Customer Reviews

Handbook for William (Medieval Texts in Translation)

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Dhuoda's Handbook (written for her teenaged son William, who was effectively a hostage at the time)is a wonderful source for anyone interested in women and children in the Middle Ages. This fine translation is very readable, and gives us a look into the emotional world of a mother separated from her child - her fear, concern, anguish, pride, resentment, and resignation.

For students of history, the book has a great deal to show us, from Dhuoda's evident high level of education to the occasional fascinating details of her life story. Incidentally, this book also puts the lie to those historians who have claimed from time to time that medieval people did not grow attached to their children, or even that they did not love them! Although we know from other sources that Dhuoda's son's life did not end happily, we know little about Dhuoda herself beyond this book. In short, Dhuoda's viewpoint is a powerful and important one, and is easily accessible to the modern reader.

Idle things to consider: her husband was Bernard of Septimania. Septimania! How can you go wrong with toponymy like that?

Handbook for William is a delightful, fascinating, and (yes, I'll say it) touching text. It has an almost fantastic (as in the genre) quality to it. Dhuoda is of interest to anyone with a taste for Carolingian Studies (a Radisson ballroom-sized group of people, I imagine), or in any number of medieval disciplines (women's studies, family life, religion, etc.)

The book it most closely reminds me of-- in overall flavor, rather than content-- is The Book of Margery Kempe. It has that same intimacy, that same semi-confessional, semi-conversational flavor. Considering it is basically a very long letter written from a mother to her teenage son, one can expect that. Over a thousand years later, Dhuoda comes across as an actual human being (not merely an Historical Personage of Some Note) and, because of the "handbook" aspect of her work, you're not constantly evaluating her motives (e.g., Caesar's "Conquest of Gaul")

Her concern for her husband (a traitor to the King!) and children (held hostage!), her own declining health, her isolation and loneliness, her desire to both aide her children and leave something of worth behind... it is very provacative. Her notions of what a boy should know are also fascinating, touching on everything from "how to suck up to the king even though he's probably going to kill you," her weird Christian Mysticism and numerological obsessions, and even her pride in her learning and the quality of her work reveal things about the late Empire that are not covered anywhere else (e.g., what a woman of high social status would know and what she'd teach her children). There is even a faint whiff of "hey this is pretty good, other people should check this out." That sense not only makes you "like" her, it makes it a little amusing when she's wrong about things, too. Thoroughly great stuff, easy to read, and food for thought on intellectual and emotional levels, historical and philosophical levels, all sorts of levels.

This translation is excellent, and the book is good quality. Buy it, read it, tell your friends. Dhuoda deserves a more widespread fame.