The Court and Cultural Diversity ed. by Evelyn Mullaly and John Thompson (review)

running head? evelyn mullaly and John thompson, eds., The Court and Cultural Diversity. International Courtly Literature Society. Rochester, NY: Boydell and Brewer, 1997. Pp. 426. isbn: 0-85991-517-4. $90. This volume is a collection ofthirty-seven articles, selected from the 125 papers given at the eighthTriennial Congress ofthe International Courtly Literature Society, held at the Queen's University ofBelfast, 26July—1 August 1995. The contributions come from an international and Western body of scholars with a heavy representation from the U.S. and the U.K., and a much lesser one from France, Canada and Holland. The essays are divided into five sections: Contexts for courtliness; Fashioning history and romance; Negotiating a courtly voice; Texts and readers; and The limits of courtliness. Each ofthe first three sections is introduced and is defined by the paper of one of the three plenary speakers. Given this arrangement, it is not clear what motivated the addition and the organization of the last two sections of the volume. The papers of all five sections in this volume are a fine illustration both ofsome of the great diversity of approaches characteristic of recent scholarship on courtly love, and ofthe persistent interest in the more traditional topos ofcourtly literature. All together, they give a good account of part ofthe 1995 Belfast Congress. The main weakness of this otherwise interesting set ofarticles resides in the fact that the promise ofthe volume title is never fulfilled. According the editors' preface, the title The Court and Cultural Diversity was selected because it 'presented itself quite naturally as the overall theme' of the 1995 International Courtly Literature Society Congress. And yet, that theme is never defined nor explained by the editors. Their preface, only a little over a page long, is merely descriptive and attempts in no way to problematize the chosen subject. It neither provides a background to the question ofcultural diversity in the Middle Ages, nor mentions any ofthe important scholarship that has been made to this subject in the last decade; it does not speak either ofwhat is original and new in the articles that were selected for inclusion. Moreover, ifone takes CulturalDiversity to signify (as the initial advertising blurb states) the 'cultural differences in medieval European literary practice,' that verysubject is almost entirely absent from the articles chosen in this volume. More often than not (and with the notable exception of the piece by Donald Maddox and to some extent that by Françoise Le Saux), the papers in this volume deal with Western (Celtic, Irish, Norman, Caucasian) courtly diversity rather than cultural (non-Western) or cross-cultural differences.While pushing the limits ofwhat one considers traditionally 'courtly,' the articles in The Court and CulturalDiversity do not address for instance the Oriental theory ofthe origins ofcourtly love and ofcourtly literature in general. None speaks either (and again with the exception of Maddox and Le Saux) of the cross-cultural interaction or exchanges of courtly topos in medieval literature and society. Finally, very little is said of the political implications of cultural diversity and the social structures that first rendered possible and then erased the presence of the 'Other' from medieval culture and literary production. arthuriana In conclusion, one may say that the articles in this volume remain individually interesting, but as a collection, do not add in anysignificant way to our understanding ofcultural diversity in the Middle Ages. sahar amer University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill ...