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Medieval

Gregory Kratzmann (ed.): Imagination, Books and Community in Medieval Europe

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November 2010, no. 326

Binocular vision

Stephanie Trigg

 

Imagination, Books and Community in Medieval Europe
edited by Gregory Kratzmann
Macmillan Art Publishing and the State Library of Victoria, $99 hb, 256 pp, 9781921394331

 

In cinema the trope is familiar: an old boo ...

Parergon, Vol. 26, No. 2 edited by Anne M. Scott & Parergon, Vol. 27, No. 1 edited by Vanessa Smith and Richard Yeo

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March 2011, no. 329
Gregory Kratzmann reviews 'Parergon, Vol. 26, No. 2' edited by Anne M. Scott and 'Parergon, Vol. 27, No. 1' edited by Vanessa Smith and Richard Yeo

Australian and New Zealand universities have for more than a century produced significant numbers of medieval and early modern literary scholars and historians. Formerly, full international recognition was won by many who moved to the northern hemisphere, but, happily, in these days of the global scholarly community, those who have chosen to make their careers at home are now accorded recognition and acclaim by their colleagues abroad. Parergon will next year celebrate its fortieth birthday; the journal’s belated coming of age is a tribute to a series of dedicated editors, the most recent being Anne M. Scott and Andrew Lynch at the University of Western Australia.

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The Felton Illuminated Manuscripts in the National Gallery of Victoria by Margaret M. Manion

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March 2006, no. 279
Joan Barclay-Lloyd reviews ‘The Felton Illuminated Manuscripts in the National Gallery of Victoria’ by Margaret M. Manion

To commemorate the centenary of Alfred Felton’s death in 1904, the National Gallery of Victoria and Macmillan Art Publishing have published the five illuminated medieval manuscripts and the single leaf ac-quired for the Gallery through the Felton Bequest. This stunning volume is profusely illustrated with colour plates taken by the photographic team of the NGV of all the decorative features in the manuscripts; in addition, there are numerous coloured figures of comparative works in other collections. Decorative elements from each Felton manuscript ornament the opening pages of each section, and embellish the title and end pages of the book. In design and illustration, this volume is itself a work of art, with hundreds of coloured images to delight the eye.

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English Prose Fiction 1158–1700: A Critical History by Paul Salzman

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June 1986, no. 81

Paul Salzman has wit and judgement. He knows his chosen period is usually thought of as a lean one for prose fiction; he is anxious not to be typed as ‘the indefatigable in pursuit of the unreadable.’ He sees himself as the cartographer of a largely uncharted region: his main aim is to give us an idea of what is there.

A writer in this situation would like to be able to report on neglected masterpieces. Salzman is too sensible to make extravagant claims: the claims he does make are the more believable because they are modest. If he fails to find a seventeenth-century rival to Clarissa or Middlemarch, he nevertheless turns up some long and short fictions that deserve to be better known than they are. Mary Wrath’s Urania, ‘a feminist reading of the romance form’ which exposes ‘the less salubrious underside of the courtly code’, is one. It is apparently the earliest published work of fiction written in English by a woman. (It was suppressed soon after publication because it allegedly played ‘palpably and grossly’ with the reputations of certain influential people whom it portrayed under fictional names.)

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