The Centre and Its Compass: Studies in Medieval Literature in Honor of Professor John Leyerle ed. by Robert A. Taylor et al. (review)

142 LETTERS IN CANADA 1992 refusal to be contained by hwnan constructions which exposes the partial and fallible nature of those constructions. From there the book turns its attention to a series of modern works dealing with animals in the wild (including London's The Calla! the Wild, Fred Bodsworth's Last of the Curlews, and Allan Eckert's The Great Auk) and in cities (Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, Thomas Mann's 'Tobias Mindernickel ,' Katherine Mansfield's 'The Fly,' and Giorgio Bassani's The Heron). Other chapters focus on animals variously implicated in questions of human sexuality (Grove's Settlers of the Marsh, Lawrence's The Fox, Steinbeck 's 'The White Quail,' and Webb's Gone to Earth) and on the roles they are made to play in modern-day myth-making (Flaubert's Salammbo, Findley 's Not Wanted on the Voyage and Faulkner's 'The Bear'). Finally, there is a disappointing chapter on 'The Doubly Victimized Animal,' in which Hemingway, Graeme Gibson, and Jerzy Kosinski are pilloried (most unfairly so, it seems to me) for having, in The Sun Also Rises, Communion, and The Painted Bird, 'put so much artistic effort into proving that, in truth, animal victims are negligible that their stories could easily be judged much more pernicious than any popular work of horror.' Ignoring the slight against the popular and the horrific for the moment (Stephen King's Cujo is the immediate target of that remark), I cannot see what is to be gained by such a harsh and simplistic condemnation . Scholtmeijer's readings of these texts are illuminating and even - in one or two instances - damning, but surely victimized animals have greater enemies than these. Sporadic excesses aside, Animal Victims in Modern Fiction is a valuable piece of work. It raises questions regarding our place in the world that need to be raised more often and more urgently. But what is perhaps most significant about Scholtmeijer's book is its adamant and humbling reminder that, if we are to answer those questions adequately, we cannot hope to answer them on our own. (BRIAN PATTON) Robert A. Taylor, James F. Burke, Patricia J. Eberle, Ian Lancashire, and Brian S. Merrilees, editors. The Centre and Its Compass: Studies in Medieval Literature in Honor of Professor John Leyerle Medieval Institute Publications. xii, 474. $40.00 During the 'go-go' years of the 1960s and into the early 19708, when higher education in North America experienced an unparalleled expansion, no figure was equal to John Leyerle in medieval studies. With uncommon vigour and vision, Leyerle crafted a grand strategy for the field and managed the fine details necessary to that strategy, with the result that Toronto' - an intellectual place name that incorporated many elements, units, faculties, and resources - became the centre for medieval HUMANITIES 143 studies in the world. The teaching and research programs that he led or inspired had many worthy features, but among them were most assuredly an emphasis on primary verbal and related sources, required original language competency, especially in Latin, and a sensitivity to the full historical context, broadly conceived. There was a medieval 'there' there, and the real medievalist had to be ready to engage it. Because of his success, Leyerle was sought for various administrative posts, including dean of graduate studies at the University of Toronto and interim president of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and was welcomed as consultant to various other programs and as coordinator of such special activities as the endowment campaign of the Medieval Academy of America. Now, at his retirement, seventeen friends and colleagues have written essays in his honour, and a committee of five has edited them, in a collective tribute that reflects and mirrors the substantial intellectual contributions Leyerle has made. The Reverend Leonard E. Boyle, OP, and Andrew Hughes offer 'vintage Toronto' essays in their respective studies of tonic accent in manuscripts and scribal work in late-medieval liturgical manuscripts. Both show how a close attention to manuscript detail produces broader interpretive results. Hughes's ending challenge to the reader to write two sample sentences as if the reader were a scribe is the sort of practical engagement that makes...