Caviness, Madeline H.

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to see continuities that are simply not apparent when reading any individual textin relative isolation, as we are wont to do. Which leads us to a third significantcontribution of the book: as the author himself states, he hopes to counterbalancethe analyses that sometimes result from that isolation, those that proclaim theappearance, ex nihilo, of profeminine material in medieval authors withoutsufficient contextualization. Our future readings of Hildegard of Bingen, ofChristine de Pizan, of Jean le Fevre, will be richer and more balanced for takinginto account the traditions of both misogyny and defense that these authors hadassimilated as part of their scholarly culture.Barbara K. AltmannUniversity ofOregonBrigitte Buettner. Boccaccio's "Des cleres et nobles[emmes": Systems ofSignificationinan Illuminated Manuscript (College Art Association Monograph on the FineArts 53), Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1996.208pp., 110illus (4 in color), appendix, notes, bibliography, index, 81/2" x 11".The subject of this study is the production of meaning in a sumptuous illustratedcopy of Boccaccio's lives of illustrious and noble women that was presented toPhilip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy and brother to the French King Charles VI, onNew Year's Day in 1403 (Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, MS fro 12420).Apart fromthe value of her analysis, Buettner has done a great service to the general field ofwomen's studies by making available all the pictorial illuminations, togetherwith their associated decorated initials (albeit for the most part in black andwhite). They are arranged in the order in which they occur in the manuscript,and there is only one external illustration, both immediate indications of theauthor's synchronic approach to the book. The women who figure here arepresented in chronological order, from the ancient goddesses such as Ceres,Venus, and Isis to mythological characters such as Europa, the Amazon queens,Thisbe, Medea, and Arachne, Clytaemnestra, Helen, Circe, and Penelope, Dido,Sappho, and Lucretia, to Romans such as Irene, Hortensia, Cleopatra, and Portia,and the series closes with a few later Christians-among them Pope Joan, andJoanna, queen of Sicily and Jerusalem. The text life of each is prefaced by a singlepicture of some salient event enacted in ca. 1400costumes and settings, the normfor historical representations. Here is an extraordinary series of vivid yet elegantimages, of women birthing and committing suicide, avenging murder and ridingin combat, being tortured and executed, inventing Latin and working on panelpaintings, and acting as ambassadors and priests.mThe author immediately introduces her readers to the "structuralist mode ofinquiry" that led to this form of presentation, promising "semiotically informedperspectives insofar as they posit that meanings can be generated, and in turnunderstood, only through relational models. For painting, like any other'language,' is inherently a dynamic, open-ended, polyvalent, even self-contradictory, and above all, never finite process of conceptual systematization"(1, emphasis hers). Hers is not to be the old kind of iconography and iconologythat so long dominated art historical readings, nor does her reading assumetextual primacy: "I hope to demonstrate that images create intelligible visibilitiesthat are only partially dependent on words. But in order to do this one has toattend to the seemingly most insignificant details, because it is there that imagesoften say what texts cannot express-that the discursive order finds its limits"(2). She informs us last that her main reason in choosing to decode this book isthat it is "entirely devoted to women" (3).The chapters that follow meet all these claims. In addition, they offer valuableinsights into the viewing community and the circumstances of the translation ofBoccaccio's text into French, and the production of the manuscript (7-17). Theyoffer as well some comments on the relation of this work to Christine de Pisan'sCityofLadies, including the interesting observation that the illustrations mighthave influenced Christine in the more positive attitude to her subject than isfound in Boccaccio's text (21-22; also 25-26).This is the first glimpse of thesemantic space between text and image that figures in Beuttner's analysis.Indeed, she finds that some of the biographies have even been altered or addedto in translation (e.g. Pamphile's role as a silk worker, an interest of the malepatron of the work). yet she ultimately finds agreement between the fluctuatingor inconsistent representational codes (color, gesture, space) in the pictures, andthe way "Boccaccio's assessment of women's achievement fluctuates" (98-99).A question I should ask to satisfy readers of MFN: Is this a feminist study of thisextraordinary late medieval array of images of famous women? Gender isacknowledged throughout, yet an analysis burdened by semiotic jargon andsometimes as tedious in the detailing of signs as the old art history was indescribing stylistic traits, does not support sustained attention to sex/genderarrangements. Concerned with the minutiae of this polyvalent representation of"women," and its categorization of their estates and behaviors, the author neversteps back from the obsession of the culture of origin with praising andcondemning (different) women, by asking why this would be so-or what is itseffect (a few gestures to ideology aside). Indeed, the bibliography and notesshow no sign of recent theorizing of gender, such as the contributions of Teresade Lauretis and Michele Barrett to bridging the gap between semiotics andpraxis.' In my view this is not a serious defect; I would never require an authorto write a different book than the one they have published. This book grew outmof a dissertation that was directed by first-rate traditional scholars, and feminismis not something to force into such a situation. Buettner has done great service tohave put this manuscript in view, with a usable level of erudition and asophisticated reading of the imagery.Madeline H. CavinessTufts University1 Teresa de Lauretis, "The Essence of the Triangle or Taking the Risk of Essentialism Seriously:Feminist Theory in Italy, the U.S., and Britain," Differences 1 (summer 1989), 3-37. Reprinted in TheEssential Difference, ed. Naomi Schor and Elizabeth Weed (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,1994), 1-39; de Lauretis, "The violence of rhetoric: Considerations on representation and gender," inThe Violence of Representation, ed. Nancy Armstrong and Leonard Tennenhouse (London: Routledge,1989),239-258; Michele Barrett, "Ideology and the Cultural Production of Gender," in Feminist Criticismand Social Change: Sex, Class and Race in Literature and Culture, ed. Judith Newton and DeborahRosenfeit (New York: Methuen, 1985), 65-85.Christine de Pizano Le Livre des Faits et Bonnes Moeurs du roi Charles V Ie Sage.Trans. Eric Hicks and Therese Moreau (Paris: Stock/Moyen Age 1997).373 pp.Twelve years ago, when Eric Hicks and Therese Moreau brought out theirmodern French translation of LeLivre de la Cite des Dames, they did a great serviceto the reading and teaching of Christine de Pizano One of Christine's major prosetexts was finally available in an appealing, accessible modern French format.Numerous scholarly essays and full-length studies produced during the lastdecade are buttressed by the existence of this translation, and many classes ofFrench literature students have acquainted themselves with late medievalexempla through the same work. Hicks and Moreau have now again made anessential contribution to Christine studies by publishing a modern translationentitled Le Livre des Fais et Bonnes Moeurs du roi Charles V Ie Sage?Over the last century, the text had previously been printed only in SuzanneSolente's two-volume edition, completed in 1941;while excellently edited andmeticulously presented, the work in fifteenth-century French remained largelyimpracticable for college students and non-specialist readers. The new versioncomes complete with an engaging and serious introduction, a chronology ofChristine's works and their modern editions, and a helpful, substantive index toproper names. The translation is elegant, by turns straightforward, playful, orceremonious, in keeping with Christine's own changes of style. In addition tofocussing on the historical genesis of the work, the introduction takes up them

Brigitte Buettner, Boccaccio\u27s  Des cleres et nobles femmes : Systems of Signification in an Illuminated Manuscript. (College Art Association Monograph on the Fine Arts, 53.) University of Washington Press, 1996

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Brigitte Buettner, Boccaccio\u27s Des cleres et nobles femmes : Systems of Signification in an Illuminated Manuscript. (College Art Association Monograph on the Fine Arts, 53.) University of Washington Press, 1996

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