The master and Minerva (review)

288 Reviews a chronology of these writings with full titles. A most useful 'Select Bibliography' and an index make the study an essential reference tool for scholars interested in medieval astrology, theology, philosophy, or science. Unfortunately, the index does not include a complete inventory of the copious information in the notes. Nevertheless, History, prophecy, and the stars shows how important astrology could be in the world view of the later Middle Ages and thus provides a nice counterbalance to the works of Coopland on Nicolas Oresme and Pruckner on Henry of Langenstein, which highlighted the denial of astrology by the rare sceptical Uiinkers of this era. Maxwell J. Walkley Department of French University of Sydney Solterer, Helen, The master and Minerva, Berkeley/Los Angeles/London, University of California Press, 1995; paper; pp. xiv, 301; 14 plates; R.R.P ? Helen Solterer's aim in this book is to examine the role of the female listener/reader in certain types of high medieval clerical writings, with a view to demonstrating that male authors undermined die audiority of tiieir own texts by the inclusion of such 'disputing women' in their discourse, a discourse which was usually directed toward die subjugation of women to men in general and to male constructions of knowledge in particular. In the process of her investigation the capacity of language and writing to do damage, the history of libel, and the current preoccupation with verbal sexual harassment are touched upon. The texts analysed include those which authorize male control of women such as Le Chastoiement de dames and Li Houneurs et li vertus des dames. This control is 'natural' in the light of Biblical narrative and Aristotelian philosophy, in which woman is to man as the body is to the mind. The danger of being persuaded by a woman was an ever-present fear for medieval men, especially clerics. It recalled Eve's persuading Adam to disobey God and the entry of pain and suffering into die world, and reminded men that their intellects could be overcome by the demands of the flesh. Therefore, the speech of women was potentially a powerful force for destabilizing societal order. The strength of female speech appears in a number of different types of male writing. M e n seem unable to write away the resistance of women. Reviews 289 'Andreas Capellanus's mock dialogues in the De Amore (On Love) project female voices that reply to and often foil the suits of male lovers . . . Even in medieval versions of Ovid's Heroides, the letters attributed to female correspondents mark a type of interaction' (p. 2). The lengthy discussion of the Response au Bestiaire d'amour in Chapter Four, 'Contrary to what is said', brings together Solterer's analysis of the dialectical method used in medieval university teaching and the question of the relationship between the sexes. Dialectic is itself a precarious activity because the master's status is perpetually atriskas the student grows in skill and threatens to usurp his authority. Therefore, the application of the dialectical model to male-female discourse is pregnant with the possibility that the woman will usurp male modes of argument and emerge a magistra. The second type of male literary product which reveals the potential power of women is the genre of misogynist complaint. Texts such as the Lamentations of Matheolus are a catalogue of 'slander, blasphemy, [and] expletives' (p. 80). In Chapter Five, 'Defamation and the Livre de leesee', it is demonstrated that Jean LeFevre's Livre de leesce, which purports to refute Matheolus, is in fact a spin-off which reinforces male complaints against women. LeFevre translated the Lamentations, which made it available to a much greater reading public, and his 'refutations' are reclassifications of w o m e n as existing only in die zone of the positive and delightful. This offers women no freedom, as it functions like Victorian England's insistence on the purity of women, which unfitted them for any public role. The final literary form revealing the power of women is the text authored by a woman. The issue of the extent of female education in the High Middle Ages is canvassed, with references to the beguines and...