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152 Reviews the major public research institutions of every country. K. V. Sinclair Deparunent of M o d e m Languages James Cook University Camille, Michael, Image on the edge: the margins of medieval art, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1992; paper; pp. 176; 86 illustrations; R.R.P. US$17.95. The tide of this book commands immediate attention since a reader may well think that here is a study concerned with manuscript marginalia. It is more than that, however. CamUle's discussions range over life at court, the splendours of the Church's architectural monuments, the ordered monastery and its sumptuous liturgical books, and the often squalid existence of the lower ranks, such as prostitutes in Paris, who, while living on the city edge, also wander though the seedy periphery of society. The author is at ease with his subject, the popularization of the hitherto thoroughly scholarly discipline of manuscript marginalia pioneered by Lilian M . C. Randall. In the course of the exercise he assails the reader from all directions with scatological voidings and sexual infusions with the shattering impact of a siege machine. In a section entitled "The pregnant page', Camille primarily discusses reproductive matters. H e describes the depiction of 'a youthful gryUus' who 'plays bowls with the eggs he has just laid below a patron's swelling figure'. If w e are to assume the eggs are being associated with fecundity, how are w e to relate the firmness of CamUle's convictions when he labels the illustration in question 'Flagellation of Christ and egg/turd-bowling'? He then goes on to discuss Betty Boop and Constantin Brancusi and the 'soul of the cartoon character under capitalism is relegated to a Purgatory of the popular'. He would even have us believe that babewyns and grylli were Betty Boop's ancestors. Elsewhere, in an attempt to make a point, he throws in Magritte and Ernst for good measure. Some of CamUle's more startiing statements imperil his credibility. Observe the following statement, (p. 5): Tt is perhaps the greatest hony in Marguerite's Book of Hours that the illuminator's quirky pen-lines and curves circumscribing the revered visages of Christ and the saints are indistinguishable from—indeed, they are the same as—the squiggles that suggest a monkey's bum'. W e are reaching the point of almost nihilistic Reviews 153 absurdity. CamUle's idea that 'the people of the Middle Ages saw themselves at the edge, the last ageing dregs of a falling-off of humanity,... Everything was worse not better, everything was mere imago ...' deserves a far deeper analysis than he has granted it. O n the same page, the statement that 'Women were associated with the dangers of excess . . . with the artifices of representation—then fashionable clothes and cosmetics' is gender restrictive, not to say discriminatory, when seen in the light of CamUle's style of writing. In any case, he speaks presumably of the haute bourgeoisie and the nobility, where males were no less guilty of these immoderations. Camille errs in designating the figure surmounting a world map in figure 2 as God, since the iconographical elements point to a representation of Christ. Also, a husband is on the left of a drawing, rather than the right, as he states (fig. 80). When speaking of the tail of a letter 'p' being joined by the illuminator to an arrow, the author claims that the 'wordfightsback' (p. 22). Is he saying that the text isfightingback before the illumination existed? The reader is supplied withreferences,a very full bibliography, and a list of illustrations with then respective sizes, which the publisher has reproduced with great clarity. However, the absence of an index will limit the study's use for serious research or as a tool for the inquiring minds of undergraduates. In order to cool off after reading the author's overheated presentation, non-specialists would be advised to consult some less lurid tides selected from the bibliography. Peter Rolfe Monks TownsvUle Cohen, Mark R., Under crescent and cross: the Jews in the Middle Ages, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1994; cloth; pp. xxi, 280. R.R.P. ? The author states in his preface...

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