Readers of this blog might be interested in a recent review I was asked to write for the Medieval Review, an online endeavour that publishes reviews on recent books in medieval studies including music.
Here’s an excerpt that gives some idea of the content of this delightfully cross-disciplinary collection of essays by various authors:
Its thirteen chapters–preceded by a preface by the editors and an introduction by Lina Bolzoni which broaches many of the issues discussed above–as a whole exhibit a cross-disciplinary approach, although the degree to which individual contributions span more than one discipline is limited. Five chapters concern the fourteenth-century poet- composer Guillaume de Machaut (or his reputation); two chapters deal with early English lyric; a central kernel of chapters explores citation in early modern Italian literature and medical texts; and three chapters examine the pictorial arts, including book decoration. Jan Stejskal’s chapter on the role that Italian humanists and the reformist John Jerome of Prague played in maintaining the memory of the Hussite reformists condemned at the Council of Constance fits less comfortably within the themes of this collection, despite its intrinsic merit. As such, this collection will appeal to historians of literature, music, art, and law, as well as to general historians whose interests lie in the period spanning the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries. The breadth of the collection may lie in the fact that its chapters originate from no less than three interdisciplinary gatherings of scholars over a period of five years: a pair of sessions convened by Plumley and Jossa at the 2004 annual conference of the Renaissance Society of America, and two workshops held in 2008 and 2009 at the University of Exeter as part of Plumley’s “Citation and Allusion in the Late French Ars Nova Chanson and Motet” project.
That’s all for now.
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