Aristocratic Women in Medieval France (review)

184 Reviews Dillon's application to Jonson and others of the modern much-theorised figure, theflaneur, is carried through with exemplary caution and tact, to illuminate both the linguistic construction of a fashionable city man of leisure, and the plotless wordiness of early Jonsonian satirical comedy. Mark Hutchings's lengthy piece putting Othello in a context of Jacobean spectators' 'Turkish expectations' is animated by a passion to correct unhistorical simplifying negative connotations of 'the Turks', and usefully explicates differences of foreign policy under Elizabeth and James. Mark H. Lawhorn's essay on Falstaff's page takes up the usually neglected roles for pages in Early Modern plays and considers the vulnerability of this 'youth at risk' in the context of legislation to control vagabonds. Rocco Coronato makes a suggestive '"inter-acting" comparison' (p. 178) between commedia dell'arte conceptions of grazia in acting, a natural grace of style, and its Jonsonian parody, in the rehearsals of manly behaviour ridiculed in the humour plays. In a fine collection, too many mistakes appear in the spelling of names, and H. R. Coursen's essay on Shakespeare films provides far too few references and is thus baffling for a reader new to the topic. Ann Blake School of Communication, Arts and Cultural Enquiry La Trobe University Evergates, Theodore, ed., Aristocratic Women in Medieval France, Philadelph University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999; paper; pp. x, 272; 5 maps, 5 genealogical tables; R.R.P US$49.95, £35.00 (cloth), US$19.95, £14.00 (paper); ISBN 0812217004 (cloth), 0812217004 (paper). This volume contains an Introduction by Kimberly LoPrete and Theodore Evergates andfivechapters: Kimberly LoPrete, 'Adela ofBlois: familial alliances and female lordship'; A m y Livingstone, 'Aristocratic w o m e n in the Chartrain'; Theodore Evergates, 'Aristocratic w o m e n in the County of Champagne'; Karen Nicholas, 'Countesses as rulers in Flanders'; and Fredric Cheyette, 'Women, poets, and politics in Occitania'. There is also, most unusual and much appreciated in a work of this nature, an extensive combined Bibliography and Index. All five authors write here about regions of medieval France with which they have extensive acquaintance. All five are also concerned with roughly the same chronological period: the 'long' twelfth century. Unlike many such volumes Reviews 185 ofcollected papers, this is remarkably well coordinated and conceived. Happily, the authors circulated their contributions and provided commentary to each other. The result is an unusually coherent volume and the editor is to be congratulated. The volume proffers a sharp and convincing challenge to the outmoded views of Georges Duby and others on the contraction of the political and managerial roles of aristocratic w o m e n from the twelfth century, views which unfortunately have been buttressed by tedious feminist cant. A s LoPrete and Evergates write in the Introduction: These essays underscore not only the diversity of life experiences of French aristocratic w o m e n in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries but also the range of social and political roles open to them. It is no longer possible to depict well-born w o m e n as powerless in medieval society, marginalized by purported changes in family structure and growing public powers exercised by territorial princes. As the authors clearly demonstrate, aristocratic families continued to be viewed in cognatic or bilateral terms, with w o m e n regarded as full members of both their natal and affinal families. . . . The pivotal position French aristocratic w o m e n occupied in lordly families assured their continuing participation in the 'male' domains of controlling property, dispensing justice, enforcing peace, and waging war. Neither the formation of territorial principalities nor the growing powers of the French kings prevented aristocratic w o m e n from exercising the same lordly powers as their male peers, even though they did so less frequently than men. (pp. 4-5) All readers will have their own favourite contributions to this volume and sin i t is impossible to do justice to them all, I choose to concentrate on the one most relevant to m y o w n interests: that of LoPrete. That being said, none of the chapters is weak in any way...