Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Middle English Marvels: Magic, Spectacle, and Morality in the Fourteenth Century . Tara Williams. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2018. Pp. vii+176.

2018; University of Chicago Press; Volume: 116; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1086/700315

1545-6951

Lisa M. C. Weston,

Medieval Literature and History

Previous articleNext article FreeBook ReviewMiddle English Marvels: Magic, Spectacle, and Morality in the Fourteenth Century. Tara Williams. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2018. Pp. vii+176.Lisa M. C. WestonLisa M. C. WestonCalifornia State University, Fresno Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreWonder is having a moment, and not only in medieval studies. Jane Bennett’s recent Enchantment of Modern Life, for instance, speculates about the ethical role that can be played by wonder as an orientation toward a world of vibrant matter.1 It is a speculation that Bennett explicitly roots in her reading of medieval scholars like Bynum and Daston and Park as much as in contemporary philosophy.2 In Middle English Marvels, Tara Williams takes on this timely topic, albeit with a much more narrow focus, in an insightful work that draws in turn on Bennett, Bynum, and many other analysts of the medieval preternatural in order to explore a small group—arguably a sample of a larger tradition—of Middle English romances in which encounters with magical persons, objects, or events prompt engagement with morality. This is a volume carefully located in conjunction with and in response to the growing body of critical work on medieval romance and on marvels in both literature and courtly culture, and one wide-ranging in its implications.An introduction, “Why Marvels Matter,” and conclusion, “How Marvels Matter,” frame four chapters offering detailed analyses of specific texts in what, Williams posits, constitutes a subgenre or tradition within the larger corpus of Middle English romance. As the introduction explains, the focus of this volume is on literary marvels rather than those courtly marvels and displays considered in studies such as E. A. Truitt’s Medieval Robots.3 Yet both such mechanical marvels and the literary ones on which Williams focuses witness the same medieval concern—something between a fascination and an anxiety—about phenomena located at the intersection of the natural and the unnatural. Like Truitt, Williams ties marvel to visual spectacle and argues that confronting the marvelous—either in its mechanical or supernatural form—forces the viewer (or reader) to be troubled by but ultimately to revel in momentary uncertainty. That moment of wonder provokes moral actions by characters in texts, which in turn provokes audience reflection. For Williams the ethical treatment of others, especially women, is fundamental to the subgenre. Moreover, in representing ambiguous marvels as well as by exploring the moral tension such ambiguity elicits, these texts often go against dominant trends in the romance genre. What then was it about the fourteenth century in England, and particularly about one developing language and literary community, that gave such issues special currency? By focusing on vernacular texts that add magical and moral elements to French, German, or Latin sources and analogues, Williams prompts further questions about why Middle English particularly should be the language of choice for this philosophical speculation.In chapter 1, “Mirroring Otherworlds: Fairy Magic, Wonder, and Morality,” Williams begins her explorations with a beautifully nuanced reading of Sir Orfeo. In that romance’s gallery of “victims” abducted and transported into the fairy realm, Williams argues, readers see the effects of fairy (nonhuman) magic, even though the magic itself remains opaque, unexplained, and morally ambiguous. “Wonder and enchantment,” Williams notes, “are often described as types of gazes or as responses to visual stimuli” (26). It makes sense, therefore, that she grounds her reading of the text’s spectacles in the theories of vision advanced by medieval thinkers like Richard of St. Victor. To what engagements with others should such visions move their viewers? That is among the questions then posed in chapter 2, “Revealing Spectacles: Virtue and Identity in Fair Unknowns,” which turns to the Lybeus Desconus, a text widely popular in the fourteenth century but less well known today. In this text, Williams observes, magical phenomena precipitate a moral quandary and a test of chivalric virtue. Confrontation with the marvelous is thus intrinsically connected with critical issues of identity. How should the hero—the Unknown of the romance’s title—deal with the hybrid Dragon Lady? Should he protect the lady or destroy the creature? In reading, the audience must also confront this dilemma and make an ethical choice.In chapter 3, “Moving Marvels: Action and Agency in Courtly Spectacles,” the wonders that both readers and characters encounter in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight are located in contemporary appreciation for courtly spectacles. Marvels, whether in Arthur’s imaginary Camelot or the historical court of Richard II, whether instigated by Morgan or created through the mechanical skill of a tregetour, excite an uncertainty about perception. Returning to her exploration of contemporary theories of vision, Williams contextualizes the romance within a late medieval scientific paradigm shift from extramission to intromission that fundamentally reconfigured the relationship between the viewing subject and the viewed object. In Sir Gawain, she argues, this complicates the way magic is to be read and its morality to be evaluated.It is perhaps inevitable that an author as canonical as Chaucer should be given the final word, as it were, in the definition of any proposed fourteenth-century literary tradition. Chapter 4, “Talking Magic: Chaucer’s Spectacles of Language,” neatly draws upon the previous three chapters as it uses two of The Canterbury Tales as a starting point for a wide-ranging exploration of the medieval philosophical discourse. The basic question remains how to read the marvel. Neither unambiguously magic nor miracle, nor technological mirabilia, Williams argues, the marvel is for Chaucer fundamentally an aspect of language. Discussion of the Squire’s Tale thus concentrates on issues of translation between species and the ring that deciphers the language of birds rather than the more obviously marvelous brass horse. Her analysis of the Wife of Bath’s Tale similarly downplays the visual and public spectacle for the verbal and private. In Chaucer’s work, she suggests, the real issue is the material effect of words in and beyond magical context: his spectacles are spectacles of words. And the use (or abuse) of language is an inherently moral rather than merely aesthetic concern.Middle English Marvels is a well-written, accessible, and insightful volume, and one of clear interest to scholars of Middle English literature, particularly of romance. And it may well prove very useful, too, for teaching. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and The Canterbury Tales appear in many an undergraduate survey as well as more specialized courses, and this volume provides some novel and thought-provoking readings of those texts. Indeed, the value of this study is in the further speculation on texts like those discussed it stimulates, and on larger questions about language and literary tradition—and the role wonder can play in our own ethical engagement with the world.Notes1. Jane Bennett, The Enchantment of Modern Life: Attachments, Crossings, and Ethics (Princeton University Press, 2001).2. Caroline Walker Bynum, “Wonder,” American Historical Review 102 (1997): 1–26; and Lorraine Daston and Katherine Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150–1750 (New York: Zone Books, 1998).3. E. A. Truitt, Medieval Robots: Mechanism, Magic, Nature, and Art (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015). Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Modern Philology Volume 116, Number 3February 2019 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/700315HistoryPublished online September 14, 2018 For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.