MLR, I02.2, 2007 467 Medieval Blood. By BETTINA BILDHAUER. (Religion and Culture in the Middle Ages) Cardiff:UniversityofWalesPress. 2oo6. X+245PP. ?55. ISBN978-0-7083 I940-6. The dust-jacket image iswell chosen: a fourteenth-century Rhineland depiction of monastic devotion toChrist crucified. Christ's blood not only spurts violently from his arms, side, and feet,but its same redness colours thewhole of his body, even his halo. Vivid and surreal, itsets the tone.Keep thedust jacket because the reproduction of this imagewithin the book, being black-and-white, has no impact. Blood as symbol of life (sanguis) but also of death (cruor); blood as the sign of kinship; blood in theeucharistic mystery; semen asmen's life-blood;menstrual blood as evidence of female pollutedness; blood as taboo-such figurative associations do minate. At the same time this study is also an essay on the idea of 'body'. In Bodies that Matter: On theDiscursive Limits of 'Sex' (New York: Routledge, I993) Judith Butler challenged theworkings of heterosexual hegemony in the crafting ofmatters sexual and political. Bettina Bildhauer picks up thatdiscourse and ensuing interna tional debate, relating it to the Middle Ages. She too startswith an ironic reflection on the philosophical difficultyof defining 'body'. It isnot just amaterial, bounded entity.And how do we make the distinction between amaterial body and an imma terialmind, soul, spirit, or consciousness? Butler provided a critical rearticulation of various theoretical practices, including feminist and queer studies. Aptly for the medieval period, Bildhauer adds two further 'otherness' perspectives: Jews (accused of drinkingChristian babies' blood) andmonstrosity (e.g.Gog andMagog as depicted in theEbstorfMappa mundi). Developing these themes and perspectives, Bildhauer draws on a remarkablywide range of texts-literary, legal,medical, devotional-and related secondary literature. Not just gory episodes in classic German epic tales (Nibelungenlied, Parzival, Armer Heinrich), but also many lesswell-known stories feature, among themWigalois and Kdnig Lucius' Tochter.The latter isof special interestbecause itprefigures the 'pound of-flesh-but-no-blood' motif inTheMerchant ofVenice.Attitudes toblood in theologi cal and mystical writing are analysed mainly on the basis of the thirteenth-century Cistercian Heilige Regel fur ein vollkommenes Leben, Mechthild von Magdeburg's Flie]3endes Licht der Gottheit, and Berthold von Regensburg's Sermons. Medical at titudes are represented mainly by the thirteenth-century Secreta mulierum and the anonymous fifteenth-centurySouth German commentary on it.Composed by aman and intended fora readership ofmen, itsaimwas evidently to forgean exclusive male community without having to reveal the secrets its titlehints at. Quite bizarrely to themodern mind, Johannes Hartlieb's translation of theSecreta gives expression to awidely held belief of the time that Jewishmen menstruate. Three points of detail: the idea of herzebluot ('lifeblood') ismentioned several times,but not verch and verchbluot (Nibelungenlied). Secondly, in the episode of Sir Henry's conversion (ArmerHeinrich) themotive forhismiraculous change of heart isexplained too simply in termsof blood taboo. Similarly, theproposition thatParzi val's trance following sight of the three drops of goose-blood is an example of how 'women's love harms and violates men' seems-to a traditional interpreterofParzi val such asmyself-to be taking too far the argument thatmedieval men feared and distrusted women. But such quibbles do not detract from thebook's overall achievement. Its argument is referencedmeticulouslythroughout. All German and Latin quotations areprovided with translations. Bildhauer set out with an ambitious goal: tomake accessible to an English-speaking public some classic and some almost forgottenGerman textswhose 468 Reviews concepts of blood and bodies have for themost part never been investigated, and which inmany cases have hardly been studied at all. She succeeds admirably. LEEDS RICHARD F. M. BYRN Guinevere: A Medieval Puzzle. Images of Arthur's Queen in the Medieval Literature of Britain and France. By ULRIKE BETHLEHEM. (Anglistische Forschungen, 345) Heidelberg: Winter. 2005. X+441 pp. E59. ISBN 978-3-8253-50I2-3. Ulrike Bethlehem's exhaustive study ofGuinevere processes awealth of primary and secondary material, and explores its subject from a variety of perspectives, deliber ately not focusing solely on the legendary queen's relations with her husband and her lover.The promotional literature for this book asserts thatGuinevere emerges as 'amirror of past legend and contemporary reality,and amedieval vision of...