A Companion to Medieval English Literature and Culture c.1350–c.1500 ed. by Peter Brown (review)

REVIEWS 208 Troubadour Lyric: A Psychocritical Reading. The Cholakians explore Marguerite ’s role as a religious reformer and patron of the arts through her many writings . Marguerite was not only a royal but a prolific writer as well, the author of prose and poetry all of which was published in a two-volume anthology. The authors look at the full range of Marguerite’s works, and find previously overlooked autobiographical elements. Marguerite’s creative personality in part sparked the creation of the tradition of an intellectual, philosophical, humanist, and creative atmosphere for which the French court was known and admired. Marguerite, queen of Navarre, also played an important religious role, speaking out against church corruption, supporting vernacular translations of religious works, and promoting an atmosphere of tolerance for reformers. One of her theological poems, Miroir de l’ame pecheresse, was even adopted into the Protestant corpus. However, Marguerite herself remained a devout Catholic to her death. The connection between Marguerite and her writings is well documented. Pierre de Bourdeilles, abbot of Brantome, correctly identifies the heroine of the fourth story of Marguerite’s oeuvre, Heptameron, as Marguerite herself. His account is given further credibility by the fact that Brantome’s grandmother, Louise de Daillon, and his mother, Anne de Vivonne, had been ladies in waiting for Marguerite and were firsthand witnesses to Marguerite’s court life. This connection is of crucial importance to biographers of Marguerite de Navarre as it allows the identification of autobiographical elements in her fiction. The morals of fifteenth-century France did not allow the candid self-reflection which reveals the true personality of a historical personage, but a meticulous biographer can make connections between the life of the character and the life of the historical personage and glean insights into the personality and psychology of the personage. The Cholakians have followed this strategy beautifully; Marguerite’s numerous personal letters and fictional works are wonderfully embedded in the Cholakians’ biography. Each of the book’s ten chapters contains numerous references to the Heptameron and various correspondence. These firsthand accounts produce a truly enlightening, revealing , and, most of all, enjoyable biography. But the true heart of the work is its inspiration: Marguerite de Navarre. Her intellect and compassion shine through the centuries. Rouben and Patricia Cholakian have brought to life this extraordinary personage and have produced a well-written, engrossing biography , a welcome addition to any medievalist’s library. MIHAELA LUIZA FLORESCU, Foreign Languages, Cerritos College A Companion to Medieval English Literature and Culture c.1350–c.1500, ed. Peter Brown (Oxford: Blackwell 2007) 668 pp. “Companions” and “guides” to almost every aspect of medieval literature, culture , and society have come to dominate library shelves in recent times, but this volume offers much that is fresh, well-researched and worth reading. Peter Brown’s latest addition to the Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture series is a weighty tome that brings together thirty-eight individual essays into what is both a thought-provoking and surprisingly cohesive whole. In his introduction, positioning his Companion in relation to other recent studies in the area such as David Wallace’s The Cambridge History of Medieval Litera- REVIEWS 209 ture (1999) and James Simpson’s Reform and Cultural Revolution (2002), Brown tentatively aligns his book with the more pluralistic outlook of Wallace, and it seems this approach had much to recommend it. Take, for instance, the overarching objectives of the collection which are set out early on in Brown’s introduction. Foremost among these is the broadening and deepening of “the category of ‘literature’” (1) to include different kinds of writing, particularly those of a religious or political nature. Issues relating to the numerous, varied, and variable processes involved in medieval literary production, as well as the roles that women may have in these, are threads that are picked up regularly across the volume. At its heart, however, influenced as the Companion is by historicist and postcolonial discourses, is the importance of viewing texts in dialogue with a variety of social, historical, and cultural contexts. Indeed, the value of critical theory in relation to medieval literature and culture is a constant that characterizes the approaches and methodologies of each individual contributor...