The Color of Melancholy: The Uses of Books in the Fourteenth Century by Jacqueline Cerquiglini-Toulet (review)

Book Reviews Jacqueline Cerquiglini-Toulet. The Color ofMelancholy: The Uses of Books in the Fourteenth Century. Trans. Lydia G. Cochrane. Forward by Rogier Chartiet. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univetsity Press, 1997. 186p. Jerry Root University of Utah Jacqueline Cetquiglini-Toulet's new book engages in a thick description offourteenth -century litetary culture. Het reading of this literature and period flushes out Johan Huizinga's thesis ofthe "waning" ofthe Middle Ages in a positive way. Cetquiglini-Toulet focuses on melancholy as a way to levet into the material and cultutal conditions that made the decline ofthe fourteenth century possible. Her investigation becomes a revision of the "massive reduction to unity" (152) operated on the fourteenth century and its scholastic foundations by humanist thinkets . She thus attempts to "reintroduce a degree ofdistinction into the period that humanists considered and rejected globally in the interests of self-affirmation" (152). The degree ofdistinction she reintroduces manifests itselfas a willingness to take the period on its own terms, and to allow these terms to express the otganizing categories ofthe period's "decline." This approach gives an accute sense of the local and immanent. Such a "degree ofdistinction" results in a richly varied subject mattet. It is the strength of this book. As the elegant introduction by Roget Chartiet puts it, Cetquiglini-Toulet brings to the study of these wotks "the description of theit material forms, and a comprehension ofthe various meanings invested in them by theit authots, theit copyists or printets, and theit readets" (xvi). Cetquiglini-Toulet entets this realm of material fotms through the prism ofmelancholy, a tetm which, unfortunately, she nevet defines. Nonetheless, examples ofthe tetm abound. Melancholy is the "painful contradiction" (3) that a literature as young as fourteenth-century French litetature could see itself"as the wintet of litetature" (4). Melancholy is also behind the facade ofthe Court ofLove, fotmed by Châties VI in 1400: "The act offoundation was thus conceived as a therapy that would petmit an entire society in crisis to escape a sentiment—melancholy—that was becoming predominant in both life and aesthetics" (47). It manifests itselfat the even mote subtle and basic level ofgenre ot compositional technique: "The sentiment ofcrisis in materials engendered reflection on the very ways in which litetary materials were produced and on the origins ofthe wotk oflitetature" (64). Melancholy is thus a double trope. It is a figure fot a material and political wotld in crisis and it becomes a metaphot fot literature's reflection on and engagement in that crisis. Cetquiglini-Toulet maps the complicated archaeology of the material fotms of this crisis "in both life and FALL 1998 * ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW * 81 aesthetics." Het mastetful command of the period and its dense textualiry make this book a wealth ofinformation, minute and genetal. While the dense engagement with detail is a strength (among many examples, see particulatly the section on the wtitet [31 et passim] and the section on invention [100 et passim]), it can also become a weakness. Cetquiglini-Toulet seems so intent on avoiding the globalizing, reductive view of the period that she decides to withhold from the readet the fine genetal petspective she must have. The result is that het reintroduction of distinction leaves us somewhat lost in the trees with no sense ofthe forest. The first chaptet is almost aphoristic, and throughout the book I was left eaget fot a füllet discussion of patticulat texts (see especially the atgument that culminates on 146). Radier than making a critique ofwhat is here, I am drawing attention to the absence ofa latget frame that would help situate these issues amongst more genetal and theoretical concerns. While the book is rich with examples offourteenthcentury uses ofthe wotd "melancholy," there is no attempt to define the wotd or to put it in dialogue with the rich modem discussions ofit in criticism and psychoanalysis . Likewise, I was sutprised to see that Chattiet's forward invokes Foucault's article "What is an Authot?," and yet in a dense and key moment in het genealogy ofthe authot, Cerquiglini-Toulet cites a sutprisingly outdated discussion of authotship by Ernest Kris and Otto Kurz (1934). Ifshe had situated the vety compelling issues ofmelancholy and authotship in...