Boccaccio's and Chaucer's Cressida (review)

318 Short notices Kellogg, Laura D., Boccaccio's and Chaucer's Cressida (Studies in the Humanities, Literature—Politics—Society, 16), Bern, Peter Lang, 1995; boards; pp. 144; R R P SFr.58.00. The story of TroUus and Cressida was used by Boccaccio in the Filostrato and by Chaucer in Troilus and Criseyde. Laura Kellogg provides an expansive and well-documented discussion of their sources, and some psychological interpretation of the motives of characters and narrators. This is a summary of existing material glossed with personal insight rather than original research or innovative methodology. Some specialists will find it useful. I a m inclined to think that Kellogg could have .given more consideration to the function of her work. As a compendium of detail, it assumes a lot, lacking facts at a basic level, such as when the works were written. For people who have not read Boccaccio and Chaucer, it will not serve as an introduction. O n the other hand, for those who have, much of the material is self-evident, such as the retelling of the story. For Kellogg, Chaucer 'translates and transforms' the Filostrato. This should be the starting point rather than the conclusion, and a theoretical discussion of theseterms,the authors' own understanding of what they were doing, and detailed comparison of the texts would be illuminating. Given Kellogg's acknowledgement of editorial contact it behoves the^publisher to give more guidance and focus to its contributors. M a x Staples School of Humanities Charles Start University Lestringant, Frank, Mapping the Renaissance world: the geographical imagination in the age of discovery, translated from the French by David Fausett, Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1994; cloth; pp. xvii, 197; 10 plates; R R P AU$38.00. Mapping the Renaissance world valuably touches upon a number of current issues in early m o d e m scholarship, including discourse surrounding the new world, the influence of genre upon the construction of knowledge, and struggles over authorship and authority. As Stephen Greenblatt comments in his foreword to the English translation, Lestringant explores a 'compelling instance of the Renaissance fascination with the invention—at once the finding and the fabricating—of reality' (p. xiv). ...