Settlement and land use in Micheldever hundred, Hampshire, 700-1100 (review)

194 Reviews Klingelhofer, Eric, Settlement and land use in Micheldever hundred, Hampshire, 700-1100 (Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, volume 81, part 3), Philadelphia, American Philosophical Society, 1991; paper; pp. x, 156; 18tilustrations;R.R.P. US$20.00. In some ways this is a valuable contribution to the study of local history. The author attempts to integrate the findings of the 'new geography', the 'new topography', the 'new toponymy', and the luce, but, curiously, not the 'new' Domesday studies, to present a multi-disciplinary, synthetic approach to the pattern of settlement in this part of middle Hampshire. One cannot help but feel, however, that, with nearly half the main text devoted to issues of methodology, historiography, and general context, the apparatus has taken over from the main subject. The latter is largely dealt with in the third chapter, which confirms the generally accepted view that between the fifth and eight centuries setdement shifted from the chalk uplands to the valley bottoms, mainly as a result of a lowering of the water table, and that the late Saxon period witnessed intensification of this pattern, together with the movement towards more nucleated village setdement and a manorial organization that predated Domesday Book by at least two centuries. There are several aggravating features of this book. Not the least is the poor Index. Broadly speaking, it is limited to authors' names and select subject matter, but even in these areas it is deficient. Interesting comments are made about how to interpret swinefiguresin Domesday at pp. 45, 11213 , and 134, but the subject is omitted from the Index. The omission of place-namesrelatingto Micheldever and its surrounds is likewise surprising. Errors within the main text itself abound. Welldon Finn is called Wheldon Finn (p. 95 and Index). Wharram Percy appears as Warram Percy (pp. 7,92) and is omitted from the Index. Welford hundred appears as WeUford (pp. 101,117), Buddlesgate hundred as Buddlegate and 'Buddie.?' (pp. 115,150). W e have Meaney for Reaney (p. 5), ten for nineteen (p. 6), the year 1000 for 1100 (p. 16), predominately for predominantly (p. 93), moda for modo (p. 107), tbe decimal-age p. for the duodecimal d. (p. 113), feckford for Leckford (p. 154), and alternate and alternately throughout for alternative and alternatively. At p. 69 Anglo-Saxon charters appear suddenly as S360, S381, S695 and so on, with no indication here or in the list of abbreviations that the 'S' refers to the calendar of Anglo-Saxon charters published by the Royal Historical Society (1968). Nor is there any reference to the spurious nature of some of the charters relating to Micheldever. Within the Reviews 195 abbreviations Bede's Historia ecclesiastica appears as Historia ecclesia. The analysis of Domesday values is duplicated at pp. 110-11 and in Appendix B (pp. 152-3), and the three values for Norton (p. 153) are wrong: they were£6, £3 and £6-10-0, not £6, £4 and £5. This work clearly needed a great deal more editorial direction, control and proofreading. A piece of work should hardly have this number of errors. Useful though it may be in suggesting a model for approaches to the study of local andregionalhistory, on other matters lector caveat. John Walmsley School of History, Philosophy and Politics Macquarie Univeristy Kugel, James L., ed., Poetry and prophecy: the beginnings of a literary tradition (Myth and poetics), Ithaca and London, Cornell University Press, 1990; cloth and paper; pp. xii, 251; R.R.P. US$34.95 (cloth), $12.95 (paper) plus 1 0 % overseas. Steinberg, Theodore L., Piers Plowman and prophecy: an approach to the C-text (Garland studies in medieval literature), N.Y. and London, Garland, 1991; cloth; pp. xx, 154; R.R.P. US$20.00. Therelationshipbetween poetry and prophecy is a topic whose time has come. A n increasing number of scholars suspects that inquiry into the relationship may reveal 'the beginnings of a literary tradition', to use the subtide of Kugel's essay collection. If so, its results may entail a revision of Middle English literary history, in which Chaucer has been cast in the role of inaugurator. For it is his maverick contemporary, Langland, who...