Women and the Book: Assessing the Visual Evidence ed. by Jane Taylor and Lesley Smith (review)

REVIEWS example, almost certainly had much more to do in this North Country performance with the fact that the unruly laughter was at the expense of a character with the Scots name of Fergus than with the general "dis­ ruptive dramatic energy" (p. 152) that Sponsler analyzes in this chapter. But how do we know? Sponsler's book asks, finally (p.161), and makes us ask ourselves. Some readers of this book will object to the sleight ofhand with which Claire Sponsler produces texts when the En­ glish fifteenth-century dramatic texts do not exist; some will object that her claims for the transgressions of medieval Robin Hood performances seem more inspired by Katarina Witt's cross-dressed, ice-skating Robin Hood in her19 94 Winter Olympics comeback than by anything a me­ dieval document or play fragment told her. But this is a book to be reckoned with, a study of late medieval drama that boldly goes where no such book has gone before and that mediates with the authority of a traveler's guide between our own obsessive cultural questions and a dis­ tant late medieval theater.Drama and Resistance attempts to do no less than write the unwritten, and the intelligence and astuteness of this book will impress even the most skeptical reader."To look for moments of resistance within late medieval culture, as I have done," Claire Spon­ sler writes in her afterword, "...inevitably reveals as much about the searcher as it does about the practices found and scrutinized" (p. 161). What this book surely reveals is a very perceptive searcher indeed. GAIL MCMURRAY GIBSON Davidson College JANE TAYLOR and LESLEY SMITH, eds.Women and the Book: Assessing the Visual Evidence. The British Library Studies in Medieval Culture. Toronto: University ofToronto Press,1997.Pp.287.$7 5.00cloth; $29.9 5 paper. The purpose ofthis collection of essays is to examine visual images from the Middle Ages-primarily manuscript illuminations, but also miseri­ cord carvings and occasionally other media-in an effort to approach medieval conceptualizations of women and, in particular, of the rela­ tionship ofwomen to books.As the editors point out, one cannot simply assess visual images without taking into account various factors sur389 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER rounding both the origins and the destinations of the objects in ques­ tion: for whom they were made, by whom, about whom, and for what purpose. Thus, the essays address a wide range of materials, including books authored by women, designed and executed by women, commis­ sioned by women, owned by women, used by women, or simply con­ taining representations of women. This diversity of approach is fruitful and allows the questions of the use and meaning of images, and their implications for gender constructions, to be considered from many dif­ ferent perspectives. The essays themselves are somewhat uneven, but overall the volume includes much that is interesting and informative. Lesley Smith's essay poses the provocative question of why medieval manuscripts, despite the plethora of images depicting women reading or handling books, in­ clude so very few images of women writing. While her essay provides no real answer-perhaps none can be given-it does call attention to an interesting iconographic problem as well as identifying a small but fascinating series ofrepresentations offemale scribes and authors. Sandra Hindman in turn examines two illuminated manuscripts of the Fables attributed to Marie de France, suggesting that the juxtaposition of au­ thor portraits and miniatures illustrating the opening and closing fables respectively serves to highlight the role of the female author. Some of Hindman's arguments might be questioned; she argues, for example, that Marie as a female author is treated differently from male authors such as Chretien de Troyes or Benoit de Sainte-Maure, for whom no author portraits exist. But the portraits of Marie exist in manuscripts of the Fables, not in those of the Lais that may or may not have been written by the same author; and manuscripts of the Fables would be more appro­ priately compared with those of didactic texts such as other Ysopet col­ lections or bestiaries-which often do feature author portraits-than with courtly romance. Hindman's...