Romance and Rhetoric: Essays in Honour of Dhira B. Mahoney (review)

This volume honours Professor Dhira B. Mahoney who recently retired from the University of Arizona and is well known for her rhetorical readings of late medieval literature. The volume is divided into four sections: Prologues and Pictures; Women and Rhetoric; Lyric, Song and Audience; and Arthurian Literature: Composition and Production. Each section represents a particular interest of Mahoney's and offers the reader a rich and diverse range of texts and readings. The range of texts covers Middle English, Latin, French, and German and authors such as Chaucer, Lydgate, Malory, Christine de Pisan, and Chretien de Troyes. What ties all these texts and authors together is that the essays presented in this volume are a response to Mahoney's scholarship. The opening chapter, a tribute to Mahoney, discusses how each section of the volume relates to her academic interests and scholarship.

The first two sections are primarily concerned with what rhetorical devices within texts can tell the reader about those who constructed them. The first section contains three essays that examine this question. Ann Dobyn's 'Exemplars of Chivalry and Ethics in Middle English Romance' considers the prologues to three romances in the Thornton Manuscript to investigate how similar ethical concerns tie the romances together. The second essay, 'Jan der Enikel's Prologue as a Guide to Textual Multiplicity' by Maria Dobozy, turns from romance to the German chronicle tradition to examine how a text's reception can influence the way various prologues are constructed. The final essay in this section, 'Gifts and Givers that Keep on Giving: Pictured Presentations in Early Medieval Manuscripts' by Corine Schleif, studies visual representations of books being given to patrons to understand how the makers of texts wished to be seen by their audiences.

The second section turns to issues of gender and authorship. The first essay, 'The Light of the Virgin Muse in John Lydgate's Life of Our Lady' by Georgiana Donavin, looks at the description of light in Lydgate's Life of our Lady. Light becomes a motif that persuades readers 'to envision the Virgin in the meditations' (p. 81) as Lydgate positions himself as an advocate of the Virgin. The following essay, 'Sisters under the Skin: Margery Kempe and Christine de Pisan' by Elizabeth Archibald, looks at the similarities between these two authors and the manner in which they constructed themselves as 'self-fashioned autobiographers' (p. 107) within their texts. The last essay in this section, 'Wolf in Sheep's Clothing: Margery Kempe as Underground Preacher' by Rosalynn Voaden, looks at how Margery Kempe constructed herself as a woman who lived her life according to what Christ had willed for her (p. 121). Voaden argues that Kempe was not a woman driven by spiritual anxiety, but rather that her preaching was a conscious undertaking in obedience to Christ.

The third section, Lyric, Song and Audience, is concerned with different rhetorical devices found in texts. Phyllis R. Brown's essay 'Rhetoric and Reception: Guillaume de Machaut's "Je Maudi"' discusses how the use of a curse in love poetry still affirms the power of love while drawing attention to human ridiculousness (p. 146). Christine Francis looks at how Chaucer uses music to define his characters in '"Maken Melodye": The Quality of Song in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales'. And finally John Damon examines the antiphon Estote fortes in bello as a means of legitimizing violence by Christians against those seen as heretics, such as the Lollards, in a wide range of texts.

The final section of the volume turns to Arthurian literature, which is the area of literature for which Professor Mahoney is best known, particularly her work on the Grail legend. There are four essays in the section and the first two discuss the Grail. Anita Obermeier discusses images of fertility and sterility in medieval versions of the Grail legend. The second essay by Kevin J. Harty looks at Arnold Fanck's 1926 film...