Cheryl Taylor

Shaping a regional identity: literary non-fiction and short fiction in North Queensland

Stories, anecdotes, and descriptive articles were the earliest publications, following the main wave of colonisation in the 1860s, to bring Queensland north and west of Proserpine to the attention of the national and international community. Such publications were also the main vehicle of an internal mythology: they shaped the identity of the inhabitants, diversified following settlement, and their sense of the region. The late date of settlement compared with south-eastern Australia meant that frontier experience continued both as a lived reality and as mythology well into the twentieth century. The self-containment of the region as actual and exemplary frontier was breached only with the arrival of television and university culture in the 1950s and 1960s.

Readings in Medieval Textuality: Essays in Honour of A. C. Spearing ed. by Cristina Maria Cervone, and D. Vance Smith

‘that view does not prevent us from trying to understand the past’ (p. 17). While fully acknowledging the necessity of ‘tap[ping] as many sources of knowledge as possible [...], whether [...] written text, painted image, material artefact, oral testimony, embodied memory, or other means of transmission’ (p. 17), she simultaneously raises the question of practice-as-research. Confronting headon the concerns of some scholars regarding this—it does not fit easily within ‘established research paradigms’ (p. 31), applying methodology and rigour can be difficult, and some see it simply as ‘fun’ instead of ‘serious’ scholarly research—, she nevertheless argues strongly that investigating medieval performance practice in this way ‘can expand our search for both fuller knowledge about early performance and for heightened awareness about the assumptions of such an attempt’ (p. 34). This is a welcome endorsement and, it is to be hoped, one that will encourage exciting new forays into the performance of medieval drama and related theatre. Sponsler’s chapter acts as a touchstone for the other eleven. Other authors frequently refer back to her, so that her work becomes a thread linking the chapters—disparate though they are in topic—and running through the entire volume. In a neat symmetry, the last chapter of the book—Butterworth’s ‘“Ymage off Seynt Iorge” at St Botolph’s’—both echoes and builds on Sponsler’s suggestion that experiment and creative practice can be a useful way of advancing knowledge. Butterworth’s chapter is an account of his liaison with Eric Williamson to draw up plans for ‘a conjectured version’ (p. 14) of the fifteenth-century semiautomaton St George and the Dragon. The diagrams accompanying the text are particularly helpful for visualizing and understanding how the model may have worked. Hopefully Butterworth and Williamson will one day have the opportunity to take this research to the logical next step, and produce a working replica of the automaton. This book will be of most interest, relevance and value to those working closely and in detail with late medieval performance, but is also clear and engaging enough to be accessible to advanced undergraduates or those with a more general interest. It is highly recommended. eleanor blooMfield, The University of Auckland

Music at Midnight: The Life and Poetry of George Herbert by John Drury (review)

Karen Sullivan shifts the focus to vernacular literature with Robert de Boron’s Merlin. Rejecting a rationalist denunciation of Merlin as diabolically inspired, Boron draws on a contemplative perspective that employs the prophet’s mysterious nature to valorise intellectual humility and faith. Helen Swift continues this perspective in her chapter on love poetry. The lover’s desire renders him peculiarly incapable of discerning the truth but this inability is itself willed for: the continuance of uncertainty is the precondition for the continuance of desire. Jean de Meun, Chaucer, and Lydgate are the subject of Nicolette Zeeman’s contribution. She sees these authors turning the weapons of the scholastic philosophers against them in a systematic problematising of sanctioned epistemological, moral, social, and gender hierarchies. Next, Mishtooni Bose focuses on the role of opinion in the vernacular philosophical and moral works of Christine de Pizan and Bishop Reginald Pecock. Notwithstanding the Introduction’s disclaimer, Kantik Ghosh addresses heresy and the policing of intellectual debate in the trials of Richard Fleming, Jerome of Prague, and Jan Hus, all of whom were accused of following Wyclif. Fleming successfully defended himself on the grounds of academic debate, but Hus and Jerome found arguments for academic freedom powerless against the Inquisition and the stake. The volume concludes on a more upbeat note. Hester Goodenough Gelber argues that Holcot and Chaucer accepted an inevitable uncertainty in human knowledge but maintained an optimistic confidence that salvation might yet be achieved through good will. Finally, Sarah Kay examines Richard de Fournival’s Bestiaire d’Amours, a rather charming text which humorously reshapes the medieval moralising bestiary into a rueful meditation on sexual love, simultaneously rejoicing in our shared animal nature while gesturing to our difference. Uncertain Knowledge sheds new light on the complexity of medieval philosophical engagement, both within the academy and without, and succeeds admirably in combating the cliché of the Middle Ages as an Age of Faith. It should be of great interest to scholars of medieval literature, philosophy, and the history of ideas. lola SHaron davidSon, The University of Technology Sydney

'Twelfth Night': A Critical Reader ed. by Alison Findlay and Liz Oakley-Brown (review)

This is a study I have long anticipated which offers the reader a significant reappraisal of early Australian literature. For instance, in reading the landscape poetry of Christopher Brennan, I was excited to discover what I thought were clear resonances with the Middle English poem Gawain and the Green Knight. D’Arcens’s work supplies a meticulously researched study that justifies my own long-held belief in the medievalist strands woven into the literature of the Australian nation and provides future researchers with an invaluable tool to further their own studies into this fascinating topic.

Interpreting Francis and Clare of Assisi: From the middle ages to the present [Book Review]

Review(s) of: Interpreting Francis and Clare of Assisi: From the middle ages to the present, by Mews, Constant J. and Claire Renkin, eds, Melbourne, Broughton Publishing, 2010, paperback, pp. xvi, 416, 39 colour illustrations, R.R.P. AU

Constructing Sonnet Sequences in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance: A Study of Six Poets by Danijela Kambasković-Sawers (review)

89.95, ISBN 9780980663464.

'What Would Civilisation Be without a Gun?' The Resistant Land in Sarah Campion's Burdekin Trilogy

Review(s) of: Constructing sonnet sequences in the late middle ages and renaissance: A study of six poets, by Kambaskovic-Sawers, Danijela, Lewiston, NY, Edwin Mellen Press, 2010, hardback, pp. xxvi, 392, 2 colour plates, R.R.P. US

Signifying God: Social Relations and Symbolic Act in the York Corpus Christi Plays (review)

149.95, 99.95 pounds, ISBN 9780773437661.

Paradox upon Paradox: Using and Abusing Language in The Cloud of Unknowing and Related Texts

An in-depth analysis of one of Sarah Campions most accomplished works in the Burdekin trilogy, consisting of Mo Burdekin, Bonanza and The Pommy Cow, is provided. This passage encapsulates the trilogys frequent view of the land as resisting a European civilisation corrupted by violence and greed, and futile in its striving.

Romantic Pioneering in the Tropics: Archibald Meston’s Home Life in Cairns, 1882-1888

Parergon 20.1 (2003) is rather that such statements insufficiently acknowledge the procedure of remaking that has occurred. As a result, the reader senses a mismatch between the refined theoretical tools and the limits of Malory’s orientation to his task of writing. The difficulty is enhanced in the present instance by a focus on books and texts, so that less space remains for grounding the Morte in the physical and cultural realities of its period. I hope it is clear that these reservations concern presentation rather than substance, and that they scarcely detract from the immense gift of insight and knowledge which Batt’s book offers to its readers. Cheryl Taylor School of Humanities James Cook University