The Monstrous Middle Ages. Edited by Bettina Bildhauer and Robert Mills. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003. Pp. xiv + 236. $50 (cloth); $21.95 (paper).

The ten chapters that comprise this volume simultaneously touch upon and wonder over monstrosities, at times even in the most unlikely of places. Beginning with the appropriately entitled "Conceptualizing the Monstrous," Bettina Bildhauer and Robert Mills examine the recent work done in monster studies and articulate the overall goals of their edited volume—namely, to let the monsters tell their own stories, to introduce questions about the purpose and function of monsters in the Middle Ages, and to trouble the popular definition of monstrosity. Although Bildhauer and Mills's complicated reading of two pictorials—one of "Lionel, the Lion- Faced Boy" (ca.1900) and the second of a lion-human hybrid from a manuscript pictorial in Cotton MS Tiberius B.v. or Wonders of the East (ca.1025–50)—promises a more theoretical approach than those produced in the other contributors' writing, The Monstrous Middle Ages nevertheless succeeds in its goals.

Miriamne Ara Krummel
University of Dayton