The latest in Palgrave Macmillan's New Middle Ages series approaches an elusive subject, obliquely and opaquely referenced in medieval sources as much from the squeamishness of contemporary clerical authors as from that of later commentators. Insofar as there is a key protagonist in this text, it is Roland the Farter, or le Pettour, who held land in sergeanty in Suffolk, probably since the reign of Henry I, by the service at Christmas of a leap, a whistle, and a fart, to be executed simultaneously. Under Henry III, the service was commuted “because it was unseemly” (eo quod servicium predictum indecens fuit [169]) for a money rent. Henry III's wife, if not his mother, would have agreed. There is here a glimmer of a nugget telling us about the nature of royal courts and what mattered to these two kings. It is one of the virtues of this book that it opens up the discussion about the bawdy at court—how entertainers, often grouped together as “minstrels,” but sometimes with their specialities separately identified, were expert practitioners in a range of activities, from musicians to acrobats, dancers, and the pettours. If decorum—or prudery—held sway under Henry III, it was less so at the court of his immediate successors.

This book centers on discussion of a series of questions related to the body and its place in the medieval world, especially its “detritus, the wind, water and solids that our intestines throw out daily” (1). The text's organization consciously mimics waste, resisting order and conventional structure, directing the reader in search of such niceties to the index. The scatalogical is to be examined on its own fragmented terms. However much this conceit appeals, the sacrifice involved is a costly one, and it leads to a lack of strong themes and to unwanted repetition (e.g., the discussion of the etymology of “carminative” on pp. 33–35 and 138). This is a disappointment, as together the wide range of references on offer provide some striking illuminations of ways in which medieval men and women thought about the world and their place in it.

The fart has sensory connotations that offend both the nose and the ear. It has both a diabolical smell and a diabolical sound, quite literally. When St. Antony, on board a boat, detects a most awful and bitter smell, the boatmen attribute it to the fish and pickled meat on board; but St. Antony is right, and there is indeed on the vessel a young man possessed by a demon. To sense the smell of, or to hear the crack of the Devil's fart, both physical emanations, was to be contaminated by them. That these notions were widely understood in medieval society is crucial to our interpretation of behavior. As Valerie Allen shows, there were other, parallel layers of interpretation. There was clearly great pleasure in scatological behavior; its place in the repertoire of medieval exempla made some preachers at least sure of their crowd; and a grasp of the range of possibilities is essential to our interpretation, particularly (although not exclusively) of vernacular literature. The rudeness of flatulence, as much as coarse laughter, was the target of books of manners and courtesy: boorishness and behavior typical of the peasant—of which farting was high on the list—had no place in elegant society. Rutebeuf's fabliau, Le Pet au vilain, records a devil bringing back in a sack the wind of a peasant, rather than his soul, having mistaken his colic for his final passion: the stench is so awful that a chapter of devils the following day bans the souls of peasants from hell henceforth. In passages like this the book has most to offer, based on wide reading of literary sources. Its weaknesses, beyond its structure, include some unconvincing etymological excursions (why derive perfume [51] from Middle English fume, the excrement of deer, consulted by hunters, rather than the Latin per fumum, through smoke, i.e., referring to burning perfumes?) and some misunderstandings: obligations like carving before the lord, and holding the basin and ewer while he washed at meals were hardly frivolous. The notion that farting and defecation were (or should have been) essentially “private” acts is also open to challenge: intimate they may have been, but private in the modern sense they were not. Henry VIII's Groom of the Stole may have had what we would regard as a distasteful role, but personal service even of this kind was highly desirable and sought after by the nobility. Constant and intimate attendance on medieval and Tudor monarchs gave access to power. Nonetheless, without surveys like Valerie Allen’s, we will not be able to unravel the full significance of these elements of daily life.