484 Mediaevistik 31 . 2018 around or a temple to come crushing down, will serve as a useful textbook, making which indicates major cultural changes on this significant play easily available at a their way. low cost ($15.75). The Digby Play of Mary Magdalene has Albrecht Classen survived in one paper manuscript, Bodle- ian Digby MS 133, which also contains a number of other texts. A historical-critical edition was published by Donald C. Baker, Alfred Thomas, Reading Women in Late John L. Murphy, and Louise Brewer Hall in Medieval Europe: Anne of Bohemia and 1982, another edition by Joanne Findon in Chaucer’s Female Audience. The New 2000 (again in 2011; here not mentioned), Middle Ages. New York: Palgrave Mac- and the text is available both as a facsimile millan, 2015, 251 pp. by Baker and Murphy, in the online fac- Scholarly neglect of the English Queen simile by the Bodleian, the 19th-century Anne of Bohemia (1366–1394) has per- edition by Furnivall, in a student edition by sisted as an island of unchallenged sexism Bevington, and the one by Coldewey (all and Anglophone provincialism almost up mentioned only cryptically). to the present day. Fortunately, this lacune Now, Chester N. Scoville has published has been addressed in recent years, espe- a new edition for Broadview Press which cially by Thomas’s own Anne’s Bohemia: specifically aims for the use in a university Czech Literature and Society, 1310–1420 classroom. For that purpose, he has mod- (1998). His Reading Women is a rich and ernized the spelling for English words and compelling addition to the author’s earlier regularized the spelling for Latin words, work on the pan-European culture of Bo- and added a modern punctuation. But this hemia, especially as popularized in Eng- is not a translation, so many words as con- land by Richard II’s Queen Anne. It aims to tained in the original are still present, yet provide an essential context for the works are glossed on the margin to help readers of Chaucer by elucidating Anne as edu- in their comprehension. Footnotes provide cated reader and literary patron, in short, explanations of names and terms, while an “the ideal embodiment of the European appendix offers the biblical source materi- cosmopolitanism he wished to emulate” al in Mark 16, Luke 71, John 11, and John (10). Supporting this aim, as a tremendous 20. Pleasantly, there is also the relevant value-added to the chapters of textual anal- passage about Mary Magdalene in Jaco- ysis, Thomas intercalates English transla- bus de Voragine’s Legenda Aurea. The tions of medieval works in Czech—such as little volume concludes with the reproduc- the Life of St. Catherine and the satirical tion of two pages from the manuscript and Wycliffite Woman—that may be otherwise their text transcription. difficult to access. These are presented The absence of a bibliography is as- as analogues, not necessarily sources, for tounding, and there is no index. Granted, their English counterparts. the editor/translator has made good efforts Thomas’s thesis has two parts. The first, to provide new access to this important affirming the centrality of multilingual play for student readers, but the scholarly Bohemian literary culture as a force in value is rather limited. Even a textbook Chaucer’s England (3), is unassailable and ought to live up to a minimum of scholar- richly documented. The second, claiming ly expectations. Otherwise, however, this that Anne as a person represented female Mediaevistik 31 . 2018 485 power over Chaucer and came to be re- gensium (Passion of the Jews of Prague). sented by him (17, 50, 114, 168–69), is Imagery of excrement attached to the open to question. At times, the author as- Jews as “Other” finds a comic counter- sumes a cause-and-effect relationship that part in the Czech and Latin verse play may not exist—for example, his inference The Ointment Seller (60–63), appended that Richard and Anne must have had a in translation. celibate relationship, modeled on saints’ In his groundbreaking chapter “The lives (20, 95). That said, if the book were Lady as Saint,” Thomas explicates the bril- an edifice, it would stand firm on its sol- liantly original Czech Life of Saint Cathe- id construction even if you would like to rine (1360–75) as an essential context for subtract a brick or two here and there. understanding the central female figures in In his Introduction, Thomas rescues Chaucer’s Second Nun’s Tale and the anon- Anne from insular and sexist assumptions ymous English Pearl (84). Both English that she lacked a sophisticated literary cul- poems appear to contain allusive tributes ture and especially could not have promot- to Anne herself as learned, articulate, and ed composition in English. On the con- saintly (79–81, 97–88, 95), all underscor- trary, Anne’s father Charles IV not only ing the connection of Chaucer’s milieu to corresponded with Petrarch in Latin, but Bohemian cultural style. encouraged translation and original work Moving on to “Dangerous Amazons” in Czech and German as “the vernacular in Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale and the Czech was increasingly identified with cosmo- Dalimil Chronicle, Thomas claims the de- politan prestige” (7). Less well known, feat of Hippolyta that opens the Knight’s Anne’s female relatives had long acted Tale as evidence for Chaucer’s anxiety as bibliophiles and patrons in every lit- over the literary influence of the English erary sphere, including the emergence of Queen Anne (114). For Thomas, the rebel- Czech as a vibrant literary language in the lious maidens of the Chronicle, ultimately late thirteenth century (12). In Chapter 1, annihilated, are partly sympathetic coun- “Devotional Texts for Royal Princesses,” terparts both to autonomous women in Thomas continues to fill in the background Chaucer’s fictions, and the upstart role of on Anne’s descent from a centuries-old a vernacular poet gaining mastery over his tradition of female piety and learning. sources (117–18). This included such figures as Agnes of In “Powerful Wives and Captive Prague and Abbess Kunigunde, who com- Knights,” Thomas discusses “the image missioned the illuminated bilingual codex of women in the chivalric romances of Passional that bears her name (32 ff.) late-medieval Bohemia” (141) as a con- Expanding his scope to the Bohemi- text for Sir Gawain and the Green Knight an context for Chaucer’s works, Thomas and Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Tale. For argues in “Writing Jews, Writing Wom- Chaucer and the Gawain-poet, the no- en” that Queen Anne was the most likely ble, Anne-like intercessor morphs all too patron, “imagined or real,” of The Prior- easily into the “harridan” who “must be ess’s Tale (46). Christian violence against neutralized” through transformation into Jews in the conclusion to the Tale runs a compliant young woman, or a burst of parallel to the pogrom which broke out in misogynistic invective (140). Reflecting Holy Week in Prague, 1389, and was por- the tradition of Bohemian royal women, trayed in the Latin Passio Judeorum Pra- the heroines of romances in Czech show 486 Mediaevistik 31 . 2018 more “positive” traits of character and a and its literature. She explores what we degree of “equality” with men (160). might be able to tell about all the basic Chaucer’s most explicit dedication aspects of food and food preparation by to Anne appears in the Legend of Good way of carefully scanning the relevant lit- Women (F Prologue 496–97), where the erary documents from the twelfth through poet-persona is instructed by a figure re- the fifteenth centuries, both fictional and sembling the Queen to atone for his al- factual. In fact, as it becomes immediate- leged misogyny by producing a legend- ly clear, hardly any poet could ignore the ary of female martyrs to love. In his final demand by his/her audience to talk also chapter, on the Legend in its Bohemian about those material conditions, which context, Thomas relates these “clashing allows us today to get a relatively good truth claims about women” (176) to late understanding of unique recipes and food- medieval questioning of authority in gen- stuff in southern France during the high eral, especially through the related here- and late Middle Ages. sies of Hussitism and Wycliffism and the Pfeffer proceeds very methodological- furious reaction they inspired (175). ly, first introducing us to the region, the A small complaint about this otherwise various literary sources, and the typical excellent book: perhaps through no fault food products in the Occitanie. In the sec- of the author, the Bibliography lacks a di- ond section, she analyzes more specifical- vision into manuscripts, primary sources, ly the various categories of food, includ- and secondary sources. As a result, the ing flour and bread, fruits and vegetables, sources for Thomas’s useful translations fish, milk products, meats, fats and oils, are needlessly difficult to identify. sugar, salt and spices. It would have been Linda Burke, Elmhurst College, Depart- helpful if she had spent also some time on ment of English, 190 Prospect, Elmhurst, the question where especially sugar was IL 60126, [email protected] imported from (Egypt, Middle East), and I also would have liked to see some com- ments on bees and honey (apart from very brief mentions on pp. 104–05, 204–05), Wendy Pfeffer, Le festin du troubadour: but the literary sources might not have Nourriture, société et littérature en Oc- yielded enough information about that citanie (1100–1500). Traduction de aspect. Chapter four turns to all kinds of Wendy Pfeffer et Patrick Ffrench [sic]. drinks, among which wine ranked high- Cahors cedex: La Louve éditions, 2016, est, of course, whereas water for the ordi- 393 pp., numerous b/w ill. nary people was also mentioned at times, Numerous scholars have recently turned which does not surprise us, of course. to the world of foodstuff and food prepa- From here, Pfeffer engages with the ma- ration in the Middle Ages. The field itself terial objects needed in food preparation is expanding and we encounter ever new and eating, i.e., pots, pans, plates, cups, etc. materials and documents that help us to We gain a fairly good idea of how a medie- grow in our awareness about the actual val kitchen at court might have looked like, conditions on the ground, that is, in the and what silverware was used. Even at that kitchen, in the dining hall, etc. Wendy time the fork was utilized, which would Pfeffer embarks on the same topic by way have been a great opportunity to chal- of focusing on the world of the Occitanie lenge the claims by the famous sociologist