Material Culture and Cultural Materialisms in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (review)

266 Reviews here - and the editors leave it unexplained - is what, in this interpretation, close would mean, which surely is a verb depending on does (not a noun meaning 'enclosed place', as the reference is to what is revealed). The structure 'does... show's' is inherently forced and un-English. Something needs to be said about the handling of Marvell's prosody in this text. It is regularly obscured and violated. Conventionally, 1. 44 of 'To His Coy Mistress' has contained 'Thorough the iron grates of life', not 'Through...'. 'Thorough' is essential, not optional, as w e need eight syllables within the overall prosodic scheme, and the line as it has come down to us not only has those syllables, but appropriately starts with a 'weak' one. Nor are the editors consistent about the matter, for in the 'Horatian Ode' they correctly have 'through' in 1. 11, but 'thorough' in 1. 15. The 1681 text - which the editors unjustly consider 'corrupt' (p. xix) - is most punctilious about matters like this. This is not least the case with respect to syllabic versus non-syllabic ed as a verbal ending. Thus, in the 'Horatian Ode', for example, w e should have, as modernised forms, 'armed' in 1. 55 and 'forced' in 1. 66, not 'armed' and 'forced', which m o d e m readers will automatically, but wrongly, pronounce as monosyllables. D maintains distinctions like this religiously, and similarly precisely prints e.g. 'flow'rs' in line 7 of 'The Garden' where Ormerod and Wortham have 'flowers'. In short, then, this is an edition of a very uneven nature. Much of i t is very distinguished, but one hopes the editors will thoroughly revise the text of the poems for a future reprint. Joost Daalder Department ofEnglish Flinders University Perry, Curtis, ed., Material Culture and Cultural Materialisms in the Middl Ages and Renaissance (Arizona Studies in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance 5), Turnhout, Brepols, 2001; paper; pp. xxiv, 246; 16 b/w illustrations; R R P EUR50.00; ISBN 2503510744. In the words of its editor Curtis Perry, this collection of essays marks a to the hard facts ofmaterial culture in order to critique and revise received critical paradigms' (p. x). By 'hard facts' Perry seems to mean that most of these essays call on a world of things that can be touched and seen as a means of understanding that Reviews 267 which cannot - the imagined world of ideas so central to more traditional critical modes. Overall, the essays assembled here do substantiate this claim while also presenting several different 'materialisms' that collectively challenge the assumptions of existing critical practice. Despite a plurality of approaches and a broad chronology, there is an undeniable sense of cohesion here. What unifies the collection is the willingness of its various authors to openly confront the challenges faced by materialist criticism. Identifiable in almost every essay is the issue of h o w to account for cultural production on the basis offinancial,property, labour and class issues, prior to the ascendancy of widespread capitalism. These concerns come together wonderfully in Alan M . Stahl's essay 'The Venetian Mint in the Age of the Black Death'. Stahl offers an interesting account ofhow civic policing in medieval Italy coped when material realities impacted on the day-to-day functioning of the state. In this case, Stahl examines h o w the Venetian council managed to keep a steady, manageable production ofcoins going in the face ofa plague-induced labour shortage. O f central concern to Stahl is to draw attention to the materiality of money itself, as opposed to the abstract terms in which we usually refer to it, because of its omnipresent status as a system of valuation in our world. Stahl's essay is complemented by Joerg O. Fichte's '"For coueitise after cros; the crown staut in golde": M o n e y as Matter and Metaphor in Piers Plowman'. Fichte too draws attention to money as a material object, which in rum helps uncover its true significance as metaphor in Piers Plowman. Fichte emphasises the increasing importance of money in successive revisions of the poem. The overall effect is a clear exposition...