Courtly Love Undressed: Reading Through Clothes in Medieval French Culture by E. Jane Burns, and: The Performance of Self: Ritual, Clothing, and Identity During the Hundred Years War by Susan Crane (review)

104ARTHURIANA ofLovers in otherwise straight-forward narration ofTristan and Iseult's escape from Mark's court. For Barber, plot is everything; consistency in character, voice, tone, and narrative technique has little importance in his approach. I also found some ofBarber's choices peculiar. He gives little attention to Lancelot in the collection, yet he ends the Round Table section with Lancelot's death, not Arthur's. And after the first two tales, Arthur nearly disappears. The Dutch Gawain tale holds some interest for Arthurian devotees, but newcomers may find it rarher long, repetitive, and tedious, especially following the alliterative verse masrerpiece, one ofthe most beautiful, tightly structured tales in the canon. Instead ofthe nearperfect Dutch hero, a less than ideal Gawain might have been a more interesting contrast to the admirable fourteenth-century one. Finally, theTristan story, although famous as a medieval love myth, is too loosely connected with Arthur to warrant its inclusion. Lancelot would have been a more logical choice. Barber's introductions are helpful but uneven. In the Gawain section, the reader can infer that the second Gawain tale is Dutch only from Barber's aside regarding the name ofGawain—'(or Walewein, as the Dutch author calls him)' (156); Barber gives no information on cultural background or dates for this romance. In contrast, he is far more comfortable with 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,' discussing dialect, influences, dates, manuscript information, and speculations about the anonymous author. To discover the translator, however, the reader must go to the publisher's acknowledgments on the back ofthe title page. Uncertain ofhis audience, Barber sometimes gives detailed explanations ofwriters and works and other times assumes knowledge the average reader would lack. For example, in the Gawain introduction, he mentions a possible commission by John of Gaunt (157), but he does not identify Gaunt or discuss the significance ofthis connection. This volume, although handsome and readable, offers little not readily available elsewhere with better critical material and more useful bibliographies. Although marred by some careless typographical errors, it could serve as an accessible, attractive introduction to medieval Arthurian literature, but its jarring collage of narrative styles and sometimes conflicting characterizations will probably disappoint more knowledgeable readers. JANET JESMOK [EMERITA] University ofWisconsin-Milwaukee E. jane burns, Courtly Love Undressed:Reading Through Clothes in Medieval French Culture. The Middle Ages Series. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002. Pp. 326. isbn: 0-8122-3671-8. $49.95. Susan crane, The Performance ofSelf: Ritual, Cbthing, and Identity During the HundredYears War. The Middle Ages Series. Philadelphia: University ofPennsylvania Press, 2002. Pp. 268. isbn: 0-8122-186-X. $19.95 (paperback). The appearance oftwo books about clothing in the same year in the University of Pennsylvania Press's Middle Ages Scries is an indicator of the popularity of the REVIEWS105 topic. Emphasis on self-presentation, including clothing, has been inspired by and has inspired work in performance theory, spawning studies byJudith Butler, Marjorie Garber, Stephen Greenblatt, Peter Stallybrass and Ann Rosalind Jones, and medievalists including Claire Sponsler and Valerie Hotchkiss. Clearly a question until now more deeplyexplored for the Renaissance, clothing and self-representation long merited further study for the Middle Ages. E. Jane Burns's Courtly Love Undressedana Susan Crane's The Performance ofSelfom in this dialogue about the ways that people choose to represent who they are. Susan Crane's book looks at how people presented themselves in medieval courtly life, both through clothing and rituals. Crane combines the literary and historical, dividing her study into sections that focus on culturally defining moments from the mid-fourteenth to mid-fifteenth centuries. In her first chapter, Crane uses the Griselda story in conjunction with the ceremony of alliance at Ardres in 1396 to argue that secular rituals 'facilitate self-definition by interrelating material and rhetorical performance' (8). Charles VI gave many gifts ofclothing rich with symbolic meaning, and he and Richard II wore special clothing and performed certain rituals to underscore the importance of Richard's marriage to Charles's daughter. Crane finds an echo ofthis symbolism ofclothing, word, and gesture in Chaucer's marriage ofGriselda to Walter. In both cases, the marriage ceremonies emerge as more about public presentation ofa new alliance than about...