Of the Making of Books: Medieval Manuscripts, Their Scribes and Readers. Essays Presented to M. B. Parkes ed. by P. R. Robinson and Rivkah Zim (review)

REVIEWS with both genders (p. 142) in a discussion that ranges across the 1380 document that released Chaucer from the accusation of rape; legal rheto­ ric of rape in fourteenth-century England; "Adam Scriveyn"; the Legend ofPhilomela in The Legend ofGood Women; and The Wife ofBath's Tale. Rep­ resentations of women in Chaucer"s poetry, this chapter asserts, were deeply influenced by the poet's rape accusation. These summaries of selected chapters should suggest how and why this book may merit the attention of both nonspecialists and medieval­ ists. Portions of this book can furnish an aid to first-time teachers (non­ specialist or medievalist) of the many texts it considers that are regularly used in the undergraduate classroom. I came away from my reading with new ideas about how I might juxtapose in different ways those texts that I teach frequently, and how I might incorporate into my teaching medieval texts that I've never taught before. Other parts of this book provide challenging arguments that scholars will want to interrogate. To note just one example, I think that the chapter on Corpus Christi plays urges the link between cycle drama and Eucharist too strenuously; however much the implications of eucharistic symbolism may resonate in this drama, the theological and festive dimensions of Corpus Christi are not uniformly relevant to the auspices and structures of the English cycle plays. On the whole, though, in Minding the Body Potkay and Evitt have assembled an impressive group of essays whose thematic focus on gender and the body provides a very usable guide to the fundamental issues at stake in a wide range of important medieval texts. THERESA COLETTI University of Maryland P. R. ROBINSON and RIVKAH ZIM, eds. Ofthe Making ofBooks: Medieval Manuscripts, Their Scribes and Readers. Essays Presented to M. B. Parkes. Aldershot, UK.: Scalar Press, 1997. Pp. xiii, 324. $68.95. It is a tribute to the influence of Malcolm Parkes that this festschrift, gathered to mark his retirement, should serve almost as an interim re­ port on British manuscript studies. With the exception of two fine es­ says on the history of the idea of authorship by A. J. Minnis and David Ganz, each contribution is based on a meticulous examination of a care379 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER fully selected sample ofmanuscripts. The essays describe the state ofthe discipline, including its isolation (for good or ill) from the more hectic pace ofliterary criticism and its suspicion ofeasy generalization. Outsid­ ers may admire the elegance and clarity of the demonstrations and the sheer labor behind them, while wishing in some cases that the broader historical implications of the work had been more fully explored. Some of the essays round out work that has been ongoing for some time. A. I. Doyle returns to an old friend, the troublesome Carthusian Stephen Dodesham, to offer the most recent list of works he copied, some twenty-three or twenty-four volumes. Helmut Gneuss examines BL MS Catron Tiberius A.3, a mid-eleventh-century collection of ninety­ one items, many of them associated with the Benedictine reform move­ ment, including the earliest copy of a full Marian office in England. Gneuss reviews all the evidence and establishes the widely accepted provenance, Christ Church, Canterbury, as a near certainty. Jeane Kro­ chalis adds five manuscripts to Neil Ker's list of those that belonged to Kirkstall Abbey. Other essays set out hypotheses that will need to be tested in years to come. The great increase in the number of patristic texts in England from the late eleventh century on has often been attributed to the efforts of Norman reformers anxious to expand the holdings of libraries that they considered backwards. Teresa Webber argues that this view is in part a misconception, based on misleading comparisons to Carolingian collections. She shows that the English often had to seek much further than Normandy for their exemplars and traces the outline of a broader Continental connection, noting, for example, that English copies ofAu­ gustine's Confessions appear to have been based on Flemish exemplars. In some cases the manuscripts yield remarkably full accounts of human lives. Richard Beadle examines the work of Geoffrey...