Antichrist in the Middle Ages: A Study of Medieval Apocalypticism, Art, and Literature by Richard Kenneth Emmerson (review)

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER schools and there effected a change in the learned debates within the universities on the subject ofethics. Ofcourse, in the greatest compositions of this period such a rigid scheme of "up-down" will not do. The nexus between the bewildering variety of theological, social, and political cri­ tique and the poet is a complex one, with the author ofPiers Plowman, for instance, "thumbing continuously through the handbooks on his desk to help him find an orderly, vernacular path through the thicket oftheologi­ cal and social opinion on the vexed question of Christian salvation and 'rendering what one owes' for it." Coleman has written a perceptive, ambitious, and sprawling volume. Her grasp of the historical fabric of this complex half century is firm and enlivens her reading ofthe literature. My most serious reservation is that it attempts too much; we are not given sufficiently sustained investigations in a particular area, with the result that I found myself at times unable to see the sum of the thesis for the parts. The bibliography is valuable, and the breadth ofreading it encompasses is encyclopedic. This is a book from which scholars from a number ofdisciplines will profit. It points to a more nearly complete understanding ofthe complex relationship between litera­ ture and society, and for this Coleman is to be commended. THOMASJ. HEFFERNAN University ofTennessee RICHARD KENNETH EMMERSON, Antichrist in the Middle Ages: A Study of MedievalApocalypticism, Art, andLiterature. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1981. Pp. x, 366. $19.50. Scholarly works often must make a choice between two audiences: Are they to be written for specialists in a rather narrowly defined field or for generalists whose interest is spread over a somewhat larger territory? A book on Chaucer may, on the one hand, speak only to those who are well within the borders of its scholarly tradition; on the other, if it attempts to address a more general audience, it runs the risk of being received with impatience, at best, by scholars.Antichrist in the Middle Ages takes on the difficult task of addressing specialists and nonspecialists alike; that is to 164 REVIEWS say, it is a book addressed both to those whose field is medieval apocalypti­ cism and those whose interest is almost any area of the Middle Ages. This book is an important contribution to medieval studies not least because it successfully engages the interest of both audiences. To those whose interest is medieval apocalypticism, it presents a warn­ ing, perhaps even an implied polemic (though there is nothing polemical about the tone of this work, which is consistently respectful to previous scholarship-and thoroughly acquainted with it as well). The warning is that in the past scholarship has tended to concentrate too narrowly on one side of the Antichrist tradition, emphasizing its radical and millenarial aspects at the expense of a more conservative tradition that is, though less well known to moderns, more pervasive. The first three chapters of the book define this Antichrist tradition, treating it first in terms of its relationship to medieval apocalypticism generally, then in terms of the exegetical interpretations that are its basis, and finally in terms of a vita, that is, in terms of the characteristic features of the life and deeds of Antichrist as these were understood throughout the Middle Ages. As Emmerson demonstrates in his impressive perusal ofan exceedingly wide range ofprimary sources, well integrated in the body of the text and usefully presented in an extensive bibliography and copious notes, the Antichrist tradition is rich and varied. To the generalist this study therefore provides an invitation to use the Antichrist tradition as a help in under­ standing those works of art, literature, and theology which have been identified as having apocalyptic content. He himself provides us with a model ofsuch analysis in chapters 4 and 5, which deal with the influence of the Antichrist tradition in art and literature, respectively. Chapter 5 covers didactic literature, drama, allegory, and finally, in the most stimulating analysis-offering as it does the outline of a new reading of the poemPiers Plowman. His examples, effective as they are, are necessarily some­ what schematic and therefore best seen as...