New Chaucer Society Portland Demob

This year’s New Chaucer Society Congress took place in Portland, Oregon, and it was quite an experience. The most challenging aspect, one that pervaded the entire trip, was the crazy awful jet lag. I’d never really suffered like this before, so from now on I shall have a great deal of sympathy for those in the same boat at future NCSs. Local arrangements were carried out under enormous pressure with several relatively last-minute complications; given the circumstances, it all worked out rather well. The city of Portland is beautiful, it feels very relaxed. Everyone cycles around (it’s not quite Cambridge, but you know what I mean), everyone recycles, and the city centre has a free tram network. Portland is also home to the largest secondhand bookshop in the world. Needless to say, this proved very exciting. I made a couple of visits and found some lovely things: two gorgeous little hardbacks in the Nuova Universale Einaudi series, of Petrarch’s Canzoniere (which of course I had in a much later paperback repr) and Pavese’s Poesie, and a new copy of Nestlé-Aland’s Greek New Testament. I hmmm and hawed over T K Swing’s Fragile Leaves of the Sybil but in the end decided against. At the Congress itself there was a very good, but small, bookstand and I picked up copies of Kolve’s Telling Images, Travis’s Disseminating Chaucer, and Hanawalt & Kobialka’s collection Medieval Practices of Space, which I’ve used and found very good.

The congress was excellent. I found myself tending towards the ‘Affect’ thread, though I enjoyed some papers a good deal more than other. Amongst those papers I enjoyed, briefly: in the first panel, there were papers by Anna Wilson on Middle English devotional communities and Fan Fiction; Sara Baechle on affective literacies in manuscripts of Troilus and Criseyde, Brantley Bryant (he of Geoffrey Chaucer hath a Blog fame) talked about accounting in the Reeve’s Tale. A panel on England and France had Chris Cannon say that we are placing too much emphasis on French given how few people were actually speaking it; Madeleine Elson gave a beautifully sensitive paper on the Book of the Duchess and Machault; Kathryn Kerby-Fulton talked about scribal treatments of literary texts, concentrating on Arundel 292, a trilingual anthology. The session was chaired by Ardis Butterfield, who made some remarks about Cannon’s paper, mainly trying to set him straight, and a lively discussion ensued. The next session I attended was my own, with really terrific papers by Kara Gaston and Andrew James Johnston. Gaston talked about volgarizzamenti, and the culture of vernacularization; Johnston talked about humanism, Padua and political (politicized) astrological representations. In a feminism session, there were super papers by Betsy McCormick on the Legend of Good Women and the question of the ‘likability’ of the heroines, Laurie Finke on fraternity, medievalism and the Masons, and Ruth Evans gave a tour de force of a paper on Criseyde, psychoanalysis and Lacan. In the ‘Affect’ thread there was a Round Table on displaying, hiding and faking emotion in Chaucer, with Alcuin Blamires on blushing; Annette Kern-Stähler on Troilus and privacy; Sarah Kelen on emotional ambiguity; David Raybin on Griselda’s swoon and Lawrence Besserman on the Physican’s Tale and Prioress’s Tale. Carolyn Dinshaw gave a wonderfully enjoyable presidential address on multiple temporalities in Mandeville, a Victorian satire of Mandeville and the Chaucer Blogger. A short paper panel on Chaucer and Italy was most stimulating with papers by Teresa Kennedy on the House of Fame; Robert Sturges on vision and touch; Leah Faibisoff on the Parliament of Fowls and Tom Stillinger on Orpheus. Another ‘Affect’ panel had Anthony Bale talk about ‘The Prison of Christ’ and incarceration; Stephanie Trigg on weeping; Holly Crocker on Griselda and disaffection; Christine Neufeld on the Clerk’s Tale; William Youngman on the Reeve and Miller; and Glen Burger on Griselda. Bale was excellent, as well as Crocker, Trigg and Burger. Terribly in control of their material. There was a very good discussion of Griselda along the way. There was another super Chaucer and Italy panel, with Fred Biggs talking about the Shipman’s Tale; Rory Critten on Guiscardo and Ghismonda; and Sarah Massoni with a very excellent paper on Wykked Wives and Misogamy. The final session I went to was on Seeing the Book, with papers on John Lydgate’s ‘Sotelties’ by Heather Blatt, a paper by John Plummer on the reading scenes in Troilus and a paper on the MS Corpus 61 frontispiece by Laura Wang. The quality over all was really high. I must say that the Chaucer and Italy sessions were very stimulating and I got a great deal out of them.

Duccio di Buoninsegna, Transfiguration, 1307/8–1311;
tempera on panel, 44 × 46 cm, National Gallery London 

One paper I have not mentioned, I saw in the first panel on Affect. It was entitled ‘Illuminated’ by Cary Howie and it was utterly remarkable. Remarkable in its fearless sincerity, its visionary, profound search for a new critical vocabulary, its intellectual depth and breadth, its huge heart. I was absolutely bowled over by it. It was a paper about transfiguration, light, illumination, and it was simply glorious. Howie’s paper was an event bigger than the room. Something changed, the wind shifted, time twitched.

I felt as if I was watching a prophet. 

Where I'd like to Work

via here; Luke Hughes & Co. Maple Desk with a Green Leather Inset Top. H: 38" W: 54" D: 35"


I love this desk.

Nick Haus

Nick Heywood blogs here.

I am in thrall to every word he writes, every picture he posts, every object he looks at.

He’s some sort of wise stylish genius. Read and you’ll know what I mean.

(Image from here.)

Just one more book

I’ve just tracked down one of those rooms I said I loved (here): it belongs to Prof. Richard A. Macksey, at Johns Hopkins. The library comprises over 70,000 volumes. That’s rather a lot. Here’s a video, with shots of his beautiful library. I particularly like all the lovely Windsor chairs.

Where I Work(ed)

Since I’ve been posting variously on where other people work, I notice that I have not actually posted anything much here on where I work. I’ve put these photos up on my tumblr page, treated appropriately with Instagram’s nostalgic magic. The nostalgia is due to the fact that I shall soon be moving from my rooms in Cambridge when I take up a lectureship at York in October. I’m very excited by this and cannot wait, but I shall be sad to leave this room too. I’ve worked so well here, both for writing and for teaching. In term time, this little flat was also where I lived, and, despite the fact that it is what estate agents euphemistically refer to as bijoux, I always felt that I had enough space. That said, I am certainly glad that I shall have space to expand the shelves a little.

When I moved in, there was very little room for books, and after a bit of gentle hint-dropping, they came and put more in. So those shelves you see in front of my desk (the one with the computer on it), were added. And the shelves you see behind the black table were also added. The table is good, though I did covet those who had desks designed by Luke Hughes (he did work for a new building here, and has done lots of tables and desks in student rooms and in libraries throughout Oxford and Cambridge, a wonderful designer whose work I like very much). Behind my chair, which you cannot see, is mainly Chaucer. In front, is mainly Dante. They look at each other and remind me, sitting between them, of the book I have not yet written.

The black armchair is the only piece of furniture in this room I actually own (apart from the office chair—found on the street in Oxford during the first week of my doctorate and with me since—and my little Habitat Book Caddy, of course!). I found it when I went in to Borders in Cambridge, just as it was closing down. Everything was for sale, shelves, sofas, chairs, even the books. So I bought myself a book (Jacques Rancière, The Future of the Image, if you’re curious) and then bought myself a chair, in which to read it. Getting it back to my room was an adventure in itself. Having a second table is also very handy, especially in the depths of the teaching term when there’s a volley of marking to be done in waves each week.

When that volley of marking is done and term is over, then it’s back to Dublin for me. And then I work in a small room in a city-centre apartment. The apartment is a shared space, though the books occupy a large percentage of this space and they are mostly mine. On the wall is a gorgeous head portrait by Brian Bourke, while facing the desk is a lovely piece by Nina Nordenström, who works on paper and does things that look like maps. The desk was a slightly mad buy in Habitat and it took me a couple of years to get used to. In fact, it wasn’t until I cut the legs down a bit that it really felt right. It’s still not quite right, but it’s nearly there.

The shelves are in the hall and in the study, though these photos are out of date in respect of what is on the shelves in the study, since I brought a good bit of my Dante over to Cambridge this year. In the corridor, that orange set you see in the middle is a lovely copy of Shackleton-Bailey’s edition of Cicero’s Letters to Atticus (Cambridge University Press), bought for a song at the Trinity College Dublin booksale (to which I have not been in a long time). I have great memories of queuing across Front Square waiting to get in, then dashing around and finding all manner of things. I remember finding a lovely copy of Francis Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition and I have just got up now to leaf through a gorgeous copy (still in its box) of Pascal, Œuvres complètes in the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, which I remember vividly picking up and thinking I’d won the lottery.

More will follow when I get myself settled at York and, more importantly, when I get the books settled. I do hope they’ll be happy there.

Two Rooms I Love

I’m not entirely sure where these came from, but aren’t they gorgeous:

A Room of One’s Own: Nicola Gardini

I knew Gardini in Oxford, where he teaches Italian. He’s a poet, a writer, a scholar. These photos and text are from an article entitled ‘Nella stanza di Nicola Gardini’ by Sandra Bardotti. I take the liberty of reproducing them here because I’m such a sucker for writers’ rooms and the like. I like the desk, and the book trough on the desk. It’s a bit messy, but in a way that suggests it is in constant use.

Mi sembra di sentirla parlare, Amelia Lynd, qui nello studio milanese di Nicola, con il suo intercalare british impeccabile. Mi sembra di vederla muoversi eterea nella stanza, la Maestra, circondata da una luce innaturale. Si solleva con le ali fino all’ultimo piano della libreria, fino ai grandi volumi del dizionario enciclopedico Utet e del dizionario della lingua italiana Tommaseo-Bellini, per ricordarci che le parole – le idee – sono tutto. Democrazia… “Nessuno può capire fino in fondo il significato di quella parola se non ama la propria lingua. Dall’amore della lingua che parliamo e poi di quelle che apprendiamo nasce e cresce in noi il senso della democrazia… ‘Essere uno dei tanti’… Io non saprei definirla altrimenti… ‘Ed essere tanti in uno’… Questa è la democrazia. Capisci?” (Le parole perdute di Amelia Lynd, Feltrinelli 2012).

Nel salotto pieno di libri e carte di Amelia Lynd, il piccolo Luca impara a volare più in alto.

In questo bellissimo studio nel centro di Milano, hanno preso forma Le parole perdute di Amelia Lynd e altri libri di Nicola Gardini. I baroni, Per una biblioteca indispensabile, la traduzione (ancora inedita) dei versi di Catullo: molto lavoro è passato di qui e ha lasciato le sue tracce. E chissà quante altre impronte ha disseminato anche nello studio di Oxford, dove Nicola insegna letteratura italiana all’Università di Oxford – perché Nicola è uno di quei cervelli che con un dottorato in Letteratura Comparata a New York, al suo ritorno in Italia ha dovuto fare i conti con il baronato accademico e fuggire all’estero.

Libri ovunque: sulla scrivania, nella libreria, su un elegante tavolino, in una piccola libreria girevole di legno, in una libreria credenza con le ante in vetro, sul divano, per terra, sparsi sul tappeto. La grande e pregiata libreria di noce occupa tutta la parete fino al soffitto. Davanti ai libri sono poggiate alcune fotografie di famiglia. Mi mostra lo scatto di un giovane Nicola seduto su una panchina e sorride. “Questa è una delle prime foto che ho scattato al mio arrivo a New York nel Novanta. Come vedi avevo ancora i capelli e sullo sfondo si vedono le torri gemelle”. Ci sono piccoli dipinti di paesaggi e di uccellini variopinti, un guerriero dell’esercito di terracotta cinese, il busto di Omero, alcune cartoline che immortalano grandi statue classiche, l’immagine cara di Virgilio o lo sguardo penetrante di Vargas Llosa – “uno dei miei autori di riferimento, insieme a Canetti e aIsherwood”. Di Isherwood ci sono molte edizioni rare, che Nicola colleziona.

Dai tanti fogli sparsi per la stanza si intuisce l’abitudine a un attento lavoro svolto direttamente sulla carta. Seduti sul divano, insolitamente sgombro, mi mostra alcune stesure tormentate e mi parla del suo metodo di lavoro. “Scrivo al computer ma uso moltissimi fogli per gli appunti preliminari o per abbozzare strutture e sketch. Poi stampo e intervengo a mano sulla stampata, quindi riporto le correzioni a pc, e così via, fino a quando il testo non è a posto. Quando scrivo in prosa o traduco, questo è il metodo che seguo. Per la poesia, invece, sento l’esigenza della scrittura a mano”.

Quasi impossibile immaginare Nicola che si muove tra tante carte, libri e oggetti impilati sulla scrivania di legno scuro venato. “Questa bella scrivania l’ho comprata a una fiera. Nella casa dove abitavo in precedenza non la usavo molto. Avevo la fissa dei tre tavoli di pascoliana memoria, e questa l’avevo posizionata in camera da letto, dove era quasi inutilizzata. È diventata importante in questa casa, soprattutto da quando le ho cambiato posizione. Prima era rivolta verso il muro ma mi sono reso conto che avere uno spazio aperto davanti mentre scrivo mi aiuta molto a concentrarmi. Non a caso amo molto le hall dei grandi aeroporti, dove lo sguardo si perde in spazi immensi”. Tantissimi oggetti-amuleto si intravedono qua e là. Una scatolina sigillata ermeticamente al cui interno dovrebbero esserci tante bamboline in miniatura – “è con me dal 1991, doveva farmi guarire da un persistente mal di stomaco”. Una stella marina. Un timbro decorato a mano con il nome di Nicola in cinese. E poi ci sono molti sassi – “un sasso dipinto da un poeta greco; un sasso di Auschwitz, che avevo inserito in una mia installazione sul tema del dolore e della sofferenza; un grande sasso a forma di cuore che mi ha regalato mia madre”.

“Lavoro molto la mattina. È finita l’epoca in cui improvvisavo a qualsiasi ora. Adesso trovo l’ispirazione nella concentrazione. Non sono collegato a internet. Spesso mi piace leggere un’oretta prima di mettermi a scrivere. Mi capita di ascoltare musica classica mentre scrivo. In questo momento in particolare ascolto l’opera, argomento del mio prossimo romanzo”.

Nel mucchio troviamo anche degli eleganti quaderni di disegni, dove ci sono perlopiù schizzi dal vivo. Nicola dipinge – a periodi, non è un’attività costante – e alcuni intensi paesaggi naturali su tela adornano le pareti della stanza. “Qui tengo le cose più riuscite: due paesaggi americani, la mia Inghilterra”. In un angolo vicino alla finestra c’è un cavalletto – “apparteneva a Gianni Dova, mi è stato regalato da sua moglie nel 1996 corredato da pennelli e colori: così ho iniziato a dipingere a olio”. I tubetti dei colori sono abbandonati sulla tavolozza. Per terra alcuni cartoni della pizza che Nicola talvolta usa per dipingere.

C’è molto di Nicola in Amelia Lynd, nella passione per la lingua, nella fede onesta nella parola e nell’ideale. Traspare anche da questa stanza affollata di parole e ricordi, dove ogni cosa è riportata al suo significato.

“Che fede avevo nei significati, che accumulavo, proprio come te su cento quadernini! Tienli stretti tu, i tuoi quadernini! E quando, magari, ti verrà la tentazione di dubitare, tirali fuori, rileggili, non nasconderli come ho nascosto io il mio lavoro.

Goodbye, Amelia” (Le parole perdute di Amelia Lynd, Feltrinelli 2012)

Dominic Stevens

Dominic Stevens is a very talented architect based in Co. Leitrim, in the north west of Ireland. Since this is my home county, it is such a thrill to think that he’s working there. He has designed a few rather interesting houses in the county, including the wonderful ‘Mimetic House’, in Dromahair. Some photos are included below. One thing he’s been very vocal about is how houses don’t actually have to cost that much. The reason they do is that banks, developers and government coffers have all worked together to make property cost what it did. To prove this, he has developed a house that costs €25,000. The details of how to build such a house are now included in a wonderful website: www.irishvernacular.com and I highly recommend a visit. What is so exciting about this website is the way that it urges a complete rethink of the very idea of houses and property, and gives practical advice on how to go about doing this, including plans, instructions, the whole lot.

In the meantime, take a look at the ‘Mimetic House’ and enjoy:

Stupor mundi, or maybe I'm just stupid

This is me.

This is why:

And if you're wondering where these are (having read here), then I can tell you that they are on my desk right now.
On. My. Desk.
You bet your medieval ass they are!!

Berman Private Library

One word.
Swoon.



Private Library from David Vegezzi on Vimeo.

For more, see here.

For the Birds

I must be.

Keep an eye out for the next post, which will be a very exciting affair altogether.

Alison Cornish, Vernacular Translation in Dante's Italy: Illiterate Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2011)

I rarely buy new books. I know that sounds a bit odd considering this blog is mainly about the relentless crazed acquiring of books, but I’m a sucker for a bargain, a second-hand book or something on sale, and I’m far less likely to go out and buy a new book at full price. An exception to this has been Alison Cornish, Vernacular Translation in Dante’s Italy: Illiterate Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2011), published in the series Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature. It is an extremely stimulating read and well worth every penny. She talks about the remarkable flourishing of vernacular translation in the early fourteenth-century, volgarizzamenti, and then makes some excellent observations on the ways that Dante establishes himself as a vernacular writer, seeking to downplay the richness of these volgarizzamenti in setting his own poem as the work of vernacular writing.

The book comprises six chapters. In the first, ‘Dressing down the muses: the anxiety of volgarizzamento’, she takes a cue from Sacchetti’s story of the Florentine citizen reading Livy’s history of Rome (no. 66) and talks about the enormous project that was the reconstruction of Livy in the fourteenth century. Chapter 2 is entitled ‘The authorship of readers’ and talks about the myriad ways in which traditional stemmatic recension does not allow us to take sufficient account of the interactive reading done in the Middle Ages, and that volgarizzamenti was a place where readers felt comfortable and creatively involved. Chapter 3 is called ‘Cultural ricochet: French to Italian and back again’ talks about the huge cultural presence of Old French in northern Italy and looks especially at vernacular Cicero and texts such as the Li Fait des Romains etc. Chapter 4 is called ‘Translation as miracle: illiterate learning and religious translation’, and talks about the very remarkable Italian tradition of vernacular translation. Particularly interesting is the observation here of how much of this vernacular tradition was powered by women, transcribing sermons for example. The fifth chapter, ‘The treasure of the translator: Dante and Brunetto’ is about the the relationship of these two figures and explores Brunetto as a translator choosing to write in French. She argues that Dante’s condemnation is the project of volgarizzamenti. The final chapter, ‘A new life for translation: volgarizzamento after humanism’, has a few excellent pages on Petrarch’s Latin translation of Boccaccio’s story of Griselda, and then goes on to talk about Landino’s translation of Pliny produced in Naples.

This isn’t so much a review as a segnalazione, but I do want to accompany it with a strong endorsement. This book will be obligatory reading for anyone interested in the contours of vernacularity in fourteenth century Italy, an exciting and stimulating exploration of its riches and manifest aspects.

Books, and What to Do with Them, #3

It’s been an age since I posted last. I’ve been very busy I have to say, working, teaching, writing and the like. More anon. But for now, some book craziness, just to reassure you that things are ticking along nicely.

Some time ago I posted about wanting the Habitat Louis de Bernières Book Caddy and despaired of ever finding one. This cyber lament appears to have been an excellent idea because I was contacted by someone who had one to sell and before putting it on eBay, he offered me first refusal. Needless to say, I jumped at the chance. So here is a little picture of it, in red, up against my red couch! You’ll immediately see that it is a Dante Caddy, with the Ricciardi Opere minori, the Meridiani Commedia and the first volume of the Opere, the SISMEL Comedìa and the Rime on the upper shelf, while on the lower shelf is the Edizione nazionale, Commedia, Rime, Convivio, Monarchia, and then the 1932 Vita nuova. All on wheels. What’s not to love!

I’ve been making some exciting acquisitions lately, such as a lovely (unread and uncut) copy of Branca’s critical edition of the Decameron published by the Accademia della Crusca in 1976. It is quite hard to find, and, very appropriately, I found it the very day before I travelled to Berlin to see the autograph manuscript, MS Hamilton 90. Exciting and enjoyable and fascinating. I also acquired the Storia della lingua italiana Einaudi, which I’m very happy with and am using quite a bit lately. I ordered what I thought would be the three volumes of the Grande grammatica italiana di consultazione from BOL.it but they are having trouble finding the first and third volumes, alas. My GDLI is growing nicely, with recent acquisitions of the two supplements (2004 and 2009), the latter of which was bought for a mere £2.50 online and which I was almost incredulous to find at that price. I’ve also acquired Bruni’s L’italiano nelle regioni, vol. 1, Lingua nazionale e identità regionali and vol. 2, Testi e documenti, and am delighted with it. You’ll see there Serianni’s Grammatica italiana, all keyed to the GDLI.

I also made another acquisition (or rather a gift, actually) which is the Storia della letteratura italiana published by Salerno, in the volumes that appeared along with Il Sole 24 Ore. The pagination is the same and so it is possible to cite from them without having to check the Library copy, so they’re extremely useful and I’m delighted to have them. It’s in 24 volumes, which is a bit bulky, but it is very useful.

Raimondi

(c) Monica Silva

I do rather like this photo of Ezio Raimondi in his study. And I'm looking forward to reading his new: Le voci dei libri (Bologna: il Mulino, 2012).

Worse than Selfridges

Yet again, I find myself in the terrorising elbow-patched bruise-fest that is the Cambridge University Press booksale and let me tell you, it’s been worth every dig. I’ve stopped being polite at these things: I used to be ‘Oh I’m sorry, I couldn't just squeeze past you there?’, while they politely ignored me. Now I just shove past and thrust my hand towards shelves, and anyone in my way takes their chances. During a particularly brutal crush, one girl turned to me and said: ‘It’s worse than the Selfridges Sale’. I agreed, though I’ve never been to a Selfridges sale. It must be awful though. But I doubt you see a certain member of the royal family getting stuck in like the rest of them. So I feel this sale experience has a certain amount of class. The worst is when one of the assistants brings out fresh boxes and there is a flurry of activity where everyone present jostles for the best position to see them come out of the box. There’s an awkward moment where people realise that they cannot actually put their hands into the box while she’s trying to empty it, but you can see that everyone wants to do that. As soon as they are put on the shelf, hands begin to desperately reach for whatever is placed there. It’s all wonderfully primitive and surely mitigates all the civilising influence of books. Imaging acting like a vulture over the The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Music, and yet, that is just what it’s like.

Despite all this, dear readers, I’ve managed a lovely little haul and am delighted with myself. I now look a bit like Karl standing on my coffee table and looking around, ever so slightly mad. Sadly I don't have quite the space he does for books. It’ll run for another couple of weeks and I’ll probably only get a few more visits. Unless I see Cornish’s wonderful new book on volgarizzamenti, then I think I've done for this year. Now joining the crazy world of me are:

Kowaleski & Goldberg (eds), Medieval Domesticity: Home, Housing and Household in Medieval England; Farrell & Puppa (eds), A History of Italian Theatre; G.H. & E.R. Crichton, Nicola Pisano and the Revival of Sculpture in Italy [1938]; D. M. Bueno de Mesquita, Giangaleazzo Visconti Duke of Milan (1351-1402): A Study in the Political Career of an Italian Despot [1941]; C.S. Lewis, Selected Literary Essays, ed. Walter Hooper [1980]; J. M. Hastings, St Stephen’s Church: An Illustrated Study of the Origins of ‘Perpendicular’ Architecture in England [1955]; Maiden, Smith & Ledgeway (eds); The Cambridge History of The Romance Languages, vol. 1; Cook, Enigmas and Riddles in Literature; Slights, The Heart in the Age of Shakespeare; Keith, Engendering Rome: Women in Latin Epic; Swanson, Indulgences in Late Medieval England: Passports to Paradise?; Yeager, Jerusalem in Medieval Narrative; Kuehn, Heirs, Kin, and Creditors in Renaissance Florence; Ricketts, Visualizing Boccaccio: Studies on Illustrations of The Decameron, from Giotto to Pasolini; Payne, The Architectural Treatse in the Italian Renaissance; Lillie, Florentine Villas in the Fifteenth Century; Turner, The Darkness of God: Negativity in Christian Mysticism; Matthews (ed), The Cambridge Companion to J. M. Synge; Najemy (ed), The Cambridge Companion to Machiavelli; Ferris (ed), The Cambridge Companion to Walter Benjamin; Everist (ed), The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Music; McAuliffe (ed), The Cambridge Companion to the Qur'an; Brand, Italy and the English Romantics; Hardie, The Epic Successors of Virgil; Martindale (ed), The Cambridge Companion to Virgil; Gowing, Empire and Memory: The Representation of the Roman Republic in Imperial Culture; Dover (ed), Plato: Symposium; Kenney (ed), Ovid: Heroides XVI-XXI; Hinds, Allusion and Intertext; Moule, An Idiom Book of New Testament Greek; Logan (ed), The Cambridge Companion to Thomas More; Tacconi, Cathedral and Civic Ritual in Late Medieval and Renaissance Florence: The Service Books of Santa Maria del Fiore; Kelley, Reinventing Allegory; Parker, Michelangelo and the Art of Letter Writing.

Not in the CUP sale, but picked up in the Heffers sale were: Wolfthal, In and Out of the Marital Bed: Seeing Sex in Renaissance Art (Yale, 2010) and Andrew Cole & D. Vance Smith (eds), The Legitimacy of the Middle Ages: On the Unwritten History of Theory (Duke, 2010); while in Oxfam I found a lovely copy of D.F. McKenzie’s Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts in the lovely Panizzi series published by the BL in 1986. I’ve also been very fortunate in finding a copy of Gerhard Rohlfs, Grammatica storica della lingua italiana e dei suoi dialetti, 3 vols (Einaudi, 1966-1969), which I’m really delighted to have.

Welcome, my pretties, one and all!

I Want It, I Want It, I Want It, I Want It!

In 2005 appeared two volumes of the Enciclopedia fridericiana (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana, Treccani), ed. by Girolamo Arnaldi, Ortensio Zecchino, Arnold Esch, Antonio Menniti Ippolito, Alberto Varvaro and Cosimo Damiano Fonseca. In 2008 a third volume was added, on the work of Frederick himself. It is a massive, gorgeous, vast project, produced in the wake of the the anniversary celebrations of his birth, in 1194. Compelling, complex, learned, Frederick was dubbed by a contemporary chronicler stupor mundi. Leafing through the pages of these three volumes makes for not a little stupor at its breath and its beauty.

I want this. What can I say? God I want this SO much. And now, an Italian bookseller has the three volumes on eBay for €1,500. That sounds a lot and I know what you're thinking: don’t be insane. Indeed. But I still want this! I really want this. I cannot, of course, allow myself to even consider it. But know this: when it sells, as I’m sure it will, I shall look back upon this very moment filled with regret. And it will not go away.

So if you have €1,500 and you like the Middle Ages, then you could do a lot worse than to acquire this. If, in addition to the money and a love of the Middle Ages, you have a huge and generous heart, why don’t you buy it for me! I know you won’t though. I know that.

I’d like to go and have a little cry now.

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