REVIEWS 278 Ages. Pleij cites the statements of Pope Gregory the Great in the sixth century to demonstrate the early position of the church, which regarded colors as superficial , deceitful additions that hid God’s creation and were therefore thought to be produced by the devil. The colors yellow, red, green, and blue are then expanded upon and given tentative definitions by Pleij based on accounts from the Middle Ages. For example, Pleij classifies yellow as understood to be symbolic of ostracism, based on its use to identify religious outsiders. The final chapter then discusses how the intense and highly symbolic color palette of the Middle Ages faded to the basic shades, such as black and dark blue, popularized in today’s world. Pleij’s book will serve as a useful tool in the recreation of life and experience in medieval and early modern Europe, based on aspects of costume, art, religion, and typical daily activities. This book would be a valuable reference to those looking for an introduction to the history of color in Europe. The bibliography also provides a rich collection of sources for further exploration of the subject in greater detail. Written in an entertaining and readable style, this book demonstrates the importance of considering the subject of color, as well as illustrating the possibility of its continued study for historians and art historians alike. LISA BOUTIN, Art History, UCLA Sara S. Poor, Mechthild of Magdeburg and Her Book. Gender and the Making of Textual Authority (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 2004) 352 pp. In her recent book, Sara S. Poor employs the transmission history and reception of Mechthild of Magdeburg’s Das fliesende Licht der Gottheit (The Flowing Light of the Godhead) from the thirteenth century when it was written to its presence in twentieth-century anthologies of medieval mystics, female authors, and German writers to “explore and interrogate the mechanisms and categories of tradition-making at different historical moments” (200). By focusing on one medieval writer in particular, Poor both successfully takes up and reaffirms what she calls the feminist challenge “to explore how and why women have been included in the canon” (202). Poor’s unmitigated success is attributable to her ability to elucidate at each moment in the book both what her theoretical motivations and conceptual apparatus are as well as her thorough research into primary sources and her formidable ability to read manuscripts in context for what they reveal about social, political and cultural factors pertaining to their production. Ultimately, Poor accounts for Mechthild’s eventual disappearance from the manuscript record and her rediscovery in terms that are more diverse and comprehensive than merely arguing for active exclusion based on gender. Quite to the contrary, in some cases, Mechthild was a victim of her own success . Hence, Poor argues, “although gender was often a significant factor in the construction of textual authority, it was never the sole reason for exclusion from literary canons” (xiv). Poor is able to make her argument so convincingly because she actively historicizes the ideas of authorship and canon for each period and cultural context she discusses (xiv), including the period about which contemporary scholars are most blind, our own. In other words, Poor also subjects recent appropriations of Mechthild’s writings to the same theo- REVIEWS 279 retical principles and scrutiny to which she subjects medieval translators and early modern compilers. Poor’s chapter divisions are essentially chronological, but conceptual issues also vary from section to section. Chapters 1 and 2 are devoted to issues of Mechthild’s authorship. In chapter 1, “Choosing the Vernacular,” Poor focuses on the scope of Mechthild’s agency within her immediate political, religious, social and cultural milieu. First, Mechthild chooses to become a beguine and not a cloistered nun in the Magdeburg region, an area that Poor describes as a kind of political and cultural frontier (20). The language of the region in Mechthild ’s day was Middle Low German, and Poor advances the thesis that when she was writing her Flowing Light of the Godhead, Mechthild deliberately chose the regional dialect. Other instances of Mechthild’s agency include her choice to use vernacular courtly literature to express universal, theological principles...