... E si fetz mantas bonos chansos ... techniques romanes dans le Minnesang allemand du treizième siècle (review)

236 Reviews attend it It was Thompson who did much of the pioneering work that has brought the Cortes out of the obscurity in which it deliberated, revealing the extraordinarily lively role that it played in questions of royal taxation and tbe complexrelationsbetween its deputies, the cities who sent them, and the Crown. The Cortes of Castile was not summoned after 1665, but that, according to Thompson, was due not to the Crown's contempt for it but rather to the goverment's recognition of its own weakness. Furthermore, both Crown and cities now shared an interest in dealing with tax matters directiy, instead of through a body that had made trouble for both. At the sametime,thefinalco-authored article makes a strong case for the view that tbe absence of the great nobUity did matter after aU, and had much to do with why the Castilian Cortes never achieved the prestige or the power of the seventeenth-century Parliament in England. G. B. Harrison School of Spanish and Latin-American Studies University of N e w South Wales Unlandt, Nico, ... E sifetz mantas bonas chansos ... techniques romanes dans le Minnesang allemand du treiziime siecle (Amsterdamer Publikationen zur Sprache und Literatur, Band 102), Amsterdam and Adanta, Rodopi, 1992; paper; pp. vi, 444; R.R.P. ? Unlandt's book seeks to examine the formal relationship between, on the one hand, Old Provencal and Old French lyric poetry and, on the other, Middle High German lyric poetry, and to explore the influence of the former on the latter. He is particularly interested in the German contrafactum of Romance poems. He has fed the structural details of an impressively large number of poems from the three languages into a computer and then used it to make comparisons of the structures. The metrical analyses used are those ascribed to the poems by Frank (for Old Provencal), Molk and Wolfzettel (for Old French), and Touber (for Middle High German). The work is concerned primarily with developments in German lyric poetry in the thirteenth century. From the large body of poetry under initial consideration Unlandt concentrates on fifty-one Middle High German poems which bear close formal resemblance to Romance models. Of these, he identifies four poems as being certain contrafacta of romance originals, and a further four as Reviews 231 possible. Despite this very small number of direct imitations, bis general conclusion is that there is more Romance influence on Middle High German lyric poetry than is generally assumed. Tbe book is divided into two main sections; the first comprising discussion and bibliography, tbe second consisting in tbe main of tables of datarelatingto the metrical structures of the poems examined. The amount of material examined and the detail of the work are impressive. The conclusions appear sound. The work makes a number of significant findings. For example, the conclusion that the poems ascribed to Hiltbolt von Scnwangau may actually have been written by two separate poets with the same name is a significant contribution to Minnesang research. On the negative side, the book has a number oftechnicalfaults. The contents page needs revision. It gives incorrect page numbers for two chapters and incorrect tides for two others. Like the contents page, the conclusion seems also to have been inadequately checked prior to printing. There are, for example, spelling mistakes on pages 202, 203, 204, 205, 208 and 209. Furthermore, the presentation of the material gives the impression that we are dealing with a doctoral thesis little revised for publication. Nevertheless, Unlandt writes in a refreshingly light-hearted style that makes for easier reading of what is essentiallyratherdry material. Because of the nature of the study, Unlandt is almost exclusively concerned with metrical structures and rhyme schemes. He makes litde mention of the content of the poems. Readers seeking discussion of anything other than structural aspects of the poems may well be disappointed. That having been said, Unlandt has done a good and thorough job within the parameters of the task he has set himself. Geoffrey See Department of M o d e m Languages University of Newcastie Wall, Wendy, The imprint of gender: authorship and publication in the English Renaissance, Ithaca and London, Cornell University Press...