An exploration of the medieval mind as a machine, and how it might be affected and immobiled, in textual reactions to the madness of Charles VI of France. At the turn of the fifteenth century it must have seemed to many French people that the world was going mad. King Charles VI suffered his first bout of mental illness in 1392, and he underwent intermittent bouts of frenzy, melancholy and ever-scarcer lucidity until his death in 1422. The king's scarcely mentionable malady was mirrored at every level of social experience, from the irrational civil war through which the body politic tore itself apart, to reports of elevated suicide rates among the common people. In this political environment, where affairs of state were closely linked to the ruler's mental state, French writers sought new ways of representing the psychological dynamics of the body politic. This book explores the innovative mix of organic and inorganic metaphors through which they explored the relationship between mind, body and government at this period; in particular, it considers texts by such authors as Alan Chartier and Charles d'Orleans which describe mental illness and intellectual impairments through the notion of "rust". JULIE SINGER is Associate Professor of French at Washington University, St. Louis.

An examination of the ways in which late medieval lyric poetry can be seen to engage with contemporary medical theory. This book argues that late medieval love poets, from Petrarch to Machaut and Charles d'Orleans, exploit scientific models as a broad framework within which to redefine the limits of the lyric subject and his body. Just as humoraltheory depends upon principles of likes and contraries in order to heal, poetry makes possible a parallel therapeutic system in which verbal oppositions and substitutions counter or rewrite received medical wisdom. The specific case of blindness, a disability that according to the theories of love that predominated in the late medieval West foreclosed the possibility of love, serves as a laboratory in which to explore poets' circumvention of the logical limits of contemporary medical theory. Reclaiming the power of remedy from physicians, these late medieval French and Italian poets prompt us to rethink not only the relationship between scientific and literary authority at the close of the middle ages, but, more broadly speaking, the very notion of therapy. Julie Singer is Assistant Professor of French at Washington University, St Louis.

Annual volume of essays treating topics ranging from physical impairment to narrative afterlife and time. The fifteenth century defies consensus on fundamental issues; most scholars agree, however, that the period outgrew the Middle Ages, that it was a time of transition and a passage to modern times. Fifteenth-Century Studiestreats diverse aspects of the period, including liberal and fine arts, historiography, medicine, and religion. Volume 35 addresses topics including physical impairments as depicted in surgical handbooks printed in Germany and as reflected through eyeglasses for the blind (a therapy proposed by French vernacular poets); literary constructions of women in de Meun's Cite des Dames and in hagiographic legends of Spain; the evolution of the Order of theGarter as dramatized in Shakespeare; serious elements in French farces; the festival context of Villon's Pet-au-Deable; Boethius in the late Middle Ages; A Revelation of Purgatory and Chaucer's Prioress; Piers Plowman in one British Library manuscript; and narrative afterlife and time in Henryson's Testament of Cresseid. Book reviews conclude the volume. Contributors: Milagros Alameda-Irizarry, Chiara Benati, EdelgardE. DuBruck, Rosanne Gasse, Chelsea Honeyman, Noel Harold Kaylor Jr., James N. Ortego II, E. L. Risden, Julie Singer, Geri L. Smith, Martin W. Walsh. Matthew Z. Heintzelman is Curator of the Austria/Germany Study Center and Rare Book Cataloger at Hill Museum & Manuscript Library, Saint John's University, Minnesota; Barbara I. Gusick is Professor Emerita of English at Troy University Dothan; Martin W. Walsh is Head of the Drama Program at the University of Michigan's Residential College.