Glamorous Sorcery: Magic and Literacy in the High Middle Ages. By David Rollo. Medieval Cultures Series, 25. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000. Pp xxv + 231. $32.95.

This book treats collocations of magic and literacy in texts by William of Malmesbury, Geoffrey of Monmouth, John of Salisbury, Beno”t de Sainte-Maure, William FitzStephen, Richard FitzNigel, and Gerald of Wales. It also, connectedly, traces economic metaphors and the connections between money, literacy, and upward mobility through these writings. The author is well versed in the recent theories of literacy, the problems he approaches are of genuine interest, and the texts he chooses to discuss resonate well together. For all these reasons it is the more to be regretted that the study does not really achieve what it attempts, because in other hands the approach might have provided genuinely interesting insights. There are, however, such serious problems with Rollo's handling of his materials that many of the key points of his analysis simply dissolve on close inspection. Perhaps the most pressing problem, and one which probably facilitates the majority of his interpretive inconsistencies and contradictions, is that Rollo is quite unfamiliar with the narrative, philosophical, and encyclopaedic sources of the ideas about magic found in these writings, and does not recognize any of the traditional medieval connections between magic and knowledge, or indeed magic and literacy.

Claire Fanger
Elmwood, Ontario