72ARTHURIANA century, priests were allowed to marry, but as the doctrine of transubstantiation was developed, the clerical wife herself was seen as a polluting presence for the minister ofthe altar. Since the priest handled the very body and blood ofChrist, he had to be absolutely pure, and part ofthis purity was abstention from sexual activity as well as withdrawal from the very temptation to engage in such activity. The clerical wife was seen as an ambigous, mixed hybrid. Peter Damián wrote that 'God recognizes only three kinds of women: virgins, wives, and widows.' One wonders just how Peter knows this. The clerical wife did not fit any of these categories, and so she could not arrive in God's presence. The last chapter deals with demonology, discussing angelic and demonic disembodiment and the idea that since demons have no body, they cannot be sexually defiled. Professor Elliott must be commended for the clarity of her prose in presenting original sources as well as intricate analytical unraveling of much of this material, which seemed arcane to this reader. It is astonishing that the church would use so many resources in proving or disproving the notion ofdemonic bodies and for the control ofnight emissions in the male clergy. This last was largely due to ignorance about the working of the body. The attempt to control women, however, is more serious because, as Professor Elliott shows, the next step was the burning ofwomen as witches, a further attempt to get rid of pollution. By using the analytic tools provided by Mary Douglas and Freud, Professor Elliott anchors her argument in the insights of modern psychoanalysis while she presents the material without polemics. She has given us a very important book that rewards careful reading. JACQUELINE DF. WEEVER Brooklyn College, CUNY JODY enders, The Medieval Theater ofCruelty: Rhetoric, Memory, Violence. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1999. Pp. 237. isbn: 0-8014-3334-7. $45. This is an intellectually challenging if not completely successful book that deserves serious consideration by medievalists, although it also aims for a broader audience interested in contemporary theories of violence. The most substantive section explores the role of violence in the memory systems of classical rhetoric. At the center of the book is a study of intentional violence—torture—in the medieval French mystères. Finally, these historical materials provoke 'an extensive meditation about the interplay among theatricality, pleasure, didacticism, morality and real life' (235). The reading of rhetoric and the discussion of drama combine to form a powerful argument about the functions of pain and violence in engendering the aesthetic; however, the speculations about the universality ofcruelty and the moral stance one should take toward it seem less fully achieved. For Enders, what is at stake is our 'well-intentioned deference to the concept of alterity' [of the Middle Ages] which, she argues, 'maywell have masked a very real denial ofthe contemporary spectacle ofviolence and ofcontemporary complicity in the history ofthat violence' (24). REVIEWS 73 Enders's first claim is that rhetoric had established an ideological connection between the subject of torture and the processes of inventio, memoria, and actio. Her second move is to suggest that such conceptual links between creative invention, dramatic catharsis, and human suffering that emerged from the rhetorical treatments oftorture (and circulated in the classical, medieval, and early Renaissance educational systems) subtended the dramatic representation of violence. The well-established rhetorical formulae that emphasized the efficacy of violent proofs for producing 'truth,' she argues, 'encouraged the dramatic representation ofviolence as a means ofcoercing theater audiences into accepting the various "truths" enacted didactically in mysteries, miracles, and even farces' (4). These are daring claims, and Enders must resort to such locutions as 'it is thus probable' or 'he may have done so' when making the link between rhetoric and theater. Despite the fragility of her own rhetoric at times, her analysis ofthe figure oftorture in rhetorical texts is compelling and forces a reexamination of scenes of violence and torture in the drama. Enders's discussion of torture's important place in the rhetorical tradition draws on poststructural theories ofthe violence ofrepresentation, which arc in turn based on the Nietzschean insight that pain produces...