The New Cambridge Medieval History: Volume VII c. 1415–c. 1500 ed. by Christopher Allmand (review)

REVIEWS CHRISTOPHER ALLMAND, ed. The New Cambridge Medieval History: Vol­ ume VII c. 1415-c. 1500. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp. xxi, 1048; 24 plates. $95.00. Professor Allmand has assembled an excellent team of scholars and pro­ duced a major, meticulous, and often analytically provocative survey of fifteenth-century Europe, one that offers literary scholars a powerful set of historical questions and models and a vast range of information about a period increasingly occupying center stage in medieval literary in­ quiry. Given so much differentiated national detail yet such recurrent attention to parallel structures-monarchical, representational, educa­ tional, artistic, and the conditions and negotiations behind the forma­ tion of European states-this volume is also a timely statement about the complex unity of Europe, since interactive and analogous forces and concerns can be seen working across its varied cultures. The work's structure follows the pattern of J. R. Lander's admirable history of later fifteenth-century England (Government and Community: England, 14501509 [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980}): chapters on themes and pan-European institutions come first ("Politics: Theory and Practice," "Religious Belief and Practice," "The European Nobility," "Rural Europe," etc.), followed by chapters on the political history of individual states or areas. The emphases throughout, however, are on wide-ranging issues; the growth of monarchical and courtly claims and authority, the expansion of literacy and education, and the power of the mercantile class are some of the recurrent topics that inform all of the chapters. And the chapters all proceed via rigorous structural analyses, whether of the variety of and various impetus behind specific institu­ tions, such as representational institutions in Europe (in a particularly helpful chapter by Wim Blockmans), or of various dynastic crises or complexities of state formation that seized most of the European na­ tions, such as the mysterious failure of Scotland to produce a nationalist propaganda, discussed in a canny chapter by Jenny Wormald. The per­ meable boundaries of Europe, often in view, are directly treated very well: the "Byzantine" East receives a particularly fine discussion in An­ thony Bryer's chapter; the Latin East is valuably surveyed by Anthony 441 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER Luttrell; and there are useful surprises in both. Given that Europe is now at a juncture of reconsidering state formation and larger cultural identities, the comparative approach of this excellent volume seizes the opportunity to set forth the elements behind the emergence of these entities with great accuracy and enormous scope and energy. English literary scholars may find less immediately directive work; the chapter on "Lancastrian England," by Edward Powell, is a good one, but the discussion features political culture at the very top-the Lancas­ trians rather than Lancastrian England-providing clarity about the way claimants to the crown might imagine or force their options rather than other cultural elements with which literary scholars are concerned. Malcolm Vale's chapter on France at the end ofthe Hundred Years' War is very helpful and stimulating; but his chapter on "Manuscripts and Books," while perfectly sound, does not offer grounds for new research or any ofthe sustained scrutiny ofparticulars that makes codicology and book production so vital a field at present in medieval European literary studies. Both gaps are, however, easily compensated by current special­ ized work, some listed in the bibliographies here; others, in English lit­ erary scholarship especially, are not listed but are readily findable (e.g., the work of Seth Lerer, Kathleen Scott, Paul Strohm, and Ralph Hanna III, to name only four among many currently producing exciting work in these areas). More important for medieval literary scholarship generally, however, is the broad impetus this hisrory provides to consider patterns and inter­ actions in Europe as a whole, at a crucial juncture of cultural transition to the modern state, marked by tension between "Europe" as a notion of religious unity and as a notion of a region dominated by secular au­ thorities. Especially relevant for literary study are those chapters featur­ ing the question of cultural or social self-image, such as the emergence of "humanist" fascination with classical literature, which, in a provoca­ tive chapter, Robert Black argues was intellectually insubstantial but...