Translation Theory and Practice in the Middle Ages , and: The Tongue of the Fathers: Gender and Ideology in Twelfth-Century Latin ed. by Jeanette Beer (review) (2000)

REVIEWS105 Soliloquies, is offered by Robert S. Sturges, who illustrates how the Soliloquies provide a strong condemnarion of the Wycliffian controversies regarding predestination and the use of images, which were seen as particularly harmful for women. The Soliloquies were written as a commentary on the dangers nuns face, which makes them particularly useful for those studyingwomen's communities. Mona L. Logarbo's contribution, The Gast ofGuy, is the most intriguing selection featured here. This account, which records a purported convetsation between a Dominican friar and a soul in purgatory, was understood as an orthodox text regarding penance and intercessory prayer, but the dialogue illusttates provocative moments ofheterodoxy: the friar summoning Guy's spirit to appeat; the layman's detailed knowledge ofthe scriprures and Christian theology, which he uses to admonish the friar about his preaching; and the indirect suggestion that laity's direct experiences with the divine can be more knowledgeable than those of invested religious persons. By contrast, Bartlett and Bestul offer two otthodox devotions that demonsttate lay interest in affective piety, including The Privity ofthe Passion and The Fifteen Oes, translated respectively by Denise N. Baket and Rebecca Krug. Read together, the two pieces illustrate the values of compassion, contrition, and contemplation encouraged by late medieval religious doctrine. Wide circulation of both texts demonstrates that the laity accepted these values and followed them in their meditations on the Passion. A fitting complement to the Soliloquies, Paul F. Schaffners translation of Life of Soul is a catechetical dialogue that addresses a broad audience, even as it affirms that laity should be taught theology and religious doctrine. This affirmation intimates that Life ofSoulvjus written by a Lollard or a follower of Wycliffe, and Schaffner describes several of the text's heretical attributes in his introduction. Concluding Cultures ofPiety is Claire Waters's translation of The Life ofJerome, a selection that documents the popularity ofsaints' lives in late medieval England, even as it illustrates the dramaturgical and didactic functions hagiography served for medieval audiences. Symon Wynter, a monk ofSyon abbey, translated this version into Middle English for Margaret, Duchess ofClarence, whose widowed piety is particularly interesting in light ofWynter's narrative, which describes Jerome as 'a friend ofwidows.' Waters's introduction to this life elucidates coopetative book production between monastic and lay communities and proves a valuable discussion of aristoctatic women's patronage. In all, the selections chosen for Cultures ofPiety coalesce into a provocative overview of popular piety and will serve as a useful complement to tradirional readings in medieval litetatute, even as they provide a rich contribution to recent scholatship in late medieval devotional pracrices. VIRGINIA BLANTON-WHETSELL Marist College Jeanette beer, ed., TransLtion Theory and Practice in the Middle Ages. Studies in Medieval Culture XXXVIII. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Western Michigan Univ. Medieval Institute Publications, 1997. Pp. iv, 282. isbn: 1-879288-81-8 (hard), $40; 1-87928882 -6 (paper). $20. io6arthuriana David townsend and Andrew Taylor, eds., The Tongue ofthe Fathers: Gender and Ideology in Twelfth-Century Latin. Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1998. Pp. vi, 213. isbn: 0-8122-3440-5. $37.50. Tempus fugit, et (to translate Bob Dylan) tempora illa mutantur. These two essay collections are required reading for anybody still peopling medieval Europe with unembodied, genderless, apolitical, serene, silent starers at manuscripts that reveal to each the same meaning. Most of the books' twenty-rwo contributots address issues newly articulated during the last quatter of the twentieth centuty. A salutary continuum does, however, link explication of two translators' pragmatic considerations (William W Kibler and David Staines, each having done Chrétien de Troyes in Modern English) with the stated or implied intentions of medieval translators themselves. Would that the latter had left more evidence of the sort detected by Peter F. Dembowski, in prefatory remarks and glosses by Frenchmen translating scientific works, or by Ian Johnson, comparing the Wycliffite Bible to an orthodox treatise vetnaculatized for much the same target audience. In both collections, most studies analyze Latin composed or understood by speakers of medieval French. The fifth essay in each book concerns Hildegard of Bingen, however; and in Translation Theory and Practice several contriburors treat Anglophone materials and one, Roget Wright, the transition to...