Mirror in Parchment. The Luttrell Psalter and the Making of Medieval England.(Review)

The Luttrell Psalter has provided many a book with splendid illustrations of an apparently happy bucolic medieval past. In his Mirror in Parchment. The Luttrell Psalter and the Making of Medieval England (London: Reaktion Books, 1998; pp. 411. 25 [pounds sterling]), Michael Camille views the Psalter in a very different light. For him, it creates a world of `violence, exclusion and anxiety', and, rather than reflecting society, it helped to shape it. Even the most apparently innocent images are, it seems, full of codes and ideology. A knife sticking out of a side pocket is a symbol of gluttony on one page, and of priapic lust on another. A distaff in a woman's hands is `a sign …