Albrecht Classen writes in his introduction to Handbook of Medieval Studies that the intention of this handbook is “to make available detailed and meticulous surveys of the state of the art in Medieval Studies, and to reflect upon the historical development of our field in its myriad manifestations” (xv). It succeeds in doing this wonderfully, and will thus be a fundamental research tool for both medievalists and folklorists interested in the Middle Ages.
Classen opens this handbook with a long introduction, “Survey of Fundamental Reference Works in Medieval Studies,” in which he describes the various encyclopedias, dictionaries, and other reference works concerning the Middle Ages. After this the handbook is divided into several sections that describe both past and current research in various areas of medieval studies as well as the various literary genres of the period.
The first of these sections is Main Topics and Debates of the Last Decades and their Terminology and Results (3-1420). Under this heading are found articles on topics of folkloric interest as various as “Everyday Life in the Middle Ages” by Valerie L. Garver (525-539), “Folklore in Medieval Studies” by Salvatore Calomino (550-557), and “Popular Religion/Spirituality in Medieval Studies” by Daniel E. O’Sullivan (1129-1137), to name only a few of the most obvious.
This is followed by the section Important Terms in Today’s Medieval Studies, where articles on topics such as “Comic” by Sarah Gordon (1468-1477), “Discourse” by Karen K. Jambeck (1488-1499), “Game” by Maurice Sprague (1508-1512), and “Ritual and Performance” by Gerhard Jaritz (1559-1562) can be found.
The third section of the handbook is on Textual Genres in the Middle Ages. Articles here of folkloric interest include “Ballads, Songs, and Libels” by Christian Kuhn (1618-1633), “Charms and Incantations” by Russell Poole (1700-1705), “Heroic Epics and Sagas” by Hermann Reichert (1807-1830), and “Proverbs” by Rosemarie Thee Morewedge (2026-2055).
The handbook’s final section is biographical: Key Figures in Medieval Studies from ca. 1650-1950 (selection). There are only a few folklorists here, such as Jacob Grimm, but many of these medievalists had folkloric interests, so the biographies are useful for understanding how folklore studies were important in the development of medieval studies.
The articles can be somewhat uneven in their length and coverage of topics, with some presenting rather short summaries of previous and current work on a topic, for instance, while others are substantial introductions to a given topic. A few of the articles are rather weak, but remarkably few given the size of the handbook, and none are bad.
Folklorists will find Classen’s Handbook of Medieval Studies, to borrow a phrase, “a mine of valuable information.” Even folklorists without a specific interest in the Middle Ages will find the articles on folkloric topics useful surveys of research on these topics. In sum, this is a major achievement that will stand for many years as a fundamental reference work in medieval studies. Classen and the contributors are to be congratulated on their accomplishment.
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[Review length: 489 words • Review posted on November 30, 2011]