The Tale of the Alerion by Guillaume de Machaut (review)

HUMANITIES 325 Guillaume de Machaut. The Tale ofthe Alerion Edited and translated by Minnette Gaudet and Constance B. Hieatt Toronto Medieval Texts and Translations, 10. University of Toronto Press 1994. viii, 192. $50.00 This attractive volume is a welcome addition to the growing list of works making Guillaume de Machaut more accessible to English readers. It does not purport to be a new critical edition of the Alerion text; the editors have consulted allthe manuscripts containing thedit, buthave worked primarily from those used as base by Hoepffner in his classic edition for the Societe des Anciens Textes (1911), departing only occasionally from Hoepffner's text to give preference to a variant reacting, documented in the critical notes. Punctuation and text divisions have been changed frequently, however, without notice, making it difficult for a comparatist reader to undertake a close study of the original through the translation. The translation itself is attractively done, but it is far from literal. The intention was to I convey a sense of the texture and style of the original poem,' and this has been achieved as far as possible. But the result - a highly readable, attractive, semi-verse text - may be said to belong to the translator, in this case Constance Hieatt, as much as it does to Guillaume de Machaut. Many readers might have preferred the literal English prose translation that was prepared by Minnette Gaudet, as an intermediary between the original and the final verse rendition by Hieatt, especially if it had been presented alongside the original text in facing-page presentation . The introduction is helpful, particularly the pages dealing with possible sources and influences, in which it is demonstrated how difficult and complex it is to trace such forces. The matter of the numerical signature, long misunderstood, is explained with clarity and precision. There is extensive commentary on the style of the original poem, indicating the delicate shadings of tone, verbal echoing, and word-play, all essential elements of the poetic genius of Gy.illawne, and all, by admission of the editors, 'impossible to duplicate in a translation.' The delicate links established by the poet between the literal episodes of falconry and the parallels that these may have with aspects of courtly love are dearly and convincingly dealt with. The pomt is well emphasized that the poem is not an allegory as such, but a serious work on falconry itself, accompanied by a series of reflections on courtly love suggested by the falconry episodes. Brownlee's notion oftwo 'registers' involving falconry on the onehand and amatory discussion on the other is exploited very successfully to indicate the delicate balance between the two, which are kept separate, but are linked in various ways to maintain the possibility of applying parallels and comparisons from one to the other. 326 LETTERS IN CANADA 1995 It is to be hoped that the beauty of this English translation and the helpfulness of the introductory material will tempt readers to take up a closer study of Guillaume's original poem, readily available in a Johnson Reprint (1965) of Hoepffner's edition. (ROBERT TAYLOR) Jean Bodin. On the Demon-Mania of Witches. Translated by Randy A. Scott, Introduction and abridgment by Jonathan L. Pearl Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies. 218. $15.00 This is the first English translation of a French work which, in the decades after its 1580 publication, was also a much-read handbook on the theory, practice, and punishment of witchcraft. Its author, a lawyer in the service of the Duke of Alen<;on, was known for his Six Books ofthe Commonwealth, often considered 1the first modern study of the state/ as Jonathan Pearl points out in his thorough and useful introduction, and for his posthumously published Colloquium, a survey of various religions and philosophies . Bodin's Demon-Mania displays the underbelly of the Renaissance. The same class of men who invented the term Jrenaissance' to describe their own time, and 'middle ages' to dismiss the previous thousand years separating themselves from the grandeur that was Rome, were largely responsible for the witch-hunts that killed probably sixty thousand people (about 80 per cent of them women) in early modern Europe. Ecclesiastical inquisitors prosecuted witches in Spain and Italy, but in France and elsewhere it was judges, lawyers, civil servants, and humanistic scholars who provided the theory, circulated the anecdotes, presided at the trials, and imposed the punishments. Theirworkserved the centralized absolutist secularstate as much as it did the clericalinstitution (Catholic or Protestant, ,depending on the country) with which they collaborated. This is Bodin's social circle and his audience, as he often remarks. The theory is not innovative but draws on what was already present in both Catholic and Calvinist doctrine. If God is good, there must be a devil to account for evil;ifmiracles are possible, then so is diabolical intervention including lycanthropy; rationalistic or sceptical doubt is impiety; moreover, all earlier cultures have reported the existence of witches. Bodin distinguishes the heretic, who makes a religious mistake, from the witch, who denies religion and knowmgly accepts diabolical assistance. This assis'tance vitiates anything a witch may do, 'for evil spirits never do good, except by accident or in order that a greater evil might come of it, when for example they cure a sick person to attract him to their devotion' or give a correct prediction. Many rationalistic authorities - ancient, medieval, and modem - come in for stern reproof because of their failure to separate natural from supernatural and hence to recognize diabolical influence. ...