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198 LETTERS IN CANADA 2000 Buddhist activities would be characterized as >composite.= Similarly, although Hur claims that prayer culture at SensÇji in the late Tokugawa period was distinct from that of earlier periods in its great concern for >this worldly benefits= (genze riyaku), this again cannot be seen as a particularly new development but was, rather, normative in Japanese religion (this topic has recently been dealt with in Ian Reader and George Tanabe=s Practically Religious: Worldly Benefits and the Common Religion of Japan). What is presented here, then, is a case study of pre-modern Japanese religious practice as manifested in the Tokugawa era, one that details how the government promoted criticism of what it charged was an increasingly >degenerate= Buddhism to control the people and how, at the same time, activities at a religious institution were utilized by commoners as an escape from social and political oppression. Hur successfully relates these factors to the particular circumstances of SensÇji as representative of trends in urban Buddhism and society in the Tokugawa period. However, greater emphasis on the broader context of the premodern Japanese religious experience would have led to a more balanced and, perhaps, a more intriguing account of the phenomenon of prayer and play at SensÇji. (CARY SHINJI TAKAGAKI) A.E. Christa Canitz and Gernot R. Wieland, editors. From Arabye to Engelond: Medieval Studies in Honour of Mahmoud Manzalaoui on His 75th Birthday University of Ottawa Press. viii, 308. $33.00 The Festschrift is a noble genre, a collection of essays dedicated to a scholar who has contributed significantly to his or her field of research and made an impact on students and fellow scholars. The pitfall of the genre, however, is that the grateful testimonies contained in the volume can be so wideranging that the focus of the volume becomes obscure. Such is the case here: in spite of the best efforts of the editors in their introduction to provide an overarching theme for the eclectic group of essays contained in From Arabye to Engelond, the topics range from the fourth-century writings of the theologian and bishop Hilary of Poitiers to the nineteenth-century art criticism of Ruskin, from the Byzantine world of the Patriarch Gennadios II to the Anglo-Saxon England of Alfred the Great. To be fair, certain of the essays succeed brilliantly in bringing together >AMatters Middle English@ [or, at least, European] and AMatters Middle Eastern@= in tribute to the scholar honoured in this volume: especially noteworthy in this respect are the essays by Hanna Kassis, Derek Carr, and Anne Klinck. Many of the others, however, are linked simply by the common tribute they pay to Professor Manzalaoui. The contents of the volume are as follows: Hanna E. Kassis, >Images of Europe and Europeans in Some Medieval Arabic Sources=; C.J.G. Turner, HUMANITIES 199 >The First Patriarchate of Gennadios II Scholarios as Reflected in a Pastoral Letter=; Derek C. Carr, >Arabic and Hebrew auctoritates in the Works of Enrique de Villena=; Beryl Rowland, >@Ad restringuendum coytum@: How to Cool Lust=; Derek Brewer, >The Compulsions of Honour=; Douglas Wurtele, >Another Look at an Old AScience@: Chaucer=s Pilgrims and Physiognomy=; J. Kieran Kealy, >Voices of the Tabard: The Last Tales of the Canterbury Tales=; A.E. Christa Canitz, >Courtly Hagiomythography and Chaucer=s Tripartite Genre Critique in the Legend of Good Women=; Murray J. Evans, >Coleridge=s Sublime and Langland=s Subject in the Pardon Scene of Piers Plowman=; Laurel J. Brinton, >@Whilom, as olde stories tellen us@: The Discourse Marker whilom in Middle English=; Paul C. Burns, >The Writings of Hilary of Poitiers in Medieval Britain from c. 700 to c. 1330=; Gernot R. Wieland, >Ge mid wige ge mid wisdome: Alfred=s Double-Edged Sword=; Anne L. Klinck, >The Oldest Folk Poetry? Medieval Woman=s Song as APopular@ Lyric=; John Mills, >The Pageant of the Sins=; Elisabeth Brewer, >John Ruskin=s Medievalism=; Patricia Merivale, >Sub Rosa: Umberto Eco and the Medievalist Mystery Story.= Some of the essays collected here appear to have been lectures or otherwise informal pieces of prose with a few references added later: particularly conspicuous in this respect are the contributions of Brewer, Kealy, and...

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