Shorter notices.(Bibliography)

Publication: Medium Aevum

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COPYRIGHT 2002 Society for the Study of Mediaeval Languages and Literature

Appropriating the Middle Ages: Scholarship, Politics, Fraud, ed. Tom Shippey with Martin Arnold, Studies in Medievalism II (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2000. 264 pp. ISBN 0-85991-626-X. 35.00 [pounds sterling]/$60.00. Like the previous two issues, Studies in Medievalism II is devoted to the theme of `Medievalism in the Academy', and it scrutinizes the work of the seventeenth-century Dutch etymologist Francis Junius; the pictures of Chaucer's Canterbury pilgrims by Thomas Stothard and William Blake; a Mozart opera, Konig Garibald; Lady Charlotte Guest's Mabinogion; nineteenth-century American responses to claims the country was discovered by the Norse; the professional reputation of the medievalist F. J. Furnivall; a forger of medieval art; and tourism of the medieval in north-east England.

These essays are carefully researched and exhaustively documented, offering interesting insights to specialists in other fields as well. For example, one learns that in the seventeenth century the Dutch were as concerned to establish the prestige of their vernacular as were the English; and the post-colonial approach to Guest's `cultural appropriation' of Welsh tales has (here unexplored) implications for the evolution of folklore and legend. [Raymond H. Thompson]

Peter Kidd, Medieval Manuscripts from the Collection of T. R. Buchanan in the Bodleian Library, Oxford (Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2000. xliii + 209 pp.; 47 illustrations. ISBN i85 85124-059-4. 20.00 [pounds sterling]. Kidd's illustrated catalogue methodically describes the twenty-four parchment manuscripts dating from before the mid-sixteenth century that once formed part of the small private library of Thomas Ryburn Buchanan (1846-1911). The Summary Catalogue has already described the post-medieval manuscripts in the Buchanan collection at the Bodleian (SC 37931-48). Kidd now traces how the medieval items acquired by Buchanan include a number of earlier book purchases made by his uncle and father, including fifteen illuminated books of hours, mainly from France but with examples from Italy and the Netherlands. The younger Buchanan managed to augument and extend this collection by making a series of astute purchases from Parisian booksellers, or at Sotheby's (including, notably, his purchase of three manuscripts at the 1898 sale of manuscripts once the property of William Morris). Such activities confirm Buchanan's particular interest in fine bindings and Italian humanistic scripts. [John J. Thompson]

K. L. Scott, A. E. Nichols, M. T. Orr, and L. Dennison, An Index of Images in English Manuscripts from the Time of Chaucer to Henry VIII: The Bodleian Library, Oxford, Vol. II: MSS Dodsmorth-Marshall (Turnhout: Harvey Miller, 2001). 192 pp.; 24 illustrations. ISBN 1-872501-17-6. 35.00 [pounds sterling]. The second fascicle in this three-volume series surveys a much larger corpus of English manuscripts than the previously published volume. Just over 300 manuscripts Dodsworth-Marshall fit the criteria for inclusion and are catalogued according to the pragmatic principles outlined in the `Users' manual' that serves as the introduction to this volume (pp. 9-23). Although short on the modern bibliographical information that the reader might perhaps have expected to find in a handlist of this nature, fascicle II thus includes within its remit a number of widely celebrated English literary manuscripts, most notably perhaps the Vernon manuscript (MS Eng. poet. a.I) and MS Fairfax 16. In comparison to fascicle I (which included the extensive Ashmole and Digby collections), fascicle II deals with relatively little medical, scientific, and informational material. Pride of place is instead taken in the `Index of pictorial subjects' by devotional images and symbols, particularly those associated with Christ's life and times, including the remarkable image-crammed copy of the Latin Commentary on the Gospels by William of Nottingham in MS Laud Misc. 165. No attempts have been made to draw connections between manuscripts with regard to iconography, style, or identity of an artist's hand, but the Bodleian manuscripts containing English writings are at least now set in interesting relationship to other less celebrated volumes, which is one of the great strengths of this series. [John J. Thompson]

Lynda Dennison, Michael T. Orr, and Kathleen L. Scott, An Index of Images in English Manuscripts from the Time of Chaucer to Henry VIII c. 1380-c. 1509, Vol. III: MSS e Musaeo--Wood (Turnhout: Harvey Miller, 2002). 141 pp. ISBN 1-872501-27-3. 35.00 [pounds sterling]. This is the third and final fascicle of this project to deal with Bodleian manuscripts. It records images in z56 manuscripts, the great majority of which are not noted in volume III of O. Pacht and J. J. G. Alexander, Illuminated Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library (Oxford, i974). It cannot be said that a great deal is gained by this more expansive coverage; many of the images are simply of nota bene hands. There is a striking omission, that of an important Chaucer manuscript, Arch. Selden. B.24; other omissions include Rawlinson B.199, B.455, C.699. At least one here, Rawlinson G.28, is held by Picht and Alexander to be French. The claim to identify the language(s) of each manuscript is honoured as frequently in its breach as in its observance. [A. S. G. Edwards]

The Pilgrimage to Compostela in the Middle Ages, ed. Maryjane Dunn and Linda Kay Davidson (New York: Routledge, 2000). xlviii + 188 pp.; various illustrations. ISBN o-415-92895-8. 13.99 [pounds sterling] (p/b). A paperback reprint of the collection of eight essays first published by Garland in 1996.

Inclinate autem: Oral Perspectives on Early European Verbal Culture. A Symposium, ed. Jan Hellden, Minna Skafte Jensen, and Thomas Pettitt (Odense: Odense University Press, 2001). 280 pp. ISBN 87-7838-680-2. D. Kr. 250.00. This collection contains six essays dealing with oral aspects of the verbal culture of classical and medieval Europe, ranging from Homeric tradition through Old English (`Deor') and Old Norse poetry (`Gudrunarkvida I') to late-medieval religious texts (catechesis, the humanist interest in St Anne), together with three essays examining oral traditions from more recent periods--Inuit storytelling in Greenland, Turkic oral epic poetry (for which K. Reichl argues that there are parallels in the Middle English popular romances), and the phenomenon of `contemporary legend'. It documents a colloquium held at the Centre for Medieval Studies in Odense in 1998.

Gesture in Medieval Drama and Art, ed. Clifford Davidson, Early Drama, Art, and Music Monograph Series 28 (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 2001). xii + 239 pp.; 48 plates, 28 illustrations in the text. ISBN 1-58044-028-2, $30.00 (hard covers); 1-58044-029-0, $25.00 (p/b). This valuably diverse collection contains the following essays: Jody Enders, `Of miming and signing: the dramatic rhetoric of gesture'; Dunbar H. Ogden, `Gesture and characterization in the liturgical drama'; Janet Schrunk Ericksen, `Offering the forbidden fruit in MS. Junius II; Clifford Davidson, `Gesture in medieval British drama'; Barbara D. Palmer, `Gestures of greeting: annunciations, sacred and secular'; Natalie Crohn Schmitt, `The body in motion in the York Adam and Eve in Eden'; Beth A. Mulvaney, `Gesture and audience: the Passion and Duccio's Maesta'; Jesse Hurlbut, `Body language in Jeu de Robin et Marion'. The core of the book in its theme and method is Davidson's own essay of nearly sixty pages, which assembles a useful range of clues from non-dramatic texts and the other arts for the gestures through which the drama may have been enacted. Like his co-contributors, Davidson sees gesture `as a complicated and dynamic visual fabric which, albeit unrecoverable in all fullness, nevertheless can be glimpsed ... with the assistance of the visual arts'. [Barry Windeatt]

Glyn S. Burgess and Clara Strijbosch, The Legend of St Brendan: A Critical Bibliography (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 2000). xii + 287 pp. ISBN 1-874045-860. Irish 20.00 [pounds sterling]/Eur. 25.40. This...

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