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humanities 177 university of toronto quarterly, volume 73, number 1, winter 2003/4 Hebrew exegetical techniques in their own explication of the literal sense of holy scripture, as well as their justification of why a vernacular translation should be made available. Despres has written several important articles on literary and pictorial depictions of Jews in medieval texts, revealing how Christian devotion to the Virgin was frequently predicated on the destruction of Jews, either metaphorically or actually. This new essay examines the famous Vernon manuscript, illuminating the relationship of the anti-Judaism of several of the works collected there to the overall devotional framework of the miscellany. The final section, >Chaucer, Jews, and Us,= is a coda devoted to modern reactions to medieval anti-Semitism. The two new essays, on teaching Chaucer to Orthodox students in the New York area, are rather anecdotal. Colin Richmond=s >Englishness and Medieval Anglo-Jewry,= however, is a moving response by a British historian to the attempted erasure of Jewish history in England, both in actual history (during the thirteenth century) and historiographically (during the second half of the twentieth century). Five of the previously published essays (Richmond, Narin van Court, Mandel, Delany, and Rose) appeared within the last decade, most of them within other essay collections , which makes it difficult to understand why they are reprinted here. Seminal essays on the book=s topic by Steven Kruger and Louise Fradenberg do not appear (although Narin van Court=s essay, often cited in current literature, is wisely included). The collection thus falls between two stools, as it were, being neither a collection of classic essays on an important topic, nor a group of new responses to the state of the field. Chaucer and the Jews inconveniently lacks a list of the original venues of the previously published essays (useful for the preparation of bibliographies). Most frustrating is the lack of corresponding page numbers for citations of previously published articles within other essays in the volume: for example, when Tomasch refers to Delany (82n15), the page cited refers to the original publication in Medieval Encounters, rather than the reproduction of Delany=s essay found in the present volume. A similar reference to Narin van Court appears in Despres (161n6). It would have been useful to update the notes to the previously published essays; unfortunately, the only updated note appears in Delany=s own reprinted essay, referring to her work in progress (57n42). (SUZANNE CONKLIN AKBARI) James M. Gibson, editor. Kent: Diocese of Canterbury Records of Early English Drama.University of Toronto Press. 3 volumes. ccxxiv, 1664. $500.00 The Records of Early English Drama (REED) series has transformed scholarly understanding of the history of English drama before 1642. Combing private, civic, and ecclesiastical records, county by county (and sometimes 178 letters in canada 2002 university of toronto quarterly, volume 73, number 1, winter 2003/4 city by city), the several editors have assembled a mass of previously unpublished information that is gradually prompting a radical rewriting of the history of early English theatre. With the publication of documents from the diocese of Canterbury, REED has now produced sixteen sets of records since the series began in 1979. This is the first to require a full three volumes. The editor, James Gibson, sums up the ambitious and painstaking scope of these volumes well: >This edition attempts to include all records of dramatic, musical, and ceremonial activity before 1642 in the diocese of Canterbury: records of professional travelling players and minstrels; records of amateur town and parish plays, liturgical plays, household plays, and school plays; records of musical performances by professional travelling musicians and by civic musicians, including waits and people responsible for horn blowing, drumming, and rough music; records of civic ceremony incorporating musical or mimetic activity, including marching watches with pageants, triumphs and festive celebrations, royal visits, bullbaiting, and bearbaiting; and ceremonial customs incorporating mimetic or minstrel activity, such as the boy bishop celebrations, Hocktide rituals, and summer games.= Remarkably, yet another complete edition in the REED series will be devoted to Kent: Diocese of Rochester. By way of introduction, Gibson provides an overview of the regional historical background; a lengthy summary of the major discoveries...

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