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A review by lee_foust
The Penguin Book of the Undead by Scott G. Bruce, Scott G. Bruce
3.0
Although I'm no longer doing serious research, writing, or publishing in the scholarly terrordrome, I try to keep up with topics of interest from my former life and things that might be applicable to the courses that I still teach--Dante's Commedia, Medieval Italian lit., and Gothic lit. I've long been interested in Medieval Christian visionary literature (my Ph.D. dissertation posited that that tradition, much more than the classical descensi of Odysseus and Aeneas, were the real models for the Commedia) and Purgatorial ghost stories, believing them ultimately to be the roots of the Victorian ghost story and certain other elements of eighteenth century Gothic literature.
This anthology of translated mostly medieval Latin texts dealing with interactions between the world of the living and that of the dead was a welcome publication, then--especially in my new lay life, in which I no longer have the time to wade through medieval Latin texts in the original. The problem with this anthology, though, for me, was that in my studies I have seen less the "interactions between the living and the dead" and more succinct literary traditions--so, for me a scene of Catabasis or the descent into Hades, and a Purgatorial visitation are really quite different things and it somehow irked me to see them mashed together here. This collection's super broad strokes both in terms of literary traditions/genres and time (from 700 BCE to 1600 in fewer than 300 pp just seemed too sketchy. I would have much preferred a more narrow focus, slightly more developed interpretation of the types of interactions with the dead presented and their effect on literary traditions, and--at the risk of some repetition perhaps--more texts in each genre for comparison.
I know, you just can't please everyone.
On the upside, I'm glad to have a translation of "Borontus' Vision," as it was left out of Eileen Gardiner's collection Visions of Heaven and Hell Before Dante, I also enjoyed the ghostly tales which, up to now, I knew mainly from The Golden Legend (oddly absent here but fine for me since I have the complete Ryan translation). I also greatly appreciated the thoughtful analysis of Shakespeare's creation of Hamlet's father's ghost as an amalgam of the Protestant and Catholic attitudes toward specters and that really nice bit of critical interpretation, specifically, made me yearn for a bit more criticism/digestion of the texts throughout and a more thorough tracing of what I call medieval Christian folklore and its effect upon later, more self-cosciously literary works of poetry and fiction.
And a shout out to the great cover art by Anton Semenov. Nice.
This anthology of translated mostly medieval Latin texts dealing with interactions between the world of the living and that of the dead was a welcome publication, then--especially in my new lay life, in which I no longer have the time to wade through medieval Latin texts in the original. The problem with this anthology, though, for me, was that in my studies I have seen less the "interactions between the living and the dead" and more succinct literary traditions--so, for me a scene of Catabasis or the descent into Hades, and a Purgatorial visitation are really quite different things and it somehow irked me to see them mashed together here. This collection's super broad strokes both in terms of literary traditions/genres and time (from 700 BCE to 1600 in fewer than 300 pp just seemed too sketchy. I would have much preferred a more narrow focus, slightly more developed interpretation of the types of interactions with the dead presented and their effect on literary traditions, and--at the risk of some repetition perhaps--more texts in each genre for comparison.
I know, you just can't please everyone.
On the upside, I'm glad to have a translation of "Borontus' Vision," as it was left out of Eileen Gardiner's collection Visions of Heaven and Hell Before Dante, I also enjoyed the ghostly tales which, up to now, I knew mainly from The Golden Legend (oddly absent here but fine for me since I have the complete Ryan translation). I also greatly appreciated the thoughtful analysis of Shakespeare's creation of Hamlet's father's ghost as an amalgam of the Protestant and Catholic attitudes toward specters and that really nice bit of critical interpretation, specifically, made me yearn for a bit more criticism/digestion of the texts throughout and a more thorough tracing of what I call medieval Christian folklore and its effect upon later, more self-cosciously literary works of poetry and fiction.
And a shout out to the great cover art by Anton Semenov. Nice.