Review of Plumley, Yolanda, Giuliano Di Bacco, and Stefano Jossa, eds. 'Citation, Intertextuality and Memory in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, vol. 1: Text, Music and Image from Machaut to Aristo'. 'Exeter Studies in Medieval Europe'. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2011, Pp. 272. $110. 978-0-85989-851-5.

Abstract

Memory's role in processes of cultural production, including intertextuality and citation, has emerged in the last few decades as an prominent area of enquiry in medieval and Renaissance studies, not only in literary studies but also in histories of art, music, religion and law. The recognition-- precipitated by the "linguistic turn" of the 1960s and 1970s-- that early European cultural productions operated within a "web of significance" (to use Max Weber's turn of phrase popularized by Clifford Geertz) in which innovation occurred against the backdrop of tradition, brought a new appreciation of, for example, late medieval literature. Rather than dismissing this early literature as unoriginal, scholars understanding memory's place in the medieval reception of literature acknowledged the role that references to earlier models play in situating a work within literary culture. Part of the problem for present day readers, auditors and viewers of medieval literary, musical and pictorial arts, however, is our inability (unless appropriately tutored) to recognize citation when not part of these early European cultures. Compounding our distance from these cultures is our uncertainty as to where a familiar turn of phrase fits within a spectrum of authorial intentionality: is it a direct and salient reference to a particular work (and therefore must be read against the backdrop of that work) or is it simply part of general artistic culture? Thus serious scholarship that attempts to nurture a present-day awareness of these models and influences upon medieval and early modern cultural productions is to be greeted with enthusiasm.