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Reviews 325 of triumph in wider intellectual and social activities (p. 229). All of the essays in Representing Women in Renaissance England are attuned to this possibility, combining sensitive, detailed analysis of the texts' literary and poetic features with nuanced readings of the cultural, ideological and gendered contexts in which early modern w o m e n lived and wrote. Lloyd Davis Department ofEnglish University of Queensland Tolan, John Victor, ed., Medieval Christian Perceptions ofIslam: A Bo of Essays (Garland Medieval Casebooks 10), N e w York and London, Garland, 1996; cloth; pp. xxi, 414; R.R.P. not known. This book contains 15 essays introducing the wide range of medieval and Renaissance Christian responses to Islam. Various lesser known texts from the seventh to the sixteenth century are examined, ranging from history and epic to polemics, exegesis and travelogue. The editor has compiled a useful and interesting collection on lesser k n o w n authors (with the exception, perhaps, of Mandeville's Travels), which complements treatments of Islam by better known authors such as Peter the Venerable, Wolfram von Eschenbach or Dante. In his introduction, John Tolan sets out the many possible responses to the challenge Islam presented to medieval Christians: Polemicists wrote theological refutations of Islam; historians attempted to explain Islam's origins and expansion; lawyers defined the legal status of Muslims living in Christian lands; exegetes defined Islam's role in the divine plan; diplomats vilified or apologized for Muslims, depending on what kinds of alliances 326 Reviews they were trying to justify; epic poets imagined Muslim warriors as embodiments either of demonic hostility or of chivalric ideals. Those varied responses, according to Gloria Allaire, in her essay on Guerrino il Meschino, fall mainly into three categories: biographical data about Muhammad's life, beliefs about Muslim people and culture, and active polemics against Islam as a false religion. Often, texts include elements from more than one of those categories. While at first the Muslim conquests are an obvious military and political threat which are only partially counteracted by the crusades, in later centuries there develops a situation where Christians and Muslims manage to live together more or less peacefully and Christian emperors m a y even make use of their Muslim subjects as pawns in the everlasting battle between church and throne. T w o such incidents are decribed in the essays by Craig L. Hanson on emperor Manuel Comnenus' fight with the orthodox church and by John Phillips L o m a x on the conflict between emperor Frederick II and his successors and the papacy — Frederick's settlement of his Saracen fighters less than 200 miles from R o m e was clearly perceived as a threat to the Popes and the issue of their conversion to Christianity were frequently used by both sides as bargaining tools. Rhonda Zaid's essay on the Guerras Civiles de Granada shows that this text mounts an impassioned defense of the Spanish Moriscoes—by that time the Muslims in Spain had dwindled from major threat to a minority which could be persecuted and maltreated by Spanish soldiers with impunity. Religious interpretations of Islam range from the definition of Islam or M u h a m m a d as the Antichrist, as discussed by David Burr in his essay on medieval Franciscan exegesis, and by Philip Krey on Nicholas of Lyra and Paul of Burgos, to calls for the conversion of Muslims to Christianity, to the conviction that Reviews 321 Muslims were either damned anyway or, as William of Tripoli asserts, destined to convert to Christianity by virtue of the many contiguities between the two religions—an idea which is also taken up in Mandeville's travels. This last interpretation made it easier t tolerate Muslims w h o did not pose an immediate physical threat and finally culminates in the depiction of a 'Christian' Muslim hero, described in Palmira Brumett's essay on "The myth of Shah Ismail Safavi'. H o w m u c h did the authors actually k n o w about Islam? While legendary elements abound, especially in depictions of Muhammad's life, where authors copy anecdotes from each other, some authors are...

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