting off her hair, nails, and even—grotesquely—her nipples. Pope Gregory IX wasted no time in canonizing her; she was inscribed into the register of saints in 1235. In three chapters, Gecser takes us through the institutionalization of Elizabeth’s cult and its diffusion through preaching. Although Gecser’s main focus is on sermons, he lays the groundwork in the first chapter by treating the vitae, liturgy, institutional dedications, and the Marburg pilgrimage, each a cornerstone of the emerging cult. One interesting finding is that Franciscan hagiography was slow to adopt Elizabeth as one of its own; it was not until the fifteenth century that her affiliation as a Franciscan tertiary was stabilized. Another point, regarding institutional dedications, is that 24 percent of the hospital dedications in the Empire honored St. Elizabeth. Gecser sensibly hypothesizes that since noble women were frequently patrons of hospitals, this statistic suggests that Elizabeth’s role as hospital founder at Marburg may have provided inspiration for other women of her status to do similarly in the name of the saint. Chapters 2 and 3, thoroughly supported by the three appendices, are the heart of this study as they deal with the sermons, the means by which the cult was consolidated. Gecser has excavated 103 of them (well described in appendix I), 40 percent of which came from the territories of the Empire and were produced by the friars. Given that Elizabeth herself was associated with both Hungary and Thuringia, this conclusion is not altogether surprising, but we must also remember that Johannes Baptist Schneyer’s great Repertorium of sermons—the starting point for any work on medieval preaching—skews in that direction anyway as his research rested heavily on manuscript holdings located in the old imperial territories. That the great preachers of her cult were the friars is not particularly surprising either as they were the predominant preachers of the period. Indeed, although Caesarius of Heisterbach (a Cistercian) produced the first known sermon on Elizabeth on the anniversary of her canonization, Gecser finds that two-thirds of the thirteenth-century sermons on the saint were authored by either Franciscan or Dominican friars in roughly equal numbers, dispelling again any notion that from early days she was associated with the Franciscan Order. Indeed, the Friars Preacher had good reason to affiliate themselves with the saint as she was canonized in their convent in Perugia. Moreover, within decades of their foundation, the Dominicans also forged strong connections with the royal families in Hungary and Naples (not incidentally aligned by marriage), who were interested in promoting the sanctity of their common saintly ancestor. Samples of the sermons of the mendicants number among the eighteen skillfully edited texts that Gecser includes in appendix III, along with those by the Czech preacher Jan Milič and King Robert of Naples, among others. Robert’s sermon on the saint dwelled both upon her royal status and her marital status as widow, a thema taken from Rev. 18:7. Other themata pertaining to Elizabeth are catalogued in appendix II and admirably explicated in chapter 3. Ultimately Gecser’s is a careful and thorough study of the preaching on St. Elizabeth of Hungary in the later Middle Ages. We are, [End Page 784...

La Creation romanesque de Proust: la genese de 'Combray'

The rich holdings of Proust manuscripts (cahiers de brouillon, cahiers de montage, and dactylogrammes) in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, and the fact that practically all such material is kept in a single place, have ensured that À la recherche du temps perdu has been a prime candidate for ‘genetic’ investigations. The bibliography of Akio Wada's new volume (he is already the author of an Index général des cahiers de brouillon de Marcel Proust (Osaka: Osaka University Press, 2009)) lists sixty-five such studies (books and articles), by thirty different authors, bearing chiefly on the early part of Proust's novel. Wada examines material composed, reworked, copied, or typed between the end of 1908 and the summer of 1911, and attempts to use it to trace the emergence of the ‘Combray’ we now know from Proust's original project of an essay on Sainte-Beuve, to be framed in an account of a morning spent with his mother. He also discusses elements of Un amour de Swann, and returns to the vexed question of how much of Le Temps retrouvé (the last volume of the finished work) was actually composed at this very early stage. These are questions of abiding interest to Proustians, but this book will be of value chiefly to specialists already deeply versed in the study of his manuscripts. The opening of Wada's Chapter 3 gives a good impression of the level of detail at which he works: ‘Il faut pénétrer dans le labyrinthe des ajouts autographes qui parsèment les feuillets de la dactylographie [de ‘Combray’]. Les différences de couleur de l'encre suggèrent qu'ils ne datent pas de la même époque' (p. 43). He is soon able to establish (pace an earlier scholar) that certain red-ink numbers appearing in Carnet 1 of the manuscript relate to red-ink additions to the typescript. This allows him to adjust some dating by a matter of months. Most of the book is taken up with highly technical arguments of this kind with other Proust ‘geneticists’. His sixth chapter (in Part II), ‘Du Contre Sainte-Beuve au Temps retrouvé’, will be of most interest to the non-specialist reader of Proust, and in his Conclusion (pp. 168–69) a helpful chart gives Wada's own account of the order of writing and typing of the various components of what would eventually become the first and last volumes of Proust's novel. Well-funded specialist libraries wishing to complete the ‘Recherches proustiennes’ series will be the most likely buyers.

The Directory of Institutions in the United States and Canada with Pre-1600 Manuscript Holdings: From its Origins to the Present, and its Role in Tracking the Migration of Manuscripts in North American Repositories

This article outlines the stages of a fifteen-year project to update information on repositories holding medieval and Renaissance manuscripts. Using Seymour de Ricci’s Census and its Supplement as a starting point, the project culminated in a directory of updated information on almost 500 institutions and a body of data that can be used in various ways, including the tracking of the movement of manuscripts through private and institutional hands over a seventy-year period.

Rebecca Laroche, Medical Authority and Englishwomen’s Herbal Texts, 1550–1650, Literary and Scientific Cultures of Early Modernity (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), pp. xii + 196, £55.00, hardback, ISBN: 978-0-7546-6678-3.

Rebecca Laroche, Medical Authority and Englishwomen’s Herbal Texts, 1550–1650, Literary and Scientific Cultures of Early Modernity (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), pp. xii + 196, £55.00, hardback, ISBN: 978-0-7546-6678-3. - Volume 55 Issue 2

Review of Janine Utell's <i>James Joyce and the Revolt of Love: Marriage, Adultery, Desire</i>

Review of Janine Utell's James Joyce and the Revolt of Love: Marriage, Adultery, Desire Elizabeth Foley O'Connor (bio) Utell, Janine. James Joyce and the Revolt of Love: Marriage, Adultery, Desire. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010 (177177 pages) In 1921, James Joyce refused to grant Jacques Benoist-Mechin's request to see the Ulysses schema, even though Benoist-Mechin was in the midst of translating portions of the novel into French. According to Richard Ellmann, Joyce responded humorously by protesting that "If I gave it all up immediately, I'd lose my immortality. I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that's the only way of insuring one's immortality" (JJ 521). Joyce's jocoserious denial has become a foundational narrative of the scholarly industry his work has spawned, as well as a self-fulfilling prophecy. As the centenary of the 1922 publication of Ulysses approaches and with the hundredth anniversary of the 1907 edition of Chamber Music—Joyce's first published text—already passed, the accuracy of Joyce's proclamation, as well as his immortality, seems assured. A recent "Joyce, James" search of the MLA database netted over 10,000 citations, and neither the arguments nor the pace of publications shows any signs of abating. But have Joyceans finally exhausted everything there is to say about the seven major prose works, two poetry collections, voluminous letters, and extensive manuscript holdings? Having passed through phases of scholarship dominated by psychoanalysis, structuralism, deconstruction, post-structuralism, feminism, historicism, post-colonialism, and genetic criticism among others, is the Joyce industry, like the river Liffey in Finnegans Wake, experiencing a "commodious vicus of recirculation" (FW 3.2)? Are we indeed destined to repeat "The seim anew" (FW 215.23)? Derek Attridge rightly points out in Joyce Effects: On Language, Theory, and History (2000) that commentary begets commentary, and the vast [End Page 213] array of scholarly sources available makes it increasingly unlikely a given critic will be able "to track down everything that has been said on his or her chosen topic."1 As a result, he concludes, Joyceans are now writing what has come before "over and over again, using a newer vocabulary to articulate the same insights" (Attridge 170). But is Attridge's assessment of the state of Joyce criticism entirely accurate? Perhaps one reason for the persistent sense of "the siem anew" is that critics keep returning to a few key issues in Joyce's work, such as his depiction of love, marriage, and adultery, because his texts are multifarious and do not offer up easy or uncomplicated answers. Janine Utell's James Joyce and the Revolt of Love: Marriage, Adultery, and Desire (2010) reveals that new scholarship need not be a mere recycling or glossing of what has come before, but it also shows that the over-abundance of Joyce scholarship can lead to critical myopia in the quest for originality. Over the past two decades, Joyceans have cast their nets both deeper and wider in order to illuminate new dimensions of his oeuvre, especially through contextual, interdisciplinary, and genetic studies. The ever-present danger, however, is that, in attempting to carve out a unique space in an over-crowded field that values novelty, critics may ignore the essential contributions of earlier scholarship. Such omissions, reflecting the increasingly specialized nature of contemporary literary criticism, mar Utell's sometimes incisive study. While Utell's book has several interwoven strands, the principal focus of James Joyce and the Revolt of Love is an exploration of Joyce's relationship to what Utell, drawing on the work of the philosopher Emanuel Levinas, terms "ethical love." She defines the term as the "commitment to mutual flourishing and recognition, even in the face of the pain of infinite distance and separation that comes with love" (8). Drawing primarily on Giacomo Joyce, Exiles, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake as well as his letters, Utell argues that "Joyce imagines marriage to be the ideal means for two people to come together—a complete joining . . . yet we find again and again that such a union is impossible, or that to fully partake of...