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120 Reviews about man. In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, to take one such narrative, the age terms have been amongst the most difficult features of the text to interpret Following consideration of the overall use of age terms in the late fourteenth century, Dove argues that the description of Arthur's court as being in the 'first age' places it at the early end of youth, the period otherwise known as adolescentia . But neither this description of the court, nor that of Arthur himself as 'sumquat childgered' is derogatory, as critics have sometimes cldmed: the court is an ided court, it is simply experiencing an actud stage of life. G a w d n is still young, like spring, when he arrives in Bertilak's castle, but the inner man is aging by the end of the poem, as G a w d n accuses himself of sins associated with old age. Bertilak, described as being of 'hyghe eldee' and 'olde', is seen above all as ambiguous and thought-provoking, associated varyingly with middle age and old age. The poem at large is seen as susceptible to interpretation as a 'game of the ages', and more of its detail is considered in this light In a briefer discussion, B u n o w reaches similar conclusions about Arthur's court and Gawdn, but he resolves the question of Bertilak's age by placing him wholly in middle age. The flurry of activity in this area of scholarship has brought forward a wedth of fascinating materid. Dove's book in particular is at least as chdlenging as it is informative: it should enlighten and rouse readers of the Ricardian masterpieces and it should launch similar investigations into medievd writing from other contexts. Diane Speed Department of English University of Sydney Duby, G., ed., A History of Private Life. Vol. 2: Revelations of the Medieval World, trans. A. Goldhammer, Cambridge Mass., Belknap Press of Harvard U. P., 1988; pp.xiii, 690; large no. of illustrations; R.R.P. U S $39.50. The subtitle chosen for this translation of the second volume of the four part Histoire de la vie privie, Revelations of the Medieval World, suggests that the reader is being led for thefirsttime into a hitherto unexplored world, lurking behind a conventiond exterior. Georges Duby opens the book by comparing the historian to the gossiping women of Montdllou, their eyes permanently glued to keyholes so as they might spy on what goes on in other people's houses. The reader may be titillated by the prospect Yet, over six hundred pages later, what have we learnt that is new? The origind French subtitle, De I'Europefeodale d la Renaissance, conveys more accurately both its subject matter (both the Eastern and Western early Reviews 121 Middle Ages up to the eleventh century are dedt with in the proceeding volume, From pagan Rome to Byzantium, ed. Paul Veyne) and its essentid fidelity to those classic notions of periodization so dear to French historiographicd tradition. Like any Histoire ginerale, this History charts the roots of, and thus gives sanction to, a thoroughly respectable vdue of Western (and particularly French) society, that of privacy or therightto a private hfe. A major theme of Revelations, the transition from an anonymous, c o m m u n d world in the eleventh century to a more individudistic private and intimate one in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, would please Burckhardt Yet the only discussion of the relevance of this theme is a glib introductory answer from Duby to any accusation that this is an anachronistic project by comparing ittoa search into the history of class struggle, another 'modem' idea. Tellingly Duby dso confides that while his origind intention was for the contributors to work together to produce a seamless whole, such bold optimism had been misplaced. The result is a curiously mixed collection of studies by generally well established scholars. Besides Duby, Dominique Barthelemy, Charles de La Ronciere, Danielle Rdgnier-Bohler, Philippe Contamine, and Philippe Braunstein each follow their own branch of the historicd discipline. Their contributions are grouped into categories of conventiond socid history (of French aristocratic households in the 1 lth-13th...

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