The Trotula: A Medieval Compendium of Women’s Medicine by Monica H. Green (review)

REVIEWS 196 search for the most ancient and authentic wisdom” (235). In her essay “In Search of the Origins of Medicine: Egyptian Wisdom and Some Renaissance Physicians” Siraisi presents the debate between proponents of Greek and Egyptian medicine in the search for the oldest and most authentic medical tradition . Equally concerned with the conservative nature of progress, Kevin Brownlee’s essay “The Conflicted Genealogy of Cultural Authority: Italian Reponses to French Cultural Dominance in Il Tesoretto, Il Fiore, and La Commedia ” employs an idea akin to Harold Bloom’s “anxiety of influence” to explain the recourse to Latin poets by Italian writers of the Duecento and Trecento . Brownlee demonstrates how these three pieces overtly reject the conventions of French vernacular poetry by deviating from French poetic commonplaces while justifying these revisions through the authorization of Latin poets (in these three texts to Ovid and Virgil specifically). His argument is thorough , concise and convincing, and he successfully addresses the psychological elements of “transference” of authority with a more conventional discussion of the history of poetics. Continuing in a more conventional literary critical vein, Peter Stallybrass’s essay “Hauntings: The Materiality of Memory on the Renaissance Stage,” is a consideration of the staging of ghosts in Renaissance theatrical productions. Stallybrass sets up the following binary opposition as his working hypothesis, “… If the depths of the body display only the workings of anonymous death, the surfaces of the body trace the insignia of identity” (288). Using the Ghost in Hamlet as the example of the materiality of the theatrical ghost with a problematic inheritance, Stallybrass goes on to consider the actual material of inheritance (in particular armor and marriage beds), as well as discussing the various usages of “haunting.” The result is a fine example of an investigative social history using literature and theater as the intellectual material of inheritance. Placing Stallybrass’s essay at the end of a volume on the literary and historical figuration (troping) of generation leaves the reader to ponder whether or not we are to consider the tendencies of the final essays as a recommendation. While the earlier essays deal with sexuality and gender specifically, these final essays which deal with textual and critical anxieties leave the world of gender politics far behind. They focus instead on the continuing presence of the past and the conservative nature of intellectual radicalism. In the end, perhaps the lesson to be learned through the process of literary or critical production is the Ghost’s resounding “Remember me.” CHERYL GOLDSTEIN, Comparative Literature, UCLA Monica H. Green, The Trotula: A Medieval Compendium of Women’s Medicine (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 2001) 301 pp. In her Prologue, Chaucer’s Wife of Bath notes that one of the authorities quoted in the Book of Wicked Wives wielded by her fifth husband was Trotula (or, more correctly, Trota), the eleventh-century Salernitan woman famed for her medical practice and writings. Though it seems ironic that Trota—a woman whose most famous attributed work was intended to aid other women—should later be cited in browbeating them, the passage certainly indicates her significance as a rare female authority in medieval European culture. But despite the importance of Trota and the works ascribed to her, modern editions have, until REVIEWS 197 now, depended upon Georg Kraut’s heavily doctored and prettified 1544 edition of The Trotula. Monica H. Green’s publication would, therefore, be a welcome addition to medieval, medical, and gender studies had she simply provided an edition of the text based directly on medieval manuscripts. This volume , however, includes much more and is, in fact, a treasure trove of information on women’s medicine and its contexts during the Middle Ages. The Trotula: A Medieval Compendium of Women’s Medicine offers not only a Latin edition and English translation of what Green terms “the standardized text” of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, but also a thorough introduction to the texts of the Trotula canon, their transmission history, and their place in medical history. This engaging discussion ranges from ancient Greece to the medieval Middle East, as well as a wide range of medieval European societies. In addition to extensive notes and a well...