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COPYRIGHT 2005 Modern Humanities Research Association
Writing War: Medieval Literary Responses to Warfare. Ed. by CORINNE SAUNDERS, R01208 FRANCOISE LE SAUX, and NEIL THOMAS. Cambridge: Brewer. 2004. x+235 pp. 45 [pounds sterling]; $75. ISBN 0-85991-843-2.
A Companion to Gower. Ed. by SIAN ECHARD. Cambridge: Brewer. 2004. x+286 pp. 60 [pounds sterling]; $110. ISBN 1-84384-000-6.
The English Prose Treatises of Richard Rolle. By CLAIRE ELIZABETH MCILROY. (Studies in Medieval Mysticism, 4) Cambridge: Brewer. 2004. x+212 pp. 40 [pounds sterling]; $70. ISBN 1-84384-003-0.
War, love, religion: these three volumes together cover a wide area. They also differ in their approaches. Writing War is a collection of papers by historians and literary scholars. A Companion to Gower also assembles essays by different writers, but more systematically, in a comprehensive account of Gower and his work. The English Prose Treatises of Richard Rolle, in contrast, is a study by one author of Rolle's vernacular texts on the religious life. So we might expect these three books to light up large tracts of England's medieval literary landscape.
And so they do. Writing War is naturally the most diffuse of the three. Ranging from the philosophy of Aquinas (concepts of the just war) to technological innovation (the cannon astutely positioned by Joan of Arc to liberate Orleans) and war profiteering, it encompasses a vast subject. It also deals with literature beyond England. Nine of its papers were read in 2001 at a Durham conference on medieval and Renaissance responses to war, with two others (on Arthurian chronicles and Malory) appended. Christopher Allmand outlines the medieval and Renaissance fame of Vegetius, a civil servant who tried to save...
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