Woman Defamed and Woman Defended: An Anthology of Medieval Texts ed. by Alcuin Blamires, Karen Pratt, C. W. Marx (review)

REVIEWS her chapter in volume 1. Because of the sociohistoric circumstances, per­ sonal names receive proportionally more attention in volume 2 than do place names. As Clark shows, the changes from personal naming between Old and Middle English are remarkable, and her account thereby does justice to a topic that has not always received enough attention in the shorter histories. There are countless other commendable features in this volume, not the least ofwhich are the glossary oftechnical terms and the attractive binding and printing. A few shortcomings should also be noted, however, such as the typographical errors in I.ass's chapter (e.g., p. 43) and some foggy spots in Fischer's analyses (e.g., "the present tense of perfective verbs," p. 245her terminology is a little misleading, especially if she has present perfect verbs in mind). More troubling are some statements that seem a bit too authoritative, for example, Blake's claim that "it is impossible to determine what the nature of colloquial speech was like" (p. 18). No doubt the char­ acter ofMiddle English literature obscures many details, but it seems diffi­ cult to accept Blake's categorical statement in view of the invective in The Reeve's Tale or the upbraiding ofNoah's wife (curiously, Blake says virtually nothing about Middle English drama). Many readers will also probably be skeptical about I.ass's claim that English lost its Germanic stress rule, supposedly because of Romance lexical borrowings (pp. 85-90), especially if they note Clark's observation that Norman place-names such as Beaulieu underwent stress snifts conforming to the Germanic pattern (p. 593). For­ tunately, however, dubious claims are infrequent, and they might best be regarded as no more than specks on an admirably crafted lens, one that brings into sharp focus this crucial period in the history of English. TERENCE ODLIN Ohio State University .ALCUIN BLAMIRES, ed., with KAREN PRATI and C. w. MARX. Woman Defamed and Woman Defended: An Anthology of Medieval Texts. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992. Pp. xiii, 327. $59.00 cloth, $14.95 paper. "Woman can sing to more than one tune," lamented Mathieu ofBoulogne (as translated here by Karen Pratt from Jacques Le Fevre's Les Lamentations de Matheolus), but this anthology of antifeminist excerpts confirms the 163 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER prevailing modern belief that learned men m the Middle Ages were Johnnie-One-Notes when intoning the evils of the female sex. Editor Al­ cuin Blamires has collected a large number of medieval samples from the long-lived tradition of denigrating women, together with a smaller num­ ber of texts that he sees, with some reservations, as part of a counter­ tradition. The excerpts are arranged in nine groups, beginning with a small assortment of earlier writings from the Classical period (Ovid andJuvenal), Scripture, and medical-scientific treatises (Aristotle, Galen, and Isidore of Seville) and some later discussions of "matter" versus "form" (Anselm, Aquinas, and Guido delle Colonne), collectively identified as "The Roots of Antifeminist Tradition." The medieval flowering of this tradition is repre­ sented in five subgroups and includes theological discussions (from Ter­ tullian to Aquinas, with a few passages from The Ancrene Riwle) and satiri­ cal writings, as well as parts of short exemplary tales and longer fictional works. Roughly the last third of the collection offers a selection of texts labeled "Responses to Antifeminism," wherein women are exonerated or praised (ranging from The Thrush and the Nightingale to the anonymous tale "Merelaus the Emperor" from the Gesta Romanorum), and a series of three short excerpts from the writings of Christine de Pizan under the rubric "A Woman Defends Women." Most of the entries are reprinted from available English translations, but several are translated or retranslated by the editors themselves. Many pieces are taken from works as well known as Andreas's De Amore or Jean de Meun's continuation of Le Roman de la Rose, while a few are chosen from less familiar texts, like Jacques de Vitry's Sermones Vulgares, newly trans­ lated by Blamires, and documents from the trial of Lollard Walter Brut, transcribed and translated by C. W Marx. For readers interested in the history of gendered subjectivity and...