Domestic Violence in Medieval Texts (review)

Reviews 215 Parergon 21.1 (2004) Woman as to Who Is More Essential for the World’s Existence’, the Woman loses merely by appearing in public to debate, since, in the words of Qasmkna’s father (a courtly love poet), ‘Walls and castles were erected for woman... Her face is pudendum displayed on the main road that has to be covered by shawls and veils’ (p. 12). The maqma form of rhymed prose interspersed with poems, borrowed from classical Arabic, provides Rosen with several provocative narratives in which the exchange of women between males overlays an undercurrent, acceptable in the Arabic sources, of homosexual desire between characters and between author and patron. In these novellas, both genders subvert expectation by cross-dressing, and by acting out male ineffectualness and female aggressive speech and action. Rosen sees in this ‘passing’ behaviour a reflection of the liminal situation of Jewish intellectuals in Mediterranean societies. A less theoretically-driven presentation might have suited the first exposure of these texts to non-Hebraists. In the transvestite role-reversal of Al-Harizi’s twentieth maqma, for instance, the narrator ‘manages to regain his manhood as he symbolically draws a (phallic) knife out of his (vaginal) shoe’ (p. 158). Much relevant material is relegated to the Notes at the back, which have to be trawled for references in the absence of a Bibliography. Most errors I found were trivial; note 59, p. 226, The Transformations of Allegory is by G. Clifford. The book resembles the publisher’s Middle Ages Series, with the same high production values. Readers considering whether to purchase it might like to sample Rosen’s essays in Prooftexts; her article in Volume 20 is Chapter 8 in the book. Mary Scrafton Adelaide Salisbury, Eve, Georgiana Donavin and Merrall Llewelyn Price, eds, Domestic Violence in Medieval Texts, Gainesville, University Press of Florida, 2002; cloth; pp. 368; 42 b/w illustrations; RRP US$55; ISBN 0813024420. This collection of articles is gives a wide-ranging and important selection of responses to the central theme of medieval domestic violence. It grew out of a session at Leeds International Medieval Congress and the articles still shows some of the initial excitement the session must have generated. Examining the social history of violence has attracted growing attention recently and this book is a valuable addition to the study of the ways that past 216 Reviews Parergon 21.1 (2004) societies defined and negotiated violence. The editors in their introduction set out the issues to be addressed in an essay that is significant in itself for analysing how domestic violence in medieval societies can be construed. They acknowledge that much of what modern western societies call domestic violence was seen as normative behaviour in medieval societies, particularly as revealed in literary and narrative sources. This means that the question of how historians look for and analyse violence that occurred in a domestic setting is difficult to ask, let alone answer. Changing meanings of violence are explored in the introduction and then taken up in all the articles in the collection. In the introduction, the definition of violence used includes ‘aberrational physical conflict ‘ as well as ‘approved corporal punishment’. (p. 6). When violence occurred in medieval societies it could both maintain order and disrupt that order, both within households and in broader public arenas. Violence experienced in these settings is also placed by the editors into the setting of the Christian household. Suffering and its endurance were qualities that were admired as being Christ-like, and women were praised for showing these qualities in their acceptance of violence within the household, by such thinkers as Christine de Pizan. It is within these contexts that the articles in this volume then move on to explore domestic violence in different textual settings. There are thirteen articles in total after the substantial introduction. The articles are divided into three unequal parts: Domestic Violence and the Law; Fictional Histories: Domestic Violence and Literary/legal Texts; Historical Fictions: Domestic Violence in Chronicle, Drama, Hagiography and Illumination. Each contributor tries in different ways to grapple with the essential problem of the collection – how to explore domestic violence in cultures where that category was unknown. Philippa Maddern...