Mary Hayes's book appears in a series devoted to “pluralistic studies of medieval cultures” and, as that suggests, is a product of multidisciplinary scholarship. It draws from postmodern and traditional literary theory, social history, communications studies, art history, and a wide variety of other materials for intensive analysis of a few pieces of medieval English literature that illustrate changes occurring in two periods of transition in Western religious history: the move from paganism to the Christian era and the shift from clerical primacy in the High Middle Ages to the increasing independence of the laity in the era of Reformation. Its intent is to illuminate how human beings speak and hear a god's voice.

The “divine ventriloquism” of the book's title takes many forms: recitation or re-enactment of scripture, liturgical formulae, sermonizing, religious instruction, prophecy, and even activities that do not use the voice or what is usually regarded as speech (that is, examples of articulate flatulence in the works of Chaucer). Acts of divine ventriloquism raise the issue of authority—of who has the right to mediate the divine voice and the accuracy of the message. As the pagan idols who responded to queries through established oracles gave way to the invisible Christian God who, as John's Gospel stated, acted and was known through “the Word,” the right to ventriloquize Him became a contentious issue. The result, Hayes claims, was “a story of power, anxiety, and subversion centered on the divine voice” (2) which unfolds across the medieval era. She warns against overemphasis on the “iconocentric” nature of medieval worship and argues for the importance of an aural/oral component in the pious practices of the period. The conclusion to which she comes is that the Reformation was less a revolution (in other words, “a break with an allegedly uniform and unquestioned medieval devotion,”) than a development “prepared for by a more subtle and less violent process of evolution” (194).

Half of Hayes's book draws on Old English texts and half on late medieval sources. It is divided into three sections. The first, “Powerful Fantasies of Christ's Voice,” illustrates ways in which the divine voice might be ventriloquized. Chapter 1, “The Talking Dead,” uses riddles from The Exeter Book to explain how holy objects (like the Bible, a chalice, and so forth) spoke for Christ through reader and priest. Chapter 2, “Christ's Lips Move,” centers on Andreas, a legend of St. Andrew from the tenth-century Vercelli Book. It explores the problem of recognizing the authentic voice. Ventriloquized voices lack confirmation by the visible presence of their imputed source, but Andrew's adventures suggest that the power and integrity of the divine voice can be recognized no matter its mode of mediation. There is, however, the possibility that error might be introduced into ventriloquized speech, and this concern is addressed in the book's second section, “Anxiety and the Clerical Voice.” Chapter 3, “The Master's Voice,” draws on Anglo-Saxon texts associated with Alfred the Great and sermons by Aelfric of Enysham to discuss the case that was made for the power of the priest as “God's messenger” in the pulpit and at the altar. The development of respect for the clergy and their sacramental authority was essential for the organization of the Church's parish system. And Hayes examines how both words and silence functioned as ventriloquism for medieval Christians (such as, the listener's silence, the heart's silent testimony against the sinner). Chapter 4, “Cursed Speakers,” shifts the book's attention to the later Middle Ages, when the Church's successful promotion of priestly authority began to spawn opposition from an increasingly critical and emboldened laity. Here Hayes turns to The Canterbury Tales. She claims that Chaucer pays “significant attention” to “the ventriloquial nature of religious worship” and that his concern was both for the integrity of priestly spokesmen and the consequences of lay appropriation of sacred words. Concern for the abuse or distortion of the words of consecration had established use of the “silent Canon” and resistance to vernacular translations, but the priestly monopoly of sacred texts was fading. Hayes takes up this development in the closing section of her book, “Lay Subversion in the Eucharistic Canon.” Chapter 5, “Belly Speech,” reads Chaucer's The Friar's Tale as a parody of the Mass. Hayes suggests that the fart, which Friar John receives as an offering from Thomas, a layman, “represents the various significances that were ascribed to the silent Canon” (155), among which is “the failure of any human speech to address the divine” (156). In Hayes's final chapter, “Playing the Prophet,” she turns her attention to the N-Town Passion Play I and its staging of the Last Supper as a medieval Mass. By speaking Christ's words of consecration, actors provided their audiences with an alternative to listening for God's voice in the “sacred silence” (196) of the Church's silent Canon, an option that was to triumph in the Reformation.

At a time of surging fundamentalism in American society, Hayes has chosen an important subject for her study. The issue of what it means to mediate God's word(s) needs the kind of serious attention that Hayes brings to it. Some readers (particularly among historians) may find the postmodern literary theories that inform the book (and the writing style associated with them) heavy going. But even those who are not sympathetic with all the book's arguments will find it informative.