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JOHN-HENRY WILSON CLAY, ‘Gift-giving and books in the letters of St Boniface and Lul’, Journal of Medieval History, 35, 2009, pp. 313-325.

Abstract: The Anglo-Saxon missionary and archbishop St Boniface (d.754) and Lul, his protégé and successor in the see of Mainz (d.768), left behind a rich collection of letters that has become an invaluable source in our understanding of Boniface’s mission. This article examines the letters in order to elucidate the customs of gift-giving that existed between those who were involved in the mission, whether directly or as external supporters. It begins with a brief overview of anthropological models of gift-giving, followed by a discussion of the portrayal of gift-giving in Anglo-Saxon literature. Two features of the letters of Boniface and Lul are then examined — the giving of gifts and the giving of books — and a crucial distinction between them revealed. Although particular customs of gift-giving between the missionaries and their supporters were well established, and indeed bore some resemblance to ‘secular’ gift-giving customs depicted in Anglo-Saxon poetry, books, while exchanged frequently, were consistently excluded from the ritualised structures of gift-giving. A dual explanation for this phenomenon is proposed: first, that books were of greater practical importance to the mission than other forms of gifts; second, that their status as sacred texts rendered them unsuitable for inclusion within rituals that depended upon the giver emphatically belittling the material worth of their own gift.

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CARL GUSTAV JUNG, The Red Book, edited by Sonu Shamdasani, and translated by Mark Kyburz, John Peck and Sonu Shamdasani, New York 2009 (W. W. Norton). The full facsimile: 404 pages, $ 195.00.

«The years, of which I have spoken to you, when I pursued the inner images, were the most important time of my life. Everything else is to be derived from this. It began at that time, and the later details hardly matter anymore. My entire life consisted in elaborating what had burst forth from the unconscious and flooded me like an enigmatic stream and threatened to break me. That was the stuff and material for more than only one life. Everything later was merely the outer classification, the scientific elaboration, and the integration into life. But the numinous beginning, which contained everything, was then.» (C. G. Jung)

These are the words of the psychologist Carl Gustav Jung in 1957, referring to the decades he worked on The Red Book from 1914 to 1930. Although its existence has been known for more than eighty years, the Liber Novus or The Red Book was never published or made available to the wide audience of Jung’s students and followers. Nothing less than the central book of Jung’s oeuvre, it is being published now in a full facsimile edition with a contextual essay and notes by the noted Jung scholar Sonu Shamdasani and translated by Mark Kyburz, John Peck, and Sonu Shamdasani.

It will now be possible to study Jung’s self-experimentation through primary documentation rather than fantasy, gossip, and speculation, and to grasp the genesis of his later work. For nearly a century, such a reading has simply not been possible, and the vast literature on his life and work has lacked access to the single most important document. This publication opens the possibility of a new era in understanding Jung’s work. It provides a unique window into how he recovered his soul and constituted a psychology. It is possibly the most influential hitherto unpublished work in the history of psychology.

This exact facsimile of The Red Book reveals not only an extraordinary mind at work, but also the hand of a gifted artist and calligrapher. Interspersed among more than two hundred lovely illuminated pages are paintings whose influences range from Europe, the Middle East, and the Far East to the native art of the new world. The Red Book, much like the handcrafted Books of Hours from the Middle Ages, is unique. Both in terms of its place in Jung’s development and as a work of art, its publication is a landmark.

The Rubin Museum of Art (150 West 17th Street, New York, N.Y. 10011) exhibited the full facsimile from October 7, 2009 to February 15, 2010 (see the post Illuminating the Mind).

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SPIKE BUCKLOW, The Alchemy of Paint. Art, Science and Secrets from the Middle Ages, London - New York 2009 (Marion Boyars), 335 pages, £ 9.99.

In The Alchemy of Paint the author sets out to unravel the myths behind pigments like dragonsblood - said to be a mixture of elephant and dragon blood. Examining both the medieval palette and the often cloak-and-dagger science that created it, he uncovers the secret recipes behind luxurious colours we are familiar with today. Driven by an overriding passion for art, his aim is to restore value to colour. The purity of white is not owned by a computer manufacturer. Spike Bucklow reminds us all that our experience of colour is fundamentally a natural sensation that can verge on the divine.

Contents: Foreword (pp. 13-15); Preface (pp. 17-19); Colour: Dyes, Pigments and Metals (pp. 20-42); Ultramarine: From over the Seas (pp. 43-74); Vermilion: Towards the Philosophers’ Stone (pp. 75-108); Metallic Blues: The Powers of the Planets (pp. 109-140); Dragonsblood: The Fruit of Mortal Combat (pp. 141-172); Gold: The Riches of the Unknown (pp. 173-204); Colour: The Other Side (pp. 205-223); Vermilion: The Sublime, Crystallised (pp. 224-246); Gold: The Love that Conquers Death (pp. 247-274); The Science of Colour: Epilogue (pp. 275-281); Notes on the text (pp. 283-307); Bibliography (pp. 309-321); Glossary (pp. 323-328); and Index (pp. 329-335).       

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CARLO DIONISOTTI, Scritti di storia della letteratura italiana. II. 1963-1971, a cura di Tania Basile, Vincenzo Fera e Susanna Villari, Roma 2009 (Edizioni di storia e letteratura) (Collana: Storia e Letteratura, 253), pagine VIII + 452, € 50,00.

Indice: Piano dell’opera (p. V); Saggi contenuti nel volume II (pp. VII-VIII); Appunti sulle Rime del Sannazaro (p. 1-37); Jacopo Tolomei fra umanisti e rimatori (pp. 39-72); «Juvenilia» del Pontano (pp. 73-94); Appunti su antichi testi (pp. 95-140); Girolamo Claricio (pp. 141-171); Dante nel Quattrocento (pp. 173-212); Dante nel Rinascimento (pp. 213-220); Falconetto, l’ultima canzone di gesta italiana (p. 221); Appunti sul Bembo (pp. 223-242); Proposta per Guido Giudice (pp. 243-255); Annibal Caro e il Rinascimento (pp. 257-269); La lingua italiana da Venezia all’Europa (pp. 271-279); Il Fortunio e la filologia umanistica (pp. 281-292); Pietro Bembo e la nuova letteratura (pp. 293-304); Un opuscolo di Pier Andrea Da Verrazano per Beatrice d’Aragona (pp. 305-324); Resoconto di una ricerca interrotta (pp. 325-336); Calderini, Poliziano e altri (pp. 337-366); Una canzone sacra del periodo mantovano del Bandello (pp. 367-380); Fortuna del Boirado nel Cinquecento (pp. 381-400); Leopardi - Tommaseo - Brofferio (pp. 401-403); Per una storia delle dottrine linguistiche del Rinascimento (pp. 405-415); Europe in Sixteenth-Century Italian Literature (pp. 417-428); Filologia umanistica e testi giuridici fra Quattro e Cinquecento (pp. 429-442); Lettaratura nazionale e culture regionali in Italia (pp. 443-452).

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