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BOOK REVIEWS301 heart of her evidence is an examination of 3,000 wills. ParadoxlcaUy one of the significant results of her researches is to demonstrate the very smaU proportion of testators who left a bequest to the nuns at all. Most wiUs contained no legacies to reUgious houses, and of those that did, just 18% went to the female reUgious . Dr. OUva has made an important contribution to the growing literature on medieval nunneries, which brings a breath of fresh air to tired debates and indicates directions that fürther research might take. It demonstrates the diversity that existed among the smaU reUgious houses, and the need for similar sympathetic studies of the many male institutions within this group. Perhaps in regional studies of this kind we might hope also to see explored the extent to which the smaU houses were able to adapt to the radical changes (demographic , social, and reUgious) of the late medieval period. John Tillotson Australian National University "Songes of Rechelesnesse": Langland and the Franciscans. By Lawrence M. Clopper. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 1997. Pp. xviü, 368. $52.50.) Lawrence Clopper's "Songes of Rechelesnesse" a provocative, chaUenging, and fascinating book, is one of the most important studies ofWiUiam Langland's Piers Plowman published in the past twenty years. It confronts directly the commonplace view that this fourteenth-century poem—along with Chaucer's "Summoner's Tale"—is the artistic culmination of the antifraternal tradition in England, a view strongly argued in Penn Szittya's highly influential book, The Antifraternal Tradition in Medieval Literature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986). Clopper maintains instead that Langland "systematically exhibits a Franciscan mentaUty, ideology, and spirituality" (p. 3) and that the poem's insistent castigation of the mendicants is the criticism of an insider determined to reform the fraternal orders rather than the attack of an outsider dedicated to their eradication. Although not denying the central place of antifraternal polemic in the poem, he shows how "Langland has characters respond to specific arguments of external critics" (p. 11) and argues that the poet's "engagement with the external critics of mendicancy indicates that Piers is not so much a defense as a meditation on the impediments and difficulties of that life" (p. 14). The eight chapters are divided into two major groupings: the first three link Langland to Franciscan ideology, whereas the second five, buflding on this historical framework, investigate Franciscan issues central to the poem's thematics . Readers of this journal will likely find the first three chapters, which draw on a wealth of historical detail, the most immediately useful. Chapter 1, "Mendi- 302book reviews cant Debate and Antifraternal Critiques," summarizes the rich tradition of late medieval antifraternalism; Chapter 2, "Langland's Friars," examines the many ways in which Langland represents friars in his poem; and Chapter 3, "Langland 's Exemplarism," argues strongly for the influence of Bonaventure on the ways in which Langland organizes his poem and even on his poetic style, the alUterative long Une. The remaining five chapters, which display sharp critical acumen, address more Uterary issues, but the discussion of Langland's poUtics in Chapter 4—especially his unique notion of the traditional "three estates"— and the many insights of Chapter 7, "Renewal and the Friars' Role in History," will be especiaUy welcomed by historians. In an afterword Clopper poses the question,"Was Langland a Franciscan?" He thinks "it probable that Langland at some point was a member of the Franciscan order," but he appropriately delayed this question to the conclusion because he didn't want debates regarding biographical questions to divert attention "from the more important matter, the presence of Franciscan materials in the poem" (p. 325). This commonsensical strategy typifies "Songes of Rechelesnessse" which, argued strongly and forthrighdy, is nevertheless considerate of a variety of critical stances. Clopper, furthermore, treats scholars with whom he disagrees with respect, as when he challenges those critics who have rather simpUsticaUy equated the poet's historical scheme to that of Joachim of Fiore. Clopper also repeatedly acknowledges the difficulties his thesis faces, as when he asks, "How does Langland signal that his accusations differ from external ones?" (p. 91), a crucial question that is sure...

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