Medieval literary theory and criticism c. 1100-c.1375: the commentary tradition (review)

166 Reviews The conclusion that the household was not a mere domestic organisation nor yet a simple political structure is doubtless correct but leaves many questions unanswered. What was, for example, the role in any given period of the household in the total military organisation and expenditure of the nobility? Mertes' conclusion that the household, by the end of the sixteenth century, had ceased to be the nexus of local control and patronagefitsoddly, if at dl, with Hainsworth's demonstration that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the role of the household steward was critical in the maintenance of both the power and the patronage of a lord in his local community. The context had changed, the size of the household had varied, but the role and position of the household may weU have altered less than Mertes suggests if Hdnsworth's conclusions are trustworthy. Despite these caveats, this is a useful contribution to a much neglected area of historicd knowledge. Sybil M . Jack Department of History University of Sydney Minnis, A. J., A. B. Scott and D. Wallace, Medieval literary theory and criticism c. HOO-c.1375: the commentary tradition, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1988; pp. xvi, 538; R.R.P. A U S $240.00. This valuable, necessary and very scholarly collection of primary texts in translation, with astute and carefully worded introductions, is yet neither one thing nor the other. That is to say, it is neither a book on 'the medieval commentary tradition' - despite the statement that it is (p. 1) - nor a book on 'another branch... of medieval literary theory and critixism' (i.e., distinct from the artes poetriae, dictaminis and predicandi which deal, in fact, with composition, not (as p. 1) with 'literary theory and criticism') despite the statement that it is (p. 1). It is not the former because it does not deal systematically or comprehensively with the medieval tradition of commenting on key texts and it is not the latter because (a) there was in the Middle Ages no such area, subject or topic as 'literary theory and criticism' and (b) if there had been, a book of excerpts illustrating it would have to look more like A. Preminger et al. Classical and Medieval Literary Criticism (N.Y., 1974, 1983) - not mentioned in the present volume's bibliography (!) - than the Minnis/Scott volume here under review. The latter, in fact, is a rather modey and seemingly random collection put together to deepen the nineteenth-century philological project, which has in recent years sought to show that medieval scholars were not as bad at humanism and classical philology as we used to think. Indeed, their scholasticism is really, when you think about it, 'high-order humanism' (p. 9). W e are counselled that we can, after all (despite J. W . H. Atkins) look to the Middle Ages 'for original and lasting contributions to Reviews 167 literary theory (and) for illuminating appreciations of literary works themselves' (p. 11). Let us, then, allow our author/editor/translator team to take us by the hand and lead us into their selva selvaggia ed oscura to see how they convince us of this. Chapters I-II take us over the well-worn ground of the medievd accessus ad auctores, where w e are given useful translations of long-used works. That these latter announce their field as 'ethics' (p. 13) rather than 'literary theory and criticism' does not seem to bother our team. One wonders, however, whether the following (typicd?) comment on Ovid Heroides III classes as the sort of 'original' contribution just referred to: 'the usefulness or ultimate end (finalis causa) of the book differs according to the various intentions, depending on whether the intention is the recognition of unchaste or foolish forms of love, or else to show how some w o m e n may be courted by the letter, or how the results of living chastely may benefit us. Alternatively, the ultimate end of the book is that by commending those who engage in chaste love, he (the author) may encourage us to chaste love. Or else, having seen the advantages (utilitas) of lawful love and the disasters or disadvantages which result from unlawful...