Engaging Words: The Culture of Reading in the Later Middle Ages by Laurel Amtower (review)

REVIEWS mention the eucharist in the Parson’s portrait? Would the absence or paucity of references to the eucharist in the age of Lollardy trip alarm bells as often as they do for modern scholars of Lollardy? I agree with Aers that absences can be as significant as presences, but I remain skeptical that the absences in these particular cases are as significant as Aers would like some of them to be. Similarly, I wonder whether the constant adversion to Aquinas does not undermine the very notion Aers disputes: that there is one Faith in The Church. The appeal to Aquinas evokes the notion that there is a single religious mentality, a notion that is not unlike Robertson’s ‘‘contented hierarchies,’’ both of which ideas, I think, scholars grew skeptical of and rejected in the latter half of the twentieth century if not before. But I do not want to end on such a negative note. I particularly liked the analyses of The Clerk’s Tale, The Second Nun’s Tale, Sir Gawain, Gower, and much of Wyclif. Others who join these ‘‘webs of interlocution’’ may be more persuaded than I, but no one who reads the book will be unmoved; rather, they will be prodded into trying to conceive ways to continue Aers’ investigations of individuality, community , and subjectivity in the late Middle Ages. Lawrence M. Clopper Indiana University Laurel Amtower. Engaging Words: The Culture of Reading in the Later Middle Ages. The New Middle Ages. New York: Palgrave, 2000. Pp. xi, 243. $45.00 As Laurel Amtower notes in her introduction, ‘‘A substantial amount of scholarship has already contributed to our understanding of medieval manuscript and print culture,’’ and her book draws on these works ‘‘to demonstrate the ways in which social and technological shifts in book culture intersect with medieval conceptions of subjectivity and selfawareness ’’ (p. 12). Her topic will thus be of great interest to medievalists working in several disciplines, who will find here many insights into late medieval reading practices. Although Amtower is to be praised for such an ambitious goal, it unfortunately isn’t fully met, because she doesn’t sufficiently link the book’s introductory discussion of the ‘‘social 363 ................. 9680$$ CH16 11-01-10 12:36:48 PS STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER and technological shifts in book culture’’ to the literary texts she analyzes in the closing chapters. The five chapters of Engaging Words may be organized into two larger sections of two chapters each, with a middle chapter serving as transition . Following an introduction outlining the book’s thesis and organization , the first two chapters summarize recent scholarship on medieval reading, discussing the book trade, owners and patrons, categories of readers and reading, images in books of hours, and manuscript layout and marginalia. Chapter 3, ‘‘Authorized Readers,’’ then moves the study from general cultural history to the works of ‘‘humanist’’ authors. It briefly describes the ways reading was institutionalized in the Middle Ages by discussing the Latin commentary tradition and then examines Dante’s Vita nuova and Petrarch’s Secretum. The last section turns to Chaucer, devoting a chapter primarily to The House of Fame and another to Troilus and Criseyde and The Canterbury Tales. Amtower lists Joyce Coleman’s Public Reading and the Reading Public in Late Medieval England and France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) among important recent books on medieval reading practices , but the book’s argument is largely uninfluenced by Coleman’s significant study of the public aural reception of late medieval texts. Instead, Chapter One, ‘‘The Reading Public,’’ focuses on private, silent reading, an emphasis that greatly affects Amtower’s understanding of medieval reading and reception and explains the focus in Chapter Two, ‘‘The Image of the Book: Mediating the Aesthetics of Reader Response,’’ on deluxe books of hours, which Amtower curiously describes as ‘‘an overlooked fixture in the medieval library’’ (p. 13). Books of hours have hardly been overlooked by art historians, but the author shows little familiarity with much recent art historical work, beyond the popular but problematic studies by Michael Camille. It seems odd to cite Camille’s superficial comments on monastic marginalia (in Image on the Edge: The Margins of...