Arthurian Women: A Casebook ed. by Thelma Fenster (review)

REVIEWS quotations from that criticism, including summaries of the romance plots taken from it, his own comments are lean, spare, skeletal, unde­ veloped. It is ironic that a book concerned with the layout of texts should have an unhelpful layout itself. Evans divides his text into small blocks and uses several hierarchies of headings to show the relation of the parts. Unfortunately, this presentation, along with a lack of transi­ tional statements, requires that the reader frequently turn backward and forward to understand how an individual section fits into the larger structure of the chapter. Those with a serious interest in Middle English romances and ro­ mance manuscripts would be wise to read this monograph, for it does contain some valuable information and insights, especially about the different versions ofromances and the implications ofthe fact that cer­ tain groups of romances frequently occur together in manuscripts. However, the reader should not expect an easy passage through the rel­ atively small number of pages (about 100) of text. Caveat lector: ap­ proach with caution and, above all, with patience. GEORGE R. KEISER Kansas State University THELMA FENSTER, ed. Arthurian Women: A Casebook. Arthurian Characters and Themes, vol. 3. New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1996. Pp. lxxvii, 344. $35.00. Ofthe nineteen essays (excluding the lengthy introduction) that appear in this volume, fifteen are reprints. Two (E. Jane Burns, "Rewriting Men's Stories: Enide's Disruptive Mouths," and Laurence Harf-Lancner, "Fairy Godmothers and Fairy Lovers") are abridged versions ofpieces as they originally appeared, and two (Harf-Lancner and Anne Berthelot, "From the Lake to the Fountain: Lancelot and the Fairy Lover") are translations from the original French. Thus, there is little here that one could not find in previously published sources. The primary value of such a book, therefore, is in the assimilation of a group of carefully se­ lected articles into one convenient volume, in keeping with the intent ofthe Garland casebook series, whose editors have pronounced "the pro­ liferation of research devoted to Arthurian material" to be "daunting" (p. xi) and have set out to simplify the task of researchers and students 237 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER by assembling collections of notable articles on given themes or characters. Thelma Fenster, editor of Arthurian Women: A Casebook, has done an excellent job of selecting articles to be included in the volume, balanc­ ing studies on medieval texts with those of nineteenth- and twentieth­ century works, and including articles that focus on French, German, English, and Italian literature. However, inherent in such a collection of reprinted articles are annoying inconsistencies. For example, some es­ says include bibliographies while others do not, and consequently foot­ note styles vary among the articles. It is also unfortunate that contrib­ utors' notes are not included in the volume. They would be particularly useful in a book of this sort, which covers several disciplines and in­ cludes scholars who work in a number of different literary periods. Fenster's lengthy opening essay is divided into four sections (1) jus­ tifying the need for the book, (2) listing and summarizing the roles of Arthurian women, (3) showing how the feminine presence in the Arthurian corpus finds its richest fulfillment in the fairy world (a curi­ ous section that evolves into a brief essay on Marie de France's "Lanval"), and (4) setting forth the various sections of the volume: "Resisting Tales," "Story, Gender, and Culture," "Fairies' Tales," "Iseut and Guene­ vere in the Nineteenth Century," "Another Look," and "Revisionary Tales: Guenevere and Morgan in the Twentieth Century." The temptation to comment individually on each of the articles is quelled by their sheer number and the space limitations of this review. However, taken together the essays handily demonstrate a variety of ap­ proaches to and perspectives on Arthurian texts and underscore the flex­ ibility of the Arthurian legends that have been adapted so variously from age to age and from country to country to the tastes of their re­ ceptor audiences. They also suggest some of the difficulties inherent in dealing with characters whose names and roles may vary from text to text, which seems to be even more of a problem with female characters...