This handsome volume contains proceedings from a conference held in Stockholm on 9-12 September, 2004, entitled "Medieval Literature as a Mirror of Society: Ideology, Didactics, Exempla, and Allegory." While both conference and volume titles are quite broad, upon opening the book, one realizes that many of the contributions are centered upon one particular work: Jacobus de Cessoles' Liber de moribus hominum et officiis nobelium super ludo scaccorum. If one were to choose one chess text around which one would build a volume, Cessoles is not only a logical, but an excellent choice. After all, the work of this Dominican friar was translated into several languages--and into French on two separate occasions--and influenced chess allegory and perpsectives on social organization for centuries afterwards.
The volume contains a total twelve contributions, divided unevenly into two categories: three in "Visual approaches" and nine in "Textual approaches." Contributions are also written in three languages: German (6), English (5), and French (1). Equally diverse are the fields that the individual contributors represent: history, antiquarian studies, and Germanic studies as well as classical, medieval, and Germanic philology. The editors are to be commended for presenting their readership with a truly interdisciplinary enterprise, in which many different scholars can find their niche but also learn from colleagues in related disciplines.
The first study in "Visual approaches" figures among the most visually stimulating contributions. In her "Death Playing Chess with Man and Related Motifs: Painted Allegories by Albertus Pictor in some Uppland Churches," Pia Melin offers a study of Sweden's best known medieval painters and, more precisely, of an image that is familiar to not only Swedish churchgoers, but the world audience, thanks to Ingmar Bergman's 1957 film, The Seventh Seal: a man engaged in a chess match with Death. However, Melin also offers readings of paintings from Albertus's workshop that delight in allegory: for example, the Wheel of Fortune. Each of these lucid readings is accompanied by excellent color photos that make her insights come to life.
Maaret Koskinen's "Chess in Film: From Hollywood to Ingmar Bergman" is a good choice to follow Melin's study. After a brief presentation of the chess match with death in Bergman's film and a consideration of the motif's value as allegory, Koskinen brings us back to Albertus and a passage from an account of Bergman's own experience of a chess image in a church in southern Sweden, undoubtedly the church at Täby where Albertus painted his famous mural. From all of these encounters-- historical, cultural, literary--Koskinen reconsiders the motif of death across the career of Bergman's career, thanks to her being granted a rare entry into the Ingmar Bergman Archive. Students of film studies would be well advised to read her contribution.
A collaborative effort closes out "Visual Approaches": "The Chess Game in Medieval Scandinavia" by volume editor Olle Ferm and Göran Tegnér. This short contribution casts a wide net, covering the discovery of the small sculptures on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides in 1831 and their possible origins, a description of a few--one might suppose they are "typical"--chess pieces from medieval Sweden, and a brief treatment of chess in medieval Swedish literature, both fiction and nonfiction. The article offers no great insights into its topic, but rather a survey that the reader who is uninitiated to Swedish medieval culture (like the present reviewer) might find interesting.
The first two contributions in the section "Textual Approaches" address the overtly cultural connections between chess allegory and society. Co-editor Volker Honemann's essay, "Der Beitrag der mittelalterlichen Schachtraktate zur Beschreibung und Deutung der menschlichen Gesellschaft," focuses by and large on Jacobus, but he does in his conclusion widen his scope to other medieval allegories such as the Roman de la rose. Then, Oliver Plessow, in "Kulturelle Angleichung und Werteuniversalismus in den Schachzabelbüchern des Mittelalters," presents an exhaustively documented study of the cultural impact of Jacobus and his German translator Konrad von Ammenhausen. He pushes analysis further than many other contributors by considering both structure and content in Jacobus as well as regionalism in the work of the Genoan Dominican friar.
Gösta Hedegård's 60-page study, "Jacobus de Cessolis' Sources: The Case of Valerius Maximus," provides a very in depth look into one of Jacobus' possible sources. The article is both well documented and persuasively argued. After reviewing previous research on his topic and pointing out parallels between Jacobus and Vincent de Beauvais' Speculum maius, the author turns to the work of Valerius Maximus. Building upon the 1975 dissertation of Jean-Michel Mehl ("Jeu d'échecs et éducation au 13ème siècle--recherches sur le 'Liber de moribus,'" Université des sciences humaines de Strasbourg), Hedegård sets forth his case through myriad examples of seeing Valerius as well as other texts such as the Breviloquium de virtutibus of John of Wales. The very weight of the evidence he cites makes his argument compelling.
After Hedegård's piece, the reader comes upon the only essay in French, Jean-Michel Mehl's "Justice et administration d'après le Liber de moribus de Jacques de Cessoles." This concise study aims to cull from the Liber Jacobus' possible thoughts on political structure by closely reading the Dominican's description of the alphin and roch. Mehl is adamant that he is not trying to make a political philosopher out of Jacobus, and his anxiety in this regard puzzles this reviewer somewhat as the political ramifications of the Liber are quite obvious. The reader will then come upon three very complete studies that further testify to Jacobus' influence in the German--and Swedish-speaking worlds. In Pamela Kalning's "Der Ritter auf dem Schachbrett: Ritterliche Tugenden im Schachzabelbuch Konrads von Ammenhausen," the author undertakes a comparative analysis of the knight in both Jacobus and Konrad, concluding with a detail section on Konrad's expansions upon knightly virtue. Gender issues come Maren Jönsson's "Von tugendhaften Königinnen und neugierigen Ehefrauen: Weiblich Genderentwürfe in deutsch- und schwedischsprachigen Schachzabelbüchern." Finally, in "Schacktavelslek: An International Bestseller and its adaptation into Swedish," co-editor Olle Ferm demonstrates how the translation of Jacobus' Liber was not only a linguistic act, but also a cultural one, as the content is altered to conform better to the Swedish cultural landscape of the time.
In the penultimate contribution, "Von den Rochen--Die Richter in 'Goldenen Spiel' des Dominikaners Meister Ingold," Marja Kolde-Loges looks at the image of the judge (or rook in this allegory) in the 15th-century chess text that figures in her title. Her study is copiously documented. She not only touches the structure of the chapter on judges but also runs down each and every example in the chapter in order to draw comparisons among them and to other chess texts.
Finally, with the last essay, the editors include a contribution focused on another game allegory. Arne Jönsson's "Card-playing as a Mirror of Society: On Johannes of Rheinfelden's Ludus cartularum moralisatus." Like the Liber or Golden Game treated elsewhere in the volume, Johannes' Ludus cartularum offers its reader various exempla on moral duty, and Jönsson's article gives a basic overview of the work's structure and content. As the work is much less known than the other allegorical works under scrutiny in other essays, perhaps scholars in the field will find the short essay useful. Readers interested in chess and medieval society in general are well served by the volume. It is a pity, though, that its availability is so limited. At the time of writing, over two years after the book was published, a search on WorldCat turns up seven libraries worldwide where the book is held, and only one, Harvard University, is in North America.