Medieval Academy of America

Review
Author(s): Caroline Jewers
Review by: Caroline Jewers
Source: Speculum, Vol. 81, No. 2 (Apr., 2006), pp. 581-583
Published by: Medieval Academy of America
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20463788
Accessed: 21-05-2015 07:14 UTC

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Reviews

581

areas over the fifteenthcentury,and thenumber of dual-purpose houses increased. In resi

dential structures the elaborately decorated entrance into the palacio lost its importance,
as the exterior frontdoor gained significance as an indicator of status. The culs-de-sac of
the Islamic citydisappeared as theywere overtaken by private houses. In some small houses,
theportales became kitchens or dining rooms,whereas the townhouses at timeswere con
structedwith a large, enclosed kitchen. The number of interiorportales increased, and
more upper floors and interiorbalconies for circulation were built, reducing the area of
courtyard. Passini's analysis focuses on themetamorphosis of house plans but never ex

References
toanthropological
con
plainswhy theadaptations
noted
mighthaveoccurred.
Mus
of fifteenth-century
Toledoanddifferences
between
cerns,suchas thedemographics

lim and Christian lifestyles,or to historical events and theireconomic implicationswould

elucidate the functions and transformationsof these spaces. However, these issues are be
yond the scope of the author's stated intentand must be leftfor futurescholars. In terms
of urban space, the author has located previously unidentified sites in theMuslim neigh
borhood, such as public baths, the slaughterhouse, and the fishmarket, which were over
taken for the construction of the cathedral.
The catalogue, alone, stands as a major contribution to the study of medieval urban
space inwestern Europe. The firstpart of this exceptionally well documented survey is
dedicated to domestic structuresfound in ten commercial locations and the second part to
eleven solely residential neighborhoods. Each section presents plans and photographs of
the zone, locating the footprintof each house or shop studied, including additional struc
turesnot found in theBook ofMeasures. Observations are noted in a description of the
overall area and of groups of housing, accompanied by transcribeddocumentation, pho
tographs, and plans of thepresent-day structure,plans reconstructing,as closely as possi
formof the house or group, and interpretiveremarks.
ble, the fifteenth-century
Passini is to be congratulated for bringing each entry in the catalogue to an equivalent
levelof completeness, amajor undertaking forone individualworking ina fieldof imprecise
and variable physical evidence. The author's skills as an architect are made evident in the
rigorous and meticulous analysis of each building and in the plans and occasional axono
metric drawings he created,which are graphically clear and presented in a pleasing palate.
The scale of the catalogue is extensive and the informationprovided detailed; thereforethe
readermust depend upon Passini's analysis in the firstpart of the book for a synthetic
understanding of the preservedmaterial.
In conclusion, Passini has succeeded admirably in reconstructinga good portion of the
fifteenth-century
city, towhich futurescholars ofmedieval architecture and urbanism will
be indebted.His classification of house types and theirarrangement of spaces reveals an
enticing glimpse into the daily lifeof the inhabitants ofmedieval Toledo yet leaves room
foradditional critical inquiry.
SHELLEY E. ROFF, University of Texas, San Antonio

LISA PERFETTI,Women and Laughter inMedieval Comic Literature. Ann Arbor, Mich.:
University ofMichigan Press, 2003. Pp. xiii, 286; 2 black-and-white figures.$57.50.
In her energetically argued comparative studyLisa Perfettichronicles the antics of selected
courtly ladies, ladettes, and desperate housewives to create a herstory ofwhat their sub
versive laughterand bawdy wit might have meant forcontemporary readers/spectatorsand
what we can usefullyconstrue from it.Beginning with Chaucer's Wife of Bath, she devotes
a second chapter to Boccaccio's Decameron, another toDunbar's Tretis of theTua Mariit
Wemen and theWedo, a fourth to Ulrich von Lichtenstein's Frauendienst, a fifthto the
figureof theFrench farcewife, concluding with a consideration of theverbal and physical

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582

Reviews

humor of the "Story of thePorter and theThree Ladies" from theArabian Nights. Perfetti's
sampling thus ranges wide in time and place, but she finds commonality not just in the
texts of her ludic florilegiumbut also between medieval and modern times and theway in
which women's laughter is generated, repressed, and received: "[I]t iswomen who have
been told that their refusal to laugh at jokes made at theirexpense shows that theydon't
have a sense of humor at all. So a woman has to assert her rightnot to laugh at offensive
jokes but simultaneously prove that she is capable of laughter or risk being seen as a
spoilsport: a balancing act requiring a quick wit" (p. viii). Perfetti shows thatwhen, how,
why, and what to laugh atwas a consistent subject ofmedical treatises,theologicalwritings,
and conduct literature (all naturally conservative and concerned with restraint)-and il
lustrateshow their social prescriptions and proscriptions are worked through in imagina
tive literature (more liberated and invested in social experiment). Laughter is a social con
tract,a bodily function,a transaction, a transgression,a sign of carnivalesque disorder and
misrule, a form of resistance: it can be rebellious, subversive, cathartic, or corrective; it
"contests and enforces social and cultural boundaries" (p. 17); and in itsperformativityit
is always revealing of gender politics. Of her selection ofmaterial, Perfettisays, "Each text
features a female characterwho laughs and makes jokes about men or uses herwit to joust
verbally with men" (p. 3), and it is clearly a case of "woman on top" and the pathetic
fallacies of pathetic phalluses.
But even ifwomen are literallyand metaphorically on top, are theynot still screwed?
The author contends with the fact that the extant body ofwork was largelywritten by and
formen. Can we, then, findauthentic voices ormatter that tellsus something "real" about
women's laughterand itsuses? Perfetti'spragmatic answer is that, fautede mieux, we may
as well speculate: her approach is to regard each author as colluding with the female
characters he creates and then to allow thecharacters fullautonomy increating a discursive
space within the text,permitting us in turn to conjecture with metaphorical promiscuity
what the implied audience responsemight be, since "[m]edieval texts create gendered po
sitions for theirreaders; to argue forgender as an important factor in reader interpretation
isnot to impose a contemporary concept on a medieval context" (p. 24). In privileging the
feminine,Perfetti takes account of themasculine perspective and underscores that "medi
eval comic literature,often labeledmisogynous, could in factofferpleasures to bothwomen
and men" (p. 27), since "[t]he laughter of medieval heroines ismost striking in its un
masking of the fundamental structureunderlyingmedieval concepts of gender difference:
the binary pairs ofmale/reason/head versus female/body/passion" (p. 21).
Perfetti's introduction provides a solid and interestingtheoretical ground for her sub
sequent chapters.While there is nothing revolutionary in her assertion that theWife of
Bath is a true subversivewho toyswith authority and antifeminist tradition as she does
with men, Perfettirehearses the reasonswhy with rekindled energy.Similarly,herBoccaccio
chapter's conclusions that "[h]e allows his women to laugh at sexually explicit tales, but
in having them blush, shows the pressures thatwomen face in order to remain ladies"
(p. 97) and that "the greatest insightwe gain from studying thiswork is to see thatwomen
could actively participate in the humor of medieval texts because theirwit was the tool
that allowed them to engage in the game" (p. 98) seem self-evident,but the journey on
which she accompanies his travelers reveals some fresh twists and turns.Most enjoyable,
perhaps, are the roads less traveled in her analysis: those unfamiliar with the absolutely
fabulous "experienced matriarchs" behaving badly (p. 124) inDunbar's poetry will be
happy tomake or renew the acquaintance. Perfettiargues, "Dunbar's poem . .. allows us
a glimpse into a feminine space of laughter,or counterculture, that offeredwomen a kind
of shelter apart from thedominant culture of antifeminism" (p. 125). Misogynist authors
and their feistycreations are allowed their cake and to eat it, too. Frauendienst, Perfetti
says, is a playfulmise-en-question of theconcept of service to a lady,a literaryparody, and

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Reviews

583

a gender circus so multilayered that "the audience can no longer be surewhom they are
laughing at, and whom theyare laughingwith" (p. 167). Her meditation on the triumphant
farcewives of Le Chaudronnier and thePorte Bode's, texts that legitimate "female unru
liness" (p. 202), leads her to conclude that "women with theirown wit and sense of humor
may have turned the dramatic performance into a comic performance of theirown, telling
jokes to each other at thewell, at the public oven, or on theway to the tavern" (p. 202).
Her amusing and insightfulanalysis of theThousand and One Nights storyof the bawdy

Baghdadsisters
continuesin theveinof highlighting
the"disruptive
socialpotential
of

women's laughter" (p. 241) and reminds us thatmedieval Arabic literatureshould be an

integralpart of themedievalist canon.

Perfetti's
critical
approachisinformed
bycommonsenseand feminist
criticism,
carefully
of herchosenworksand subject
eschewing
themore traditional/masculinist
treatments

(PhilippeMenard's Le rire et le souriremerits a lone footnote [p. 8], for example). In the
finalanalysis,what she extrapolates is speculative and necessarily selective and of a general,
universal nature-after all, her works cover several centuries and six cultures. But her
textual analysis is surefooted and engaging, and this fresh look at women's laughter is a
useful contribution to feministand gender studies of theMiddle Ages.

CAROLINE
ofKansas
JEWERS,
University
HERMAN PLEIJ,Colors Demonic and Divine: Shades ofMeaning in theMiddle Ages and
After.Trans. Diane Webb. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. Pp. xi, 124 plus

20 colorfigures.
$29.50.Firstpublishedin2002 underthetitle
Van karmijn,
purperen
blauw: Over kleuren van deMiddeleeuwen

en daarna, by Prometheus.

This is both a fascinating and an infuriatingbook. It is packed with interestingdetail and

information,yet its universalizing stance on theMiddle Ages causes it to lose form and

shape.

It is a slim book of seven chapters. The central theme isperhaps whether and how colors
were perceived as instrumentsof thedevil or ornaments ofGod. The opening chapter offers
a brief discussion ofmany themes, includingmedieval notions of color, theways inwhich
colors are and were described, links between color and light, and the fluidityof color
symbolism.The book thenconsiders color in everyday life,how colors could denote social
status and emotions, especially through clothing, and how, gradually, bright colors were,
in aristocratic circles, replaced by dark colors. The thirdchapter deals with the relationship
between colors and enjoyment, touching on aesthetics and definitions of beauty, and the
fourthbuilds on this through a discussion about colors, adornment, and beautifulwomen.
This is all the positive side of color. Pleij then shiftshis focus to the negative, considering
the devil's pernicious palette, that is to say, the earthly nature of color when set against
purewhite (ifGod had meant man towear colors, hewould have created sheep in a variety
of hues, p. 68) and the evils of a multiplicity of hues, formulticoloredness indicated insta
bility.Building on this,Pleij looks at thedangers of yellow, red,green, and blue inparticular
and closes with a discussion about the progress of decoloration, the shiftfrom a colored
world to one of blacks and whites, led by the church. All of this is accomplished inninety
eight pages.
Pleij is very aware of the ambiguity of colors; as he says, every color is ambiguous, but
some colors aremore ambiguous than others.He conveys a very clear sense of thischang
ing,unstable world. But it is a universalizing world. To take the opening chapter on me
dieval notions of color,within threepages the reader ismoved fromIsaac Newton, Thomas
Aquinas, and Aristotle toVincent of Beauvais, Bernard of Clairvaux, Middle Dutch lin
guistics, and Isidore of Seville-in that order. This bewildering and rapid progression is

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