Being sick right after getting back from my trip, in combination with the respiratory aspect meaning I’ve skipped the gym this week, has meant I haven’t completed reading anything new to review. (My current gym read is the lesbian historical romance anthology
Through the Hourglass that my Margaret & Laudomia story is in. For professional reasons I won’t be doing a formal review of it--and nothing I’d post on Amazon or Goodreads--but I’ll probably say something about it when I’m done.)
So how about a “book intake post” covering both Chicago and Kalamazoo? I've added Amazon links when available for those who might want to look further.
Lauri and I went to the Art Institute of Chicago, which has a permanent display of a set of miniature period rooms, designed and commissioned by Chicago socialite Mrs. James Ward Thorne. There was a lovely catalog covering all the displays and it felt like a useful visual reference for historic room settings. (It also got me thinking about making miniature models of some Alpennian locations, but I was easily able to deflect that into “projects I will never do in this lifetime.”)
Weingartner, Fannia and Bruce Hatton Boyer. 2004. Miniature Rooms: The Thorne Rooms at the Art Institute of Chicago. Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago. ISBN 978-0300141597The bookstore had a number of tempting sale items, but the only one I succumbed to was a thick volume of alchemical symbolism in art. I’m investing so much in alchemy books, it’s clear that a future novel will need to come back to the subject in a major way.
Roob, Alexander. 2014. Alchemy and Mysticism. Taschen, Köln. ISBN 978-3836549363In the book rooms at Kalamazoo I’ve discovered the convenience of simply having the publishers ship rather than stuffing my suitcase for the trip home. So I only brought three purchases back with me. One is a gift, the other two are just for general background reference and inspiration.
McIver, Katherine A. 2014. Cooking and Eating in Renaissance Italy: From Kitchen to Table (Rowman & Littlefield Studies in Food and Gastronomy). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Lanham. ISBN 978-1442227187It looks like a serious but general-audience survey of the topic of Renaisance Italian food. This isn’t deeply technical or detailed. You could probably read it through in a single evening (which I have yet to do).
Jackson, Deirdre. 2015. Medieval Women. British Library Publishing, London. ISBN 978-0-7123-5865-1I’m a sucker for glossy collections of visual references on particular themes, especially women's lives. This is a selection of illustrations from medieval manuscripts showing a wide variety of aspects of women’s lives. Generally I use this sort of work to research details of material culture that often are incidental to the overt subject of the scenes. For example, one depiction of a woman being beaten shows her headdress having fallen off and therefore shows aspects of its construction that wouldn't be visible in place.
The fun part of having books shipped is that it means you get a series of packages in the mail over the next month or two. Like having an extended birthday party. I got the first one yesterday -- part of my Penn State University Press purchase, once more on the theme of alchemy, this time looking at the social, philosophical, and religious context in which serious thinkers such as Roger Bacon turned their thoughts and pens to the topic. Penn State's Magic in History series is a great resource in general.
Janacek, Bruce. 2015. Alchemical Belief: Occultism in the Religious Culture of Early Modern England (Magic in History). Penn State University Press, Pennsylvania. ISBN 978-0271050140For some reason, although they were shipped at the same time, the second book I bought from this press was sent separately. This book analyzes the inventory taken of Il Magnifico’s posessions at the time of his death. Just in case one wanted to know how to outfit at opulent Italian villa or two...
Stapleford, Richard. 2014. Lorenzo de' Medici at Home: The Inventory of the Palazzo Medici in 1492. Penn State University Press, Pennsylvania. ISBN 978-0271056425Yet to be shipped are the following books from Boydell & Brewer. They’re usually good for a variety of topics, especially including textiles, clothing, food and cookery, and the occasional other topic of interest. (And, as always, the annual Medieval Clothing and Textiles volume.)
Medieval Clothing and Textiles #12 (advance purchase, as it wasn’t released yet at the conference)The Medieval Clothing and Textiles volumes have the same broad mix of topics as the DISTAFF sessions at Kalamazoo and Leeds, although only an occasional paper specifically comes from those sessions. Like a box of mixed chocolates, you never know what you're going to get, but overall it will be delicious.
Hyer, Maren Clegg & Jill Frederick (eds.). 2016. Textiles, Text, Intertext: Essays in Honour of Gale R. Owen-Crocker. Boydell Press. ISBN 9781783270736I haven't looked at the contents list of this yet, but bought it for sentimental reasons. Gale is such a lovely gracious presence within the DISTAFF group, and so very supportive of researchers of all types.
Chapman, Adam. 2015. Welsh Soldiers in the Later Middle Ages, 1282-1422. Boydell Press. ISBN 9781783270316Despite the new and interesting places my writing-related research interests have drifted to, I haven't entirely abandoned medieval Wales. I have a specific future writing project that this might be useful for...
I bought something at the University of Chicago Press booth, now where did I put that slip? I have the credit card receipt, but not a copy of the order form, so I guess I’ll just have to wait until they show up to remember what I bought!
And then here are a variety of books on culinary topics that looked interesting enough to snap pix of, but that I didn’t buy. In some cases, the contents looked either too elementary or too literary-oriented to be of specific interest to me. In other cases I may decide to order them on further consideration.
Nadeau, Carolyn A. 2016. Food Matters: Alonso Quijano's Diet and the Discourse of Food in Early Modern Spain. University of Toronto Press, Toronto. ISBN 978-1442637306This one was on the "a bit too literary-oriented" side, exploring food references in
Don Quixote, but for those who specialize in Iberian cuisine, it's worth a further look.
Salloum, Habeeb. 2013. Scheherazade's Feasts: Foods of the Medieval Arab World. University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 978-0812244779I left this one on the shelf when I saw the line in the description, "The recipes are translated from medieval sources and adapted for the modern cook." But for those who are completists in historic Arabic culinary books (or who want to keep track of the pop culture versions that other people may be using for historic purposes), it's a beautiful little book and is probably useful for general background.
Wall, Wendy. 2015. Recipes for Thought: Knowledge and Taste in the Early Modern English Kitchen. University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 978-0812247589A study, not of cookery, but of culinary literature as a genre. The blurb suggests that this may focus more on philosophical analysis than some may be interested in. Sample quote:
Recipe exchange, we discover, invited early modern housewives to contemplate the complex components of being a Renaissance "maker" and thus to reflect on lofty concepts such as figuration, natural philosophy, national identity, status, mortality, memory, epistemology, truth-telling, and matter itself. Kitchen work, recipes tell us, engaged vital creative and intellectual labors.Marty-Dufaut, Josy. 2015. La Cuisine Normande au XIIIe Siècle. Bayeux: Heimdal. ISBN 978-2-84048-422-6In French. I may be sorry for not picking this up when it was in front of me, as it looks like it might be difficult to order in the US. (It doesn't have an Amazon listing.) My recollection is that it looked like a glossy "some history and some adapted recipes" work. Here's the catalog description from the above link.
La cuisine du XIIIe siècle a été longtemps méconnue, occultée par les ouvrages emblématiques, Le Viandier de Taillevent et Le Mesnagier de Paris, parus au XIVe siècle. Le XIIIe siècle est une époque d’extension, de commerce intense, d’échanges culturels. C’est l’âge d’or pour les Normands qui s’implantent dans de nombreux pays. L’Europe occidentale présente une unité et une communauté jamais connues jusque-là. La cuisine est un témoignage de cette cohésion européenne. Cet ouvrage s’intéresse aux recettes présentées dans les manuscrits anglo-normands et scandinaves. Ils sont la copie de textes antérieurs issus de la France, de la Sicile, eux-mêmes copiés à partir d’autres textes ou trouvant leurs sources d’inspiration dans la culture gréco-latine et la cuisine de l’Orient. Les plats emblématiques qui feront la réputation de la cuisine de Taillevent y apparaissent déjà. Les bases de la cuisine médiévale y sont données. L’art culinaire est en constante évolution.Woolgar, C. M. 2016. The Culture of Food in England, 1200-1500. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0300181913A general social history of food in England. Probably very like all the general social histories of food in England that have been published before.
Montanari, Massimo. 2015. A Cultural History of Food in the Medieval Age. Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 978-1474269919And, similarly to the preceding, a general survey work, aimed at non-specialists. It looks like this series is intended for college survey classes and the like. Books of this sort may or may not be written by specialists in the field, with all the potential weaknesses that can bring. (Based on my own experience, it's not uncommon for publishers with this sort of series to approach a potential author on the basis of hearing a single paper in the field. I got approached about writing a survey of medieval clothing volume for a similar series once and was a bit flabbergasted that that was all it took. I declined, noting that the project would be of more professional benefit to an academic who needed material for their cv.)
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