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  • Divine Ventriloquism in Medieval English Literature: Power, Anxiety, Subversion by Mary Hayes
  • Sachi Shimomura
Divine Ventriloquism in Medieval English Literature: Power, Anxiety, Subversion. By Mary Hayes. The New Middle Ages. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Pp. viii + 246. $85.

Divine Ventriloquism examines ventriloquial voices from the Anglo-Saxon period to the eve of the Reformation, in texts that show how “the divine voice became a contested site of power” (p. 1) as clerical institutional roles shifted. Following Stephen Connor’s extensive study of ventriloquism, Hayes addresses “ventriloquial” as divine speech projected through clerics and lay people including heterodox speakers and actors, or produced non-orally (from the etymology of ventriloquist as “belly-speaker” associated with the pagan pythia) as with the Witch of Endor, pagan idols issuing false prophecy, and, later, corrupt clergy misusing the Word. Her analysis extends to liturgical silence guarding against verbal misuse by layfolk.

This broad-based study treats devotional and pastoral texts, Anglo-Saxon riddles, hagiography, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and drama; it contributes to scholarship on the senses and on medieval concerns about voice, and develops a complex, nuanced nexus of topoi, allusions, and clerical/lay concerns that could enhance further inquiry into polemical texts such as Piers Plowman. The book proceeds from analyzing human ventriloquism of the divine to scrutinizing lay appropriation of clerical speech in situations invoking liturgical practices. Hayes follows in the steps of scholars such as Eamon Duffy who have thinned barriers between late medieval and Reformation Christianity, elucidating medieval anxieties over clerical production of divine voice and increasingly prominent lay involvement in liturgical language. She writes in dialogue with critical studies of communication, orality/literacy, textuality, aurality, phenomenology, and power (e.g., Jacques Ellul, Michel Foucault, Don Ihde, Jerome McGann, Walter Ong, Jonathan Sterne), as well as the history of liturgy and pastoral-care initiatives. Her study connects usefully with ideas investigated by medieval scholars such as Joyce Coleman (reading practices), Edwin Craun (preaching), Christopher Jones (liturgy and Benedictine Reform), and Karma Lochrie (secrecy). Book sections are carefully organized, but overall clarity suffers from some unwieldly summations (e.g., “We can perceive the fundamental investment of The Friar’s Tale in ventriloquism’s pernicious effects in its reworking of the Witch of Endor story that disturbs Ælfric to explain how the priest’s voice can be divested of its [End Page 521] authority” [p. 108]) and typographical errors: “Enysham” for “Eynsham” (p. 63), “Augustian” for “Augustinian” (p. 127), “Inde” for “Ihde” (p. 233), and several others not impacting proper names.

Chapters 1–3 examine Anglo-Saxon texts; Chapters 4–6 examine Chaucerian works and the N-Town Passion Play I. Chapter 1 focuses on eight Exeter Book riddles relating to bookmaking or the chalice. Hayes suggests that riddles that convert animals into scriptorium objects—inkhorn, book, parchment—reference the monastic idea of rumination and represent “experiments with the voice” (p. 31), where “the chronicle of the text’s material composition is but a fable for the author’s creative composition” (p. 32), as textuality absorbs (not supersedes) orality. She argues that these riddle objects, speaking through a reader who thus transmits a “dead” creator’s voice, evoke Christ’s presence through scripture, Word, and Eucharist. Her analyses of the shifting riddle voices are well conceived. A few distinctions lack adequate philological precision (e.g., in explicating “wordgaldra” [p. 39]) or seem overplayed (as when describing the persona of riddle 67 changing from scriptural listener to reader [p. 40]), given the notorious fluidity of the riddles, whose verve lies in constantly shifting shapes and relations (studied by scholars such as Craig Williamson). Hayes’s argument does not consider Paul Saenger’s work on silent reading.

Chapter 2 discusses orality in Andreas and proper/improper sources of speech that reference or challenge ideas of idolatry there and in other early hagiography. Hayes emphasizes the prominence given to recognizing authentic divine voices and revelation, which contrast with idolatry figured through pagan ventriloquism and cannibalism. She posits a “Christian vocal economy” (p. 72) whereby words derived from or originating in Christ’s teachings return to him through others’ voices; this economy draws all Christian speakers into a direct, enduring Christian presence...

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