Concept of Woman. Vol. 2: The Early Humanist Reformation, 1250-1500, The

Anglican Theological Review, Summer 2004 by Beckman, Patricia Z

The Concept of Woman. Vol. 2: The Early Humanist Reformation, 1250-1500. By Prudence Allen, R.S.M. Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2002. xxiv 1,161 pp. $70.00 (paper).

At over 1,000 pages, Alien's ambitious second volume is one that few will commit to read from cover to cover. To assist, Alien intersperses structural navigational points tying discrete sections to the whole. This is no mere encyclopedia of works that demonstrate "philosophical arguments or theories directly relating to the concept of woman," though she includes what she hopes is a complete set of examples. Rather, Alien sets forth a "genealogy of gender in western thought." With remarkable clarity, she can summon comparisons among her atypical and constructive grouping of four "communities of discourse" (academic, women's religious, satirical, and humanist).

Alien charts trends along a continuum of gender unity, complementarity, and polarity. She gets us to think about the consequences of Plato's dualism, of the core curriculum at the University of Paris, and of the turn to an introspective individual with free choice. She argues that the institutionalization of education with its concomitant Aristotelian canon reverses a monastic emphasis on complementarity in favor of polarity. Humanism (especially Christina de Pizan's, which gets the most space) then restores complementarity-a theory of gender that Alien takes as a true and just way to encourage the full thriving of all humanity.

Alien's methodological and theoretical clarity does more than map her own position. She seeks to hear what the sources themselves say, rather than to impose a twenty-first-century understanding of gender. She provides useful overviews, charts, and summaries. Anyone who has tried to maintain a comprehensive argument while unpacking diverse authors' theories will marvel.

Like many who read such a wide-ranging work, I studied with concentrated care the sections on material I know best. Within the Beguines section, I looked for a kind of barometer to gauge other sections. Here, I confess, I met concerns. Admittedly they may be the realm of the historian and not the philosopher. Alien built her case for Mechthild of Magdeburg's "philosophy of gender" on a problematic translation from an uneven edition. Thus, a confessor describes Mechthild s work as a "masculine way of writing," while the phrase may simply mean "some of these words" (hinging on a translation of "sumenlicher worten" or "sin menlicher worten"-I believe the problem stems from English translations based on Morels 9 189 69 edition, corrected in Neumann's 1990 critical edition and Tobin's 1998 translation). Only a manuscript specialist will, in the end, decide. Such details may miss the point, but they remind us that, especially when presenting grand narratives, we must draw on critical editions and excellent secondary studies. I cannot know whether similar criticisms apply to many readings of other works ranging from 750 B.C.E. to 1500 C.E., but this example may suggest caution. Or perhaps it suggests only that Alien's gendered readings encourage us to pose such detailed questions in the first place.

What Alien does best is invite: she invites us to see how men and women have always considered their own and others' gender; to assess the assumptions on which we base contemporary notions of gender, and to imagine how we might apply this study today.

PATRICIA Z. BECKMAN

University of Missouri-Columbia

Columbia, Missouri