Women, Reading, and Piety in Late Medieval England by Mary C. Erler (review)

REVIEWS 227 to people in their lives outside the theater? Enders acknowledges that “aficionados of the urban legend would say that the truth doesn’t matter” (xxv), and that both belief and art, in their effects, cannot always be separated from truth. She also nearly always abides by Jean Baudrillard’s assertion that “the signs incline neither to one side nor the other” when an action like a theft is pretended or real (xxi). But if the book’s “main theme” is the “ineluctability of truth” (xi), its argument, which comes fully into its own in the epilogue, is that truth matters because it affects how we perceive our world and thus how we live our lives. Enders asks, “What if the difference [between true and false] eventually does become clear, but too late? What if perceiving that difference is itself a matter of life and death?” (53). We hear the hint of a call for personal and social responsibility in getting at the truth because of the dangers inherent in granting credence to what is false, especially under the guise of belief. And yet, even the truth is dangerous, as Enders suggests in her epilogue, “The Moment of Truth.” The epilogue is a surprise that must not be spoiled here. Suffice it to say that Enders shows what can happen when theatrical art and real murder intersect: “reality seems more real” because “life and theater each seem more real when permeated with the theatricality of the other” (202). In our own “culture of fear” (202), such intersections are disturbing, especially when we are blind to their performative power. Death by Drama not only elucidates the cultural messages in medieval drama, it also exposes our own blithe acceptance of theatrical presentations of reality in our news media. And even more, it provides an opportunity to discover what it is, exactly, that we are telling ourselves and why. That opportunity alone makes the book well worth the read. MARY BLACK VIGIL, English, UCLA Mary C. Erler, Women, Reading, and Piety in Late Medieval England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2002) xii + 226 pp., ill. In the prologue, Mary Erler sets out the parameters and project of her most recent book. She clearly states that Women, Reading, and Piety in Late Medieval England is about women’s lives and networks and that she is using bibliography as a way to find witnesses to these lives and networks. She lays out six chapters in addition to an introduction and an epilogue to accomplish this large task. As a supplement, she has included three very useful appendices. In these chapters, she explores a variety of female connections by focusing on very specific female lives. Erler’s main interest lies in the fifteenth and the early sixteenth centuries. However, she does occasionally consider manuscripts from the fourteenth century. Her introduction—“Dinah’s Story”—begins by discussing women’s networking both religious and lay arenas. Chapter 1—“Ownership and transmission of books: women’s religious communities”—considers women’s book ownership, wills and inscriptions in order to think about “common profit” and the practice of reading. Chapter 2—“The Library of a London vowess, Margery de Nerford”—focuses on an aristocratically well-connected London vowess, Margery de Nerford, and her library. Chapter 3—“A Norwich widow and her ‘devout society’: Margaret Purdans”—looks at a Norwich widow, Margaret Purdans who was part of Norwich’s governing class. Chapter 4— “Orthodoxy: REVIEWS 228 the Fettyplace sisters at Syon”—discusses three gentry women, the Fettyplace sisters, their books and the connection that these women and their books have with Syon Abbey. In evaluating the lives of these three sisters from the early sixteenth century, Erler also considers their commitment to religious orthodoxy as they head into the Dissolution. Chapter 5—“Heterodoxy: Anchoress Katherine Manne and Abbess Elizabeth Throckmorton”—evaluates religious positions in relation to Lollardy and how a comparison between these two specific women, Katherine Manne and Elizabeth Throckmorton, can shed light on women’s participation in intellectual debates and how books become mechanisms for these intellectual exchanges. In Chapter 6—“Women owners of religious incunabula: the physical evidence”—she takes up the question of whether a medium’s...