Gestures and Looks in Medieval Narrative by J. A. Burrow (review)

REVIEWS 214 than points on a gendered sartorial continuum. Courtly garments functioned in place of the anatomical body. In one instance, the unisex “robe” which is worn by both, men and women, doesn’t define men and women on opposite poles of gender, but perhaps suggests a more fluid definition. In Floris et Lyriope, the main protagonist, Floris, dons the robe of his twin sister, who is said to be alike in appearance, differing only in actual sex. As a woman, he is able to be closer to his love, Lyriope, who he literally courts as a woman. Lyriope apparently has no qualms with transferring her love from who she thought was a woman, to a man, suggesting little import to the anatomy underneath that robe. Cross-dressing is, in fact, a common theme in courtly love, displaying a surprising mobility between definitions of masculinity and femininity. From armor to the naked flesh, both become metaphors for each other when referred to in these complex dialogues of cross-dressing, such that a woman’s naked flesh becomes her armor , and a knight’s armor is like his natural flesh. Burns further examines gender mobility in the fifth chapter, examining Lai de Lanval, with its opulently clad protagonist who defines herself as powerfully as any king, lord, or knight through her gifts and exchanges of ornate textiles. Her deployment of material dress disrupts the social and sexual hierarchies of the court, even as they redefine them on her terms. The “nature” of these bodies is not set, as the protagonist proves through her dress and actions, rather there was room for movement. In an even more ambitious analysis, Burns shifts the point of discussion again, from gendered identities, to racial perceptions in the last part of the book. When tracing the uses of foreign goods from the east, and their integration into the medieval court culture, the opposition between the Christian west and the pagan east quickly erodes. Court ladies became “hybrid bodies,” dressed in the Saracen silks and jewels brought from the east. These court ladies were the inversion of the Saracen princesses, common characters in tales of courtly love converted to Christianity and wed to a knight. Even as the eastern princesses were converted and clothed in the western courtly tradition, women in the western courts were dressing themselves in fineries and luxury goods from the east. The “hybrid bodies” became a site for spatial politics. It is no small feat, but Burns successfully shifts the existing dialogue of medieval courtly love poetry away from the narrative structure to taking a closer look at the material culture of the medieval world. Her definition of the sartorial body moves beyond the confines of cloth and flesh, to the fluid definitions of gender and the eroded boundaries of the east and west. The book sets very ambitious goals, and accomplishes them with very dense readings, which vacillates from deceptively simply and clear analysis of twelfth- and thirteenthcentury texts, to a much more profound understanding of those metaphors in a larger sociological construct. LISA TOM, Art History, UCLA J. A. Burrow, Gestures and Looks in Medieval Narrative (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press 2002) 200 pp. “All things are full of signs,” says Plotinus, “and it is a wise man who can learn about one thing from another.” Among these signs are human non-verbal communications (NVC), in which medieval writings are especially rich. This is REVIEWS 215 demonstrated by J. A. Burrow’s Gestures and Looks in Medieval Narrative, a useful introduction to the subject. A specialist in Middle English literature, Burrow comes at the material from two directions, first giving a chapter each to surveys of particular gestures and looks in an assortment of texts, then turning to a more detailed treatment of three texts he finds especially rich in NVC. Along the way he covers a wide array of non-verbal communications, including breast-beating, spitting, frowning, downward gazing, clapping, laughing, kissing , raising the eyebrows, coughing, beckoning, face-slapping, and hand-wringing . Some types of NVC, such as winking, smiling, head-shaking, and kneeling, are dealt with at some length. The author has two primary purposes. The first...