Book Reviews Book Reviews, Selim 22 (2017): 129–141. ISSN 1132-631X J. R. R. Tolkien. 2016. A Secret Vice: Tolkien on Invented Languages. London: Harper Collins Publishers. Ed. by Dimitra Fimi & Andrew Higgins. ISBN 9780008131395. Reviewed by ADRIANA TABOADA, University of Vigo It is not surprising to see how during the last few years an increasing interest in J.R.R. Tolkien’s works from outside the Middle-earth has led to a considerable number of reviews and re-editions of his no longer hidden gems. Although Christopher Tolkien has always played an excellent role in compiling his father’s more and less known writings (proof of this is the recent recognition he received from the Bodleian Library, the Bodley Medal) 1 authors like Verlyn Flieger or Dimitra Fimi are making a – successful – effort to put these texts back in the spotlight and add other less known works to the list. Dimitra Fimi and Andrew Higgins’s A Secret Vice: Tolkien on Invented Languages (2016) is part of this new wave that begun with Christopher Tolkien’s edition of The Fall of Arthur in 2013 and has recently welcome Flieger’s edition of The Lay of Aotrou & Itroun (2016). “A Secret Vice” had already been edited and published in 1983 by Christopher Tolkien as part of the essay collection The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays; however, Fimi and Higgin’s recent “extended edition” (p. vii) offers a more extensive approach to it, being it the focal point of their work. This new edition of the original text “with minimal editorial intrusion” (p. viii) allows the editors to keep the manuscript’s shape as far as possible so the reader can get a better sense of the way in which Tolkien wrote, proofread, and corrected his works; something less evident in its former edition. Moreover, the inclusion of a section dedicated to “The Manuscripts” plays without any doubt a crucial part in this matter. The format of this edition is, however, far to be new: Verlyn Fliegger had already published Tolkien on Fairy Stories (2008) using this helpful structure to complete the original essay “On Fairy Stories” that had also been part of Christopher Tolkien’s collection. In contrast to the title of the text, Tolkien’s interest and enjoyment in inventing languages is no longer a secret, although it had remained a hidden hobby for most people until this same paper was delivered at the Johnson 1 More information on the reward can be found at the Bodleian website: http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/news/2016/nov-03 130 Book reviews Society, Pembroke College, Oxford. The later publications of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings were the final evidence of what he used to call his “vice”. In fact, the publication of both the original text and the novels has led to a great variety of studies of the author’s invented languages, as Arden R. Smith does in his article “Invented Languages and Writing Systems” (2014). In “A Secret Vice” Tolkien publicly recognizes the “practice of this art” (p. 11) and makes a rather exhaustive analysis of its different aspects through some autobiographical examples. One of the most important ones is that “the making of language and mythology are related functions” (p. 24) – idea that would later be revisited in “On Fairy-Stories” when the author explains that “to ask what is the origin of stories (however qualified) is to ask what is the origin of language and of the mind” (Tree and Leaf, p. 17). However, the best example of the cruciality of this aspect for the author is his own creation of the Elvish tongues and their mythology portrayed all along his works on the Middle-earth, that, as he explains in one of his letters to the Houghton Mifflin Company, “were made rather to provide a world for the language than the reverse” (Letters, p. 219). In another letter to one Mr Thompson (an unidentified reader), Tolkien goes even further by stating that “Volapük, Esperanto, Ido, Novial &c &c are dead […] because their authors never invented any Esperanto legends” (Letters, p. 231). On the other hand, another fundamental characteristic of language invention is that these creations must sound “aesthetically pleasing” (p. xv); for him “in these invented languages the pleasure is more keen than it can be even in learning a new language” (p. 16). Editors Dimitra Fimi and Andrew Higgins have made an outstanding work in portraying the ideas of one of the best-known authors of the 20 th century. Their publication includes some extra elements such as a third part (the first one being the essay that gives name to the publication and the second one the “Essay on Phonetic Symbolism”) entitled “The Manuscripts” that includes notes from the author related to both essays, and a coda entitled “The Reception and Legacy of Tolkien’s Invented Languages”. These are very helpful sections that provide a better background for those less familiar readers with Tolkien’s academic works. Their extensive introduction to the essays is another great source of information. The authors make a thorough analysis not only on the subject matter of the texts but also on their immediate and larger contexts, giving more importance, however, to “A Secret Vice” than to the other two works. This is nevertheless understandable, for once the reader goes through the “Essay on Phonetic Symbolism”, even if it remains clear that it is an Book reviews 131 independent work, it seems to successfully compliment the former essay and tackle all those questions that were “related to, but not central in, his paper” (p. 63). Throughout this introduction, the authors make a rather compelling reflection on the impact of language invention in Tolkien’s work and life. Both academics and fans of the Middle-earth work will find especially engaging Fimi and Higgins’s comment on how Tolkien developed “his theoretical ideas on imaginary languages” (p. xxviii) by creating Quenya and Noldorin, which includes a short review of the evolution of both languages. The following sections of the book are devoted to the transcription of three of Tolkien’s manuscripts, each of them keeping the original annotations and changes made by the author. In contrast to the first edition of “A Secret Vice”, the new editors of these works have added a larger number of footnotes which cover a wide range of knowledge, running from comments on some basic general information (footnote 3 of “A Secret Vice” explains what Esperanto is, p. 36) to footnotes dealing with specific information about the author’s biography and his invented languages, although these seem to take a backseat when compared to the former. In this way, both the structure and comments on the texts make them more accessible to readers from different backgrounds and help in the task of making Tolkien’s academic works open to a wider audience. By this point, all kinds of readers will be fully aware of the influence of Tolkien’s invented languages not only in his own work but also in later creations by different authors. Therefore, it is reasonable to find at the end of the main body of the book the coda that reviews the author’s legacy and the reception of his work. The first part of this section deals with the way in which those languages became increasingly accessible to the readers, who went from “gathering up the information on the languages that could be gleaned from what Tolkien included in The Lord of the Rings” (p. 122) to the publication of linguist analysis and glossaries of the author’s productions. The second part reflects on how the creation of these languages inspired other authors in the construction of their own worlds and languages that eventually led to further research and linguist analysis of these new works from their fans. However, it is very difficult not to see this new generation as a mere shadow of Tolkien’s masterpiece. As it is common in this type of publication, the Appendix occupies the end of the volume. In this case, apart from the usual list of abbreviations, the reader will come across a quite useful chronology that sets the time of creation of these manuscripts. Again, this information might be of especial relevance to 132 Book reviews those new readers on the subject, although it will also stand as a good reminder of the specific context for the specialized audience. Readers of A Secret Vice will find in this volume a valuable tool to approach Tolkien’s ideas on invented languages as well as a hint of the author’s working method. Nevertheless, it should not be forgotten that this volume is a reedition of an already published essay; therefore specialized audiences will find it hard to come across any completely new information on the subject matter. That being said, the three manuscripts and added sections complement each other in a more than satisfactory way. Without any doubt, Fimi and Higgins’s volume will certainly be considered as a “must have” for any Tolkien admirers, however specialized they are. References Smith, Arden R. 2014. Invented Languages and Writing Systems. In Stuart Lee ed. A Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien. Oxford, Wiley Blackwell. Tolkien, J. R. R. 1983. A Secret Vice [Christopher Tolkien ed. 2006: The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays]. London, Harper Collins Publishers. Tolkien, J. R. R. 1981. The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien [Humphrey Carpenter & Christopher Tolkien eds. 2006]. London, Harper Collins Publishers. Tolkien, J. R. R. 2001 [1964]. Tree and Leaf. London, Harper Collins Publishers. Tolkien, J. R. R. Tolkien on Fairy Stories [Verlyn Flieger & Douglas A. Anderson eds. 2008]. London, Harper Collins Publishers. Reviewer’s address Department of English, French and German University of Vigo Lagoas-Marcosende Campus Praza das Cantigas s/n E-36310 Vigo (Spain) e-mail: adritg@gmail.com Book reviews 133 Richard Barber. 2017: The Prince in Splendour. Court Festivals of Medieval Europe. London: The Folio Society. xix + 258 pp. Slipcased hardback. No ISBN stated. 48 €. Reviewed by JORGE L. BUENO ALONSO, University of Vigo Since its foundation in 1947 as a society to publish “carefully crafted editions of the world’s finest literature” in “a form worthy of their contents”,2 The Folio Society has always been a frequent publisher of medieval-related books, both covering the English and the continental Middle Ages. The variety of materials presented so far has ranged from reprints of classical Anglo-Saxon – Beowulf (Heaney 2009), Bede (Sherley-Price 2010)– and medieval literary authors and texts –Sir Gawain (Armitage 2008), Chaucer (Coghill 1956), Langland (Robertson & Shepherd 2014), Julian of Norwich (Windeatt 2017), Geoffrey of Monmouth (Thorpe 2010), Margery Kempe (Windeatt 2004), William of Malmesbury (Mynors 2014), Boethius (Watts 2001)– to studies on history (Barber 2009, Clanchy 2001, Hunter-Blair 2001, Hicks & Lemagnen 2016, Weir 2015), culture (Frugoni 2007, Henderson 2004, Mortimer 2013) and literature (Brewer 2012), not forgetting limited collectors’ editions –such as Eric Gill’s Canterbury Tales or the facsimilar reproduction of the Pearl Manuscript– and thematic anthologies3, which have always been placed among their bestselling books. Although the publication of reprints prevails, in most of the cases the new volumes offer emendations, new prologues by relevant scholars and writers and in many cases illustrations and other artwork, like calligraphy, done by British artists;4 there are also instances in which the final 2 Promotional statement at the society’s webpage: http://www.foliosociety.com/pages/aboutus-welcome 3 Thematic anthologies are collections of texts with a clear thematic organization. In many cases they tend to include texts that have been previously published individually but never integrating similar volumes. For instance, Richard Barber’s Chronicles of the Dark Ages was a three-volume anthology of texts connected with Anglo-Saxon Literature and Culture that included extracts and complete texts from more than 50 different sources. His British Myths and Legends also presented a similar array of contents but with a wider medieval perspective. 4 It has to be stated, though, that every published volume makes reference to its editorial story, scrupulously indicated in a detailed note usually placed at the beginning of the book. Just to offer an example, Bloch’s 2012 Folio Society edition stated the 134 Book reviews volume offers a new book different from the original source(s).5 As far as literary and cultural studies the editorial policy of the society combines the reprinting of classic essays, hard to find or out of stock,6 with newly commissioned volumes (Mathews 2008). Our reviewed book falls into the latter category. Richard Barber, a most reputed medieval historian who has served as editor and compiler for some of the most acclaimed medieval anthologies published by the society (Barber 2005a, b, c, d; 2008a, b, c), offers a new transversal and quite necessary study that “examines the elaborate pomp and ceremony of the medieval court festival, revealing as he does so its wider cultural and political importance”.7 It is transversal in its approach, as it covers history, literature, and culture by using a wide array of sources and materials to develop the analysis; it is quite necessary, especially in our post-Brexit Europe, as it presents a pan-European perspective, covering medieval Europe as whole, signalling differences but also the very many similarities held by medieval rulers Europewide.8 As Barber himself states in the prefatory pages: “The court following: “La Société féodale was first published by Albin Michel, in two volumes, in 1939 and 1940. The English translation by L. A. Manyon was first published by Routledge & Kegan Paul in 1961. The text of this edition follows that of the second (1962) edition of the translation, with minor emendations, and contains the Supplement to the Bibliography (1962 to 1989) by T. S. Brown included in the 1989 reprint”. Thus, readers are always aware of the text held in their hands. 5 A recent example of this is Hicks & Lemagnen (2016). The editorial note reads: “The Bayeaux Tapestry: The Life Story of a Masterpiece was first published in Great Britain by Chatto & Windus. This edition follows the text of the 2007 Vintage edition with minor emendations. The ‘Scene-by-Scene Commentary’ was first published in France in 2015 by OREP Editions under the title The Bayeaux Tapestry: A Step-by-Step Discovery. This edition follows the English text of the first edition, with minor emendations”. So, this volume constitutes a new creation that goes beyond the sum of its parts. 6 Just to mention the most relevant ones, the studies by Power were originally published in 1924 and 1975, Bloch’s Feudal Society dates from 1939–1940 in French and 1961 and 1989 in English, and Le Goff’s Medieval Civilization goes back originally to 1964 and in translation to 1988 and 1990. 7 Marketing description at the book’s webpage at http://www.foliosociety.com/book/CFM/the-prince-in-splendour 8 This ‘pan-Europeanism’ is as tricky as the term Middle Ages itself. Historians like Miri Rubin (2014: 1–2) reminds us that, although the Middle Ages are “a European Book reviews 135 culture of the period, and even the fashion, is truly pan-European, and I make no apology for taking the reader from Portugal to Saxony or from London to Palermo in the space of a few lines (xix)”. After this brief preface (p. xvii–xix) that explains concisely the aim of the volume, the study opens symphony-like with a “Prelude: The Festival at Mainz” (3–10), in which Barber elaborates the main thesis of his book by using as an example the events that took place in 1184 at the imperial council summoned by Frederick Barbarossa, held at Mainz to celebrate Whitsun. This feast was “an example of the kind of festival which was to be typical of European courts for the next three centuries” (6), and through it Barber sets the tone for the volume, which pretends to be a story about the feasts, the tournaments, the royal entries these celebrations were made of, their political agendas, their symbols and signification, and with this to build “a story which ranges geographically across the whole Europe and historically across the five centuries that we now call medieval (10)”. The rest of the study is quite aptly organized in eight chapters and an epilogue. Chapter 1, “The Medieval Court and Court Culture” (11–30) offers the background to the splendour mentioned in the title by providing a description of the different courts (that of Charlemagne, the courts of Provence, the court of Henry II and the kingdom of Sicily) and the figures and ideas that made the court the centre of the medieval world, i.e. the Troubadours, Chrétien de Troyes, the courtiers and their ways at the court. After this, the volume turns to look “at the occasions for which these feasts were held and their function as part of religious, dynastic or political agendas (30)”; hence, Chapter 2, “Feast Days and Festivals” (31–72) defines the concept of feast in the Middle Ages and describes the moments in which they took place: weddings, coronations, concept” that defines “a long period of European history, ranging from around 500 to around 1500”, we cannot forget that “even the word Europe is far from fixed”. Barber uses ‘Medieval Europe’ as Rubin (2014: 2) defines: “I shall use it to describe the westernmost part of a vast continental mass, an area in which a shared Christian culture came to prevail among an ever growing group of polities and their people, and whose genealogy is linked to the later Roman Empire. Its kingdoms and peoples formed an interlocking commonwealth based on an integrated economy, a universal framework for religious life, with an intellectual elite that communicated in Latin, and a secular elite bound by marriage, diplomacy, war and lifestyle”. 136 Book reviews crown-wearings, knighting, churching9 and some popular festivals celebrated at court, i.e. Maying (springtime folk rituals connected with this month) and New Year. Abundant cross-European examples are given of every category, so Barber builds a well-documented description of why feasts took place with a very vivid style. The next two chapters refer to two important actions around which feasts were organized: tournaments and the entry of rulers into cities. Chapter 3, “Tournaments” (73–95) is a short essay on the evolution of tournaments and jousting in medieval Europe all through the period and their political implications, with precise and numerous examples, too many to mention here, that paved the way to Chapter 4, “The Court and the City” (96–120), an accurate description of “the entry of a ruler into a city [as a] moment of political tension, when the superiority of a king or emperor had to be acknowledged and at the same time the freedom of the city –limited though it was– had to be recognised” (96). To exemplify such tensions the chapter revises royal entries into London and Paris to offer examples of the behaviour of kings and courts of these ‘two mighty monarchies’ of the period. Otto IV, King John, Edward II, Edward Prince of Wales, Richard II, Henry V returning from Agincourt or Charles VI are just some of the rulers whose entrances Barber revises in this detailed analysis. If these feasts were mainly a display of power, how you attended these festivals and who provided the best entertainment to enhance such power are two capital spheres for analysis in a volume like this. The next two chapters provide the reader with such deep revisions. Chapter 5, “Dress and Display” (121–141) fully tackles with clothing as a mark of status and how it evolved through the period. Numerous examples of this evolution, with reference to contemporary sources and authors (such as Orderic Vitalis, the Brut, John of Reading, Jean de Venette, Giovanni Villani Florence or Christine de Pisan) are offered, together with a description of materials, ornaments, embroidery and colours, as elements of great symbolic meaning when it came to signal splendour. How you were dressed leads to who were you and what you did in festivals, so Chapter 6, “Poets, Musicians, Games and Entertainments” (142– 163) deals with those attending and providing high-quality amusement. So 9 Barber defines this as “the ritual which was both a thanksgiving for the queen’s recovery from childbirth and an acknowledgment of the ancient taboo on women who had just given birth attending church” (65). Ceremonies like this were held forty days after the birth of a new baby to the royal couples all over the European courts. Book reviews 137 both the people (minstrels, musicians, acrobats, painters, bufoons and tregetours10) and the activities (games, masking, disguises and dancing) are fully revised again with abundant examples and sources both historical and literary, as many of these situations were described by chroniclers and poets alike. Barber displays similar level of accuracy and detail in the last two chapters of the volume, which covered food and logistics, aspects without which you cannot celebrate a festivity in any period. Using the entry ‘On feasts’ from Bartholomew the Englishman’s Encyclopedia (c. 1235), Chapter 7, “Feasts and Feasting” (164–187), deals with food consumption in the context of medieval festivities and in the widest of senses, as the chapter covers medieval cookery at large: food, recipes, dishes, consumption, table serving and arrangements, ingredients, etc. Literary and historical sources are also used, paying Barber special attention to medieval recipe collections in general and to Master Chiquart’s book of recipes in particular.11 The chapter offers in its final pages a wonderful and succinct account of the evolution of ‘Entremets’; originally conceived as dishes or delicacies served at the end of a section of the feast, they evolve into food put on the table in specific custom-built serving devices, to end up being just a form of entertainment that separated sections of the meal in which the wrapping subtleties were as important as the food itself; this then allows for the introduction of mechanical marvels, dumb shows and more elaborated artistic and dramatic presentations. Chapter 8, “Organising the Festivals” (188–215), closes the volume analysing the massive degree of organization and financial resources these festivals implied in logistic terms. The analysis is aptly divided into self- explanatory subsections devoted to preliminary arrangements (‘Devising the Festival’), administrative preparations (‘The Officers of the Household’), general logistics (‘Buying and Making Clothes for Festivals’, ‘Food for the Feast’) and procedure (‘The Reception of Guests’, ‘The Serving of the Meal’, ‘Kings of Minstrels and Heralds; Organising the Music and Entertainments’, ‘A Tournament Manual’, ‘Housing the Festival’). It is one of the most complete and detailed chapters of the volume and acts as a vey convenient 10 Barber uses the standard concept of tregetour as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary: “A conjuror, a juggler, a magician”. 11 A complete subsection is devoted to Chiquart’s book written in 1420 at Amadeus VIII of Savoy’s request. 138 Book reviews conclusion; all chapters in the book lead to this final one in which the ‘actual’ feast is explained and analyzed from every possible angle. If Barber began his account using the Festival at Mainz from 1184, he closes it with an Epilogue12 (217–223) describing the feast held by one of the Dukes of Burgundy in 1454, the “most magnificent and eccentric festival of the medieval period” (217). This serves Barber as the proper way to summarize all the points made in his book on the importance these festivities had from cultural and political points of view. In a superb paragraph with modern resonances for our very own crisis-driven Europe in search again of a lost common ground (or market, or union, as you like it; and if there is such a thing) Barber (222–223) states that Just as the spectacular closing ceremonies of the Olympic Games today proclaim the power and ambitions of modern nations, so the medieval court festivals proclaimed the power and ambition of the medieval ruler. The cultural world of late medieval Europe was relatively coherent, with its basis in Christianity and the inheritance of Rome, and this to some extant accounts for the strong similarities between feasts and festivals from Portugal to Poland. The underlying rituals of the feast in particular, the serving of the meal, the seating of the guests, and the use of entremets, are almost identical across Europe. The common ground shared by European princes also makes the competition between them all sharper, since a courtier from Warsaw would instantly comprehend the quality of the display offered at a festival in Lisbon. Indeed, in the fifteenth century knights such as Pero Niño, the chevalier Bayard and Jacques de Lalaing travelled widely through Europe and jousted at such occasions, rather as international sportsmen would do today, in a way which strengthened the links between the courts of different rulers. The audience for a festival was therefore international, and its effect reached far beyond the ruler’s own territories. The combination of lavish expenditure and prodigious displays of wealth and artistry in a magnificent setting was all the more dramatic in a medieval context, where only a handful of courtiers and city-dwellers could ever experience such an occasion and where the contrast with the drab everyday world was immediate and unavoidable. And within the court itself the festivals reinforced both its social hierarchies and the sense of belonging to that court: an essential reminder of the ordered society in which the ruler was the key figure to which the medieval world aspire. 12 The volume contains some materials at the end (223–258): a chronology of rulers and events from 800 to 1471, the notes to every chapter with the sources of quotations, a further reading section and an index. Book reviews 139 Whether you are interested in history, literature or material culture, this book will serve you well. Richard Barber’s monumental pan-European book demanded a cross-disciplinary approach that exemplifies excellently well how in medieval studies any serious analysis requires elements from the different fields that build the discipline: language, literature, history, philology and culture are needed to develop premises and results as nicely built as those presented in this volume. In our academic world volumes like this one, which shows intellectual expertise with readable and fluent writing, are not only most necessary to understand our discipline, they are mandatory if we want it to survive in the entangled and perilous forest of our post-Bologna European Higher-Education Area. References 2010: Facsimilar edition of The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer with Wood Engravings by Eric Gill, printed and published at The Golden Cockerell Press at Waltham Saint Lawrence in Berkshire, MCMXXIX. 2016: Facsimilar edition of The Pearl Manuscript. British Library MS Cotton Nero A.x [with a complementary volume by Malcolm Andrew and Ronald Waldron with the parallel text and notes]. Armitage, Simon. trans. 2008: Sir Gawain and the Knight. London, The Folio Society [with illustrations by Diam Sudyka]. Barber, Peter. 2009: King Henry’s Map of the British Isles, BL Cotton MS Augustus I i 9. Commentary. London, The Folio Society. Barber, Richard. ed. 2005a: Epics of the Middle Ages. London, The Folio Society. Barber, Richard. ed. 2005b. British Myths and Legends: Marvels and Magic. London, The Folio Society [with illustrations by John Vernon Lord]. Barber, Richard. ed. 2005c. British Myths and Legends: Heroes and Saints. London, The Folio Society [with illustrations by John Vernon Lord]. Barber, Richard. ed. 2005d. British Myths and Legends: History and Romance. London, The Folio Society [with illustrations by John Vernon Lord]. Barber, Richard. ed. 2008a: Chronicles of the Dark Ages: The Coming of the Anglo- Saxons. London, The Folio Society. Barber, Richard. ed. 2008b: Chronicles of the Dark Ages: Anglo-Saxon Lore and Learning. London, The Folio Society. Barber, Richard. ed. 2008c: Chronicles of the Dark Ages: The Fall of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms. London, The Folio Society. 140 Book reviews Bloch, Marc. 2012: Feudal Society. London, The Folio Society [translated from the French by L. A. Manyon, with a preface by Jacques Le Goff]. Brewer, Derek. 2012: Medieval Comic Tales. London, The Folio Society [preface by Peter Ackroyd with illustrations by Becca Thorne]. Clanchy, M. T. 2001: Early Medieval England. London, The Folio Society. Coghill, Neville. trans. 1956: Geoffrey Chaucer. The Canterbury Tales. London, The Folio Society [in two volumes, with woodcuts by Edna White]. Frugoni, Chiara. 2007: Inventions of the Middle Ages. London, The Folio Society [translated by William McCuaig with a foreword by Adam Hart-Davis]. Heaney, Seamus. trans. 2010: Beowulf. London, The Folio Society [with illustrations by Becca Thorne]. Henderson, George. 2004: Early Medieval Art and Civilization. London, The Folio Society. Hicks, Carola & Sylvette Lemagnen. 2016: The Bayeux Tapestry. London, The Folio Society. Hunter-Blair, Peter. 2001: Anglo-Saxon England. London, The Folio Society. Le Goff, Jacques. 2011: Medieval Civilization 400–1500. London, The Folio Society [translated by Julia Barrow with an introduction by Umberto Eco]. Mathews, John and Caitlín. 2008: King Arthur. History & Legend. London, The Folio Society. Mortimer, Ian. 2013: The Time Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England. A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century. London, The Folio Society [with a foreword by Christopher Dyer and illustrations by Robert Venables]. Mynors, R. A. B. ed & trans. 2014: William of Malmesbury. The Deeds of the English Kings. London: The Folio Society [completed by R. M. Thomson and M. Winterbottom, and an introduction by Peter Ackroyd]. Power, Eileen. 2001a: Medieval People. London, The Folio Society [with an introduction by Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie]. Power, Eileen. 2001b: Medieval Women. London, The Folio Society [edited by M. M. Postan, with a foreword by Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie and an introduction by Maxime Berg]. Robertson, Elizabeth & Stephen H. A. Shepherd. eds. 2014: William Langland. The Vision of Piers the Plowman. Middle English Text with the Donaldson Translation. London, The Folio Society [introduced by Bernard O’Donoghue with illistrations by Harry Brockway]. Rubin, Miri. 2014: The Middle Ages. A Very Short Introduction. Oxford, Oxford University Press. Seward, Desmond. 2000: The Monks of War: The Military Orders. London, The Folio Society. Book reviews 141 Sherley-Price, Leo. trans. 2010: Bede. History of the English Church and People. London, The Folio Society [revised by R. E. Latham with and introduction by Melvyn Bragg]. Thorpe, Lewis. trans. 2010: Geoffrey of Monmouth. The History of the Kings of Britain. London, The Folio Society [with a preface by Richard Barber]. Watts, V. E. trans. 2001: Boethius. The Consolation of Philosophy. London, The Folio Society [with a preface by Brian Keenan]. Weir, Alison. 2015: Eleanor of Aquitaine, by the Wrath of God, Queen of England. London, The Folio Society [with an introduction by Richard Barber]. Windeatt, Barry. ed. 2004: The Book of Margery Kempe. A Woman’s Life in the Middle Ages. London, The Folio Society [with a preface by Alice Thomas Ellis and illustrations by Chris Daunt]. Windeatt, Barry. trans. 2017: Julian of Norwich. Revelations of Divine Love. London, The Folio Society [with and introduction by Graham James and calligraphy by Gemma Black]. Reviewer’s address Department of English, French and German University of Vigo Lagoas-Marcosende Campus Praza das Cantigas s/n E-36310 Vigo (Spain) e-mail: jlbueno@uvigo.es