... for the favorable review of their edited volume Authority and Subjugation in Writing of Medieval Wales in the January Speculum. I was fortunate to read the volume in MS and blurb it, though my endorsement was overshadowed by a certain Archbishop of Canterbury who elbowed his way onto the back cover.
I especially like that the reviewer, Morgan Thomas Davies, got that Simon Meecham-Jones's essay is a kind of jeremiad that, if taken seriously (and it should be taken very seriously indeed) will fundamentally alter the critical practice of "all scholars of medieval English literature." Contemporary scholarship has a way of re-enacting a partitioning of the island that silently replicates the cultural politics of the period instead of challenging that unnatural boundary.
An excellent review. Too bad about the price of the book, though--it undercuts the reviewer's point about the need for this book to have a wider audience.
ReplyDeleteCompare A V C Schmidt's new commentary on Piers Plowman --almost 1000 pages (big pages, with small type, lifetime's worth of scholarship) for ... $100. How does Palgrave get away with it?
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