Hermeneutics and medieval culture (review)

144 Reviews In addressing the genre issue, Severin's reference to her own earlier work on memory in relation to narrative, and to Jerry Rank's study which extends her work, is persuasive. However, this study contributes litde that is new to the genre debate. Various chapters deal with Rojas's intentions (to delight and instruct), the parody of courtly love which emphasises the comic nature of the text, ecclesiastical satire, verbal humour and stagecraft, ironic foreshadowing, and analyses of Melibea's personality and Pleberio's lament. The early chapters catalogue many examples of the aspect under consideration (parody, satire, etc.) but do not successfully relate these observations to the study's general thesis. The later chapters are quite short treatments of important problems of interpretation, containing some interesting insights into chapter or situation, without significantly advancing the analysis of genre. This study lacks a strong coherent argument which would bind these disparate chapters together. The conclusion, which closes the chapter on Pleberio, sets literary values against theological ones, and argues that literature, which is parodied throughout the Celestina, cannot replace God in giving meaning or significance to the characters' lives. It is not clear, however, what argument or thesis in die book this observation addresses. Jane Morrison Department of Spanish University of N e w South Wales Gallacher, P. J. and H. Damico, eds, Hermeneutics and medieval culture, Albany N. Y., State University of N e w York Press, 1989; cloth; pp. xv, 287; R. R. P. ?. According to the back cover, 'This study explores the art of interpretation in works of history, art, music, and literature ... The authors demonstrate that the search for meaning was a primary concern of medieval authors and that the history of medieval thought from Augustine to Aquinas and Ockham illustrates the dialectic of question and answer that is the foundation of hermeneutics'. In reality, this book is a collection of twenty-one diverse studies, papers dehvered at the sixty-first meeting of the Medieval Academy of America in 1986, supplemented by an introductory essay on hermeneutics (the theory and practice of interpretation), brief thematic section headers, and an index (in which neither Aquinas nor Ockham appear). Most of the papers are concerned more with the practice than the theory of hermeneutics. They are lucid, informative, and frequently stimulating. The overall standard is high, as one would expect from authors well-known in their respective fields, but the claim on the back cover that the collection is thefirstto offer 'a diversity of hermeneutic approaches and themes' is hyperboUc. Despite its packaging the volume remains a collection of conference papers, with the strengths and weaknesses which that implies. Reviews IAS The first group of papers is headed 'The hermeneutic gap'. Florence Ridley proposes new ways of reading Chaucer in order to create imaginative constructs 'which derive from the poetry but agree with concepts of the critic's own world' (p. 22). Karl Morrison examines three twelfth-century writers who dehberately inserted gaps into their texts in order to invite interpretation. Chauncey Wood shows how Chaucer, Juan Ruiz, and Dante used direct address to the reader to indicate how 'gaps of indeterminacy' should be fiUed. Robert Worth compares the meditative technique of the author of the Meditationes Vitae Christi with that of St. Anselm. Part II, 'Bias and interpretation', is historiographical. Derek Pearsall examines contemporary descriptions of the Peasants' revolt, showing that historical and Uterary accounts are not so dissimilar in their manipulation of 'the facts'. Lorraine Attreed discusses Tudor historiography and the Tudor myth, Jean Leclercq, concepts of knighthood in St Bernard's writings and El Poema de Mio Cid, and Joseph Duggan, the effects of the Franco-German conflict (1837-1945) on Song ofRoland scholarship. In Part III, 'Discovery of new meaning', Marijane Osborn writes convincingly on 'The Squire's 'Steed of Brass' as astrolabe: some implications for The Canterbury Tales'. Fred Robinson demonstrates the value of returning to a primary witness in "The rewards of piety': two Old English poems in their manuscript context*. Thomas Cable reexamines Old and Middle English alliterative prosody. Donald Fry writes on The Parlement of the Thre Ages, Anita Riedinger on formulae in Andreas and Paul Taylor on...