In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Short Notices 277 is difficult to escape the feeling that the mix of the material is a real problem. The book interweaves serious and scholarly writing with the tight and personal, but even more strikingly, it juxtaposes material with a very short sheU-tife with articles that serve the more enduring requirements of academic research. This mix creates a disjunction which is intensified by the editor's decision to use both English and German in the first part of the book. M u c h of the material is thus presented twice, and each of the essays is introduced and summarised in the alternate language. One has to question the wisdom of this bilingual approach, especially as it has apparently not been considered necessary in the second part. W h e n combined with variations in type for each of the languages, it is an irritating editorial feature. O n the positive side, the book is generously and interestingly Illustrated with prints, etchings and photographs from all kinds of sources, and in terms of scope and comprehensibitity it should be of value to students of Robin Hood. Philippa Beckerling Department of English University of Western Australia Ganshof, F. L., Feudalism (Medieval Academy Reprints for Teaching 34), Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1996; paper; pp. xviii, 176; R.R.P. US$13.95. 'What is feudalism?' has been the starting-point for m a n y an undergraduate course in medieval European history, and sttil is in many cases today. The two seminal works which always appear on the reading-list for this topic are Marc Bloch's Feudal Society and Francois Ganshof's Feudalism. They are very different books. Bloch offers a marvellously rich and wide-ranging account of feudal institutions and the society in which they were embedded, though his discursive and detailed approach must appear formidable to the n e w undergraduate! Ganshof, in contrast, provides a masterpiece of compression, clearly and succinctly set out, and incorporating extensive evidence with a remarkably light touch. H e is very careful 278 Short Notices to delineate the exact scope of his book: feudalism in the 'narrow, technical, legal sense of the word', as it existed in the regions between the Loire and the Rhine between the eighth and thirteenth centuries. His focus is on the two institutions in which this feudalism was embodied: vassalage and the fief. This book has had a lengthy life. First appearing in French editions in 1944 and 1947, its translation into English in 1950 was greeted with acclaim by English and American reviewers. The English version was subsequently revised for a second edition in 1961 and a thud in 1964. This n e w printing, in the series of reprints for teaching issued by the Medieval Academy of America, brings the third edition back into print after some years' absence. The reprint is a photographic one and no attempt has been m a d e to amend the text or the select bibliography in thetightof the scholarship of the last thirty years. It is evidence of the enduring quality and value of Ganshof's book that it can still be used profitably by undergraduates in its original form, and that it is sttil the best short introduction to vassalage and the fief in the Middle Ages. This reprint is therefore very welcome. Toby Burrows Scholars' Centre The University of Western Australia Library Kahn, Victoria, Machiavellian Rhetoric: From the Counter-Reformation Milton, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1994; pp. xv, 314; R.R.P. US$29.50, £23.50. Victoria Kahn's Machiavellian Rhetoric offers an innovative approach to the reading and reception of the works of Machiavelli and is a valuable addition to the corpus of research produced by scholars such as Raab, Pocock, Skinner and Worden. The book argues that the Machiavelli of force and fraud, the 'rhetorical Machiavel', is not simply the result of a naive reading of his works, but m a y be understood as a 'rhetorical dimension of his political theory' (p. 4). The primary objective of this investigation is to provide a revised history of Renaissance Machiavellism 'that sees the Machiavel and the ...

pdf

Share