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After Rome's Fall: Narrators and Sources of Early Medieval History. Essays Presented to Walter Goffart (review)
- Parergon
- Australian and New Zealand Association of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (Inc.)
- Volume 18, Number 3, July 2001
- pp. 227-229
- 10.1353/pgn.2011.0176
- Review
- Additional Information
- Purchase/rental options available:
Reviews 227 indicating her influence on Abelard. This readily available translation should then spark a renewed interest in Heloise from medievalists and feminists alike, and a reappraisal ofboth participants as two great intellectuals oftheir age. The second halfofthe work is the text itself, in parallel Latin and English with comprehensive notes, which will be of great value to scholars and students alike. Both the Latin edition and the meticulous English translation by Chiavaroli and M e w s , an intelligent and smooth rendering of the original, are set to become standard references. This is also a highly readable work, accessible to scholars at all levels, with a wealth of essential insights and creative re-reading of the core texts. The evidence M e w s offers for the attribution of the letters to Heloise and Abelard is both exciting and utterly compelling. This book constitutes a key new resource for further evidence about Heloise and the nature ofthe relationship with Abelard, yet clearly it contains much more to attract the reader, such as its account of contemporary relationships between m e n and w o m e n and of twelfth-century dialogic traditions and forms. The inexpensive paperback edition will only increase its popularity as a course text. It is a fine work, for which M e w s cannot be too highly praised. Susan Broomhall School of Humanities University of Western Australia Murray, Alexander Callander, ed., After Rome s Fall: Narrators and Sources of Early Medieval History. Essays Presented to Walter Goffart, Toronto/Buffalo/ London, University of Toronto Press, 1998; cloth; pp. xii, 388; R.R.P. US$55.00; ISBN 0802007791. This is a fine Festschrift, in which the recipient, the late Antique/early med historian Walter Goffart, remains in view through references and tributes by the contributors. Their observations can be acute: Edward James' reference to Goffart, 'who either does not know Rouche's paper or, more plausibly, does not consider i t worth citing', takes m e back to a postgraduate seminer in Toronto, when a student asked for Goffart's opinion on one historian's theory and he replied, 'Well, I don't read those texts that way'. It is thus entirely appropriate that, to quote from the editor's preface, 'This book, as it turns out, is largely about reading the sources and interpreting their narrators, both medieval and modern' (p. ix). 228 Reviews A phrase preceding that just quoted catches the eye: 'perhaps the promise of being provided with footnotes encouraged contributors to share with readers the rich and detailed contexts of their comments'. One should hope so! When notes can be placed at the foot of a text by one click of a mouse, there is no excuse for not having them there rather than as endnotes. In-text referencing suits some disciplines, such as Archaeology, very well, but historians have tried and found it wanting. After biographical and bibliographical sections on its honore, the book comprises seventeen chronologically arranged papers. Susan Reynolds is always good at showing why 'historians of modern nationalism' (who unfortunately are unlikely to read this review!) are wrong 'to believe that ideas of political community were foreign to earlier centuries' (p. 30). Those like Reynolds who are diffident about the term 'ethnogenesis' seem not to realise what a widely useful analytical tool it is and how subversive of what they are afraid of. Her conclusion that 'The gentes, peoples or nations that lasted in western Europe, although they believed in their c o m m o n descent and culture, were in reality defined primarily by their political allegiance' (p. 36) is precisely what is meant by ethnogenesis, which sees identity as fluid and particularly marked by (re-) orientation to a ruling group. Andrew Gillett lucidly and convincingly identifies Cassiodorus' Variae as 'great moments in bureaucracy' rather than Ostrogothic propaganda. Edward James, who wrote so effectively about the peoples of Gaul and ethnogenesis in his book The Origins of France, makes a mystifying statement about Gregory of Tours: 'When he does identify people ethnically they are foreigners: Goths, Lombards, Saxons, Taifals . . . it is ethnic difference within the Frankish kingdom that Gregory is eradicating' (p. 66). But...