Teaching Other Voices: Women and Religion in Early Modern Europe ed. by Margaret L. King, Albert Rabil Jr. (review)

REVIEWS 332 household bridges the idea that two separate, popular/aristocratic cultures existed . Symes considers the actual plots of the plays as just another source in her study of the wider impact of the creation and performance of the Arras plays. She considers the historical milieu as an important additional dimension to her medieval theater studies. Symes is especially sensitive to the truth that plays are meant to be seen by audiences, and if we do not understand the audience we will never fully understand the play. As such, she structures her book as a reconstruction of the historical past, paying special attention to the role of the public sphere. She even goes as far as alluding that medieval Arras is a precursor of the “marketplace of ideas” of modern times. Because of its unstructured nature the medieval public sphere was less censored and a more meaningful place of debate than its nineteenth-century successors. And even further looking at theater and public life: “the medieval sphere was both larger and more buoyant than that of the Enlightenment, just as medieval theater was more multifaceted, more immediate, and more representative (in every sense) than the playhouses of the Renaissance, to which only those with money and leisure has access” (279). Symes seamlessly melds multiple disciplines, utilizing text analysis as well as drawing upon the historical record to create a unique English language interpretation of the role and meaning of theater in medieval life. A Common Stage: Theater and Public Life in Medieval Arras is an enlightening and innovative addition to medieval scholarship. MIHAELA LUIZA FLORESCU, Liberal Arts Division, Cerritos College Teaching Other Voices: Women and Religion in Early Modern Europe, ed. Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil Jr. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2007) 208 pp. A companion to the series The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe, which chronicles the often unheeded stories of European women between 1400–1700, Teaching Other Voices: Women and Religion in Early Modern Europe is an exceptional tool in the hands of instructors and students alike. Essentially a “how to” text, the book functions as a step-by-step guide to teaching the written records of early modern women’s religious experience to undergraduate and graduate students in the humanities. While far from comprehensive, the text nonetheless provides an intellectually rich basis upon which numerous courses can be developed and countless themes explored. Inclusions of particular interest to instructors are the outline of suggested courses and pedagogy modules developed from the essays included in the text and the appendix which summarizes the teaching approaches presented by each contributing author. Margaret L. King’s introduction is both an overview of the text and an excellent introductory essay for any scholastic venture into the religious environment of early modern Europe. She outlines the major themes of women’s myriad roles in European religious experience from 1350–1750, providing a general historical and social context for female religious expression over the course of four centuries. Her chronological breakdown of the “standard narrative” of European religious history by fifty year segments is cleverly paralleled with the “alternate history” (treated in periods of a century or more) of women’s participation in this religious epoch. King also provides succinct biographical over- REVIEWS 333 views of the individual women considered in the text, noting that while these individuals comprise only a small sampling, the experiences communicated by them are representative of the major tendencies of female religiosity in early modern Europe. The text is divided into five sections organized chronologically and thematically . Each section includes essays on the religious writings of individual women by scholars who actively engage with these authors in the classroom. Collectively, the essays are well researched and highly accessible to the reader. Here it must suffice to mention only a few of these excellent contributions. Lance Gabriel Lazar’s “Teaching Women’s Devotion in Medieval and Early Modern Italy,” the first essay in the collection, sets the tone for the rest of the book. He supplies invaluable insight into how to actively engage students using devotional texts and provides clearly articulated teaching rubrics. Lazar anticipates both students’ and instructors’ needs by introducing thought provoking questions and...