Middle English Marvels: Magic, Spectacle, and Morality in the Fourteenth Century. Tara Williams. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2018. viii + 176 pp. $89.95.

Abstract

discussed are the incunabula and use of print to assert the power of political factions; the humanistic output of a few printers, especially Guyon Boudeville (1541-62); the ensuing monopoly of the Colomiès family (1562-96); and the influence of the Jesuits. In the third and last chapter, the author makes a microanalysis of the languages found in the books printed in Toulouse during the Renaissance, with a special interest in the typology of languages (notably the importance of political and religious works and the rapid and growing presence of French) and the use of Occitan as a printed language (too often neglected in previous studies, according to Escudé). Again, one must be wary of statistics based on the few surviving books available. When the author speaks of an "exceptional effervescence" of Occitan writing in Toulouse in the first decades of the seventeenth century, prompted, he explains, by the liberalization of powers and led by the national and ideological opposition in Provence (232), the evidence consists of merely ten books in Occitan out of the ninety-nine printed in Toulouse between 1600 and 1617. Demonstrating a thorough knowledge of the literature produced in Toulouse (whether in French, Latin, Occitan, or Spanish), Pierre Escudé provides an important study of Toulouse in the Renaissance, its rise and fall, and the crucial role of print as an agent of history.