The History of the Counts of Guines and Lords of Ardres (review)

Reviews 239 he pays little attention to change across the period. The years that separate Spenser and Milton were marked by incessant anatomical inquiry, and were punctuated by vital scientific advances, such as William Harvey's exposition of the circulation of blood. Yet Schoenfeldt only mentions Harvey in the book's 'afterword', nor does he explore Milton's undeniable differences from his predecessors. Notably, while Spenser's epic includes a voyage into an allegorized stomach, and Shakespeare uses the word 'stomach' over 50 times, Milton never once mentions it in his poetry. The word 'bowels' slides similarly, though not totally, from view. These facts might perhaps be attributed to Milton's idiosyncrasy, or might instead be linked to a wider cultural shift; Schoenfeldt, however, does not consider them. Furthermore, the study leaves the reader with a normative body, the politics ofwhich remain unexamined. In his chapter on Herbert, Schoenfeldt notes the poet's valorization of cleanliness, and acknowledges that the difference between a 'loathsome' and a 'sweet' body was in part a product of wealth. 'In the Renaissance', he suggests, 'one could (in both senses) smell rank' (p. 106). But he does not consider the extent to which humoral theory could become an instrument of exclusion, on grounds of degree or gender. And nor (though he shares this oversight with most other scholars in thisfield)does he examine representations ofdisabled or dismembered bodies. Therefore, after over a decade ofconcerted attention to the Early M o d e m body, and despite the many impressive qualities ofthis book, there still remains more to be said on this subject. Andrew McRae School ofEnglish University ofExeter Shopkow, Leah, The History of the Counts of Guines and Lords of Ardres, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001, cloth, 264 pp; R R P US$49.95; ISBN 0812235681. Lambert of Ardres is a name that most students of medieval history have en only through reading the works of Georges Duby, whether it be The Chivalrous Society (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1980), pp 143-46, The Knight, the Lady, and the Priest (New York, 1983), pp. 253-84, Medieval Marriage: Two Models from Twelfth-Century France (Baltimore and London, 1978), or Women ofthe Twelfth Century, Vol. 2, Remembering the Dead (Chicago, 1997). Such was Duby's 240 Reviews enthusiasm for this late twelfth-century narrative ofa noble family and its offspring, both inside and outside marriage, that the History ofthe Counts ofGuines surfaced time after time in his writing as evidence ofthe pragmatism and self-interest ofthe aristocracy in medieval society. A similar phenomenon ofa relatively little known source becoming known through the writing ofa single historian is the case ofthe inquisition registers of Pierre Fournier, exploited so famously by Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie in Montaillou. While the History ofthe Counts ofGuines has always been available to scholars with a fluent reading knowledge oferudite Latin prose in the Monumenta Germaniae Historica (24: 550-642), this chronicle has been largely neglected by scholars. The translation and commentary offered by Leah Shopkow provides a welcome opportunity to introduce a fascinating chronicle of aristocratic life that deserves to be more widely known. The History is a mine of information into the complex marital relationships of the lesser aristocracy in a region adjacent to the County of Boulogne. It relates the histories of two families: the Counts of Guines, whose ancestry stretched back to the tenth century, and the lords of Ardres, a minor castellany that was eventually absorbed through marriage into the patrimony ofthe counts of Guines. Lambert's narrative is particularly valuable, as Duby realised, for what it has to say about marriage as a dynastic strategy for aristocratic families, as well as about the way illegitimate offspring were also part of the complex web of alliances created by a noble family. Lambert ofArdres seems himself to have descended from an illegitimate child of the lords ofArdres, and relates many details about how sons and daughters b o m outside marriage (and thus without legitimate claims to inherit property) would also marry into lesser nobility. There is also much of value for understanding the evolution of aristocratic culture in the twelfth century. While he provides many stories of...