"Wemmers’ Victimology: A Canadian Perspective is essential reading for those interested in victims of crime in all their dynamism – theoretically, politically, and within the disciplines. However, Wemmers takes this further by providing a powerful analysis of structural and institutional reform, through the emerging human rights instruments that place victim rights firmly on the policy agenda. Bringing together a volume of this kind is no small feat, internationally significant, but with obvious relevance to those especially interested in Canada’s justice response."
Elizabeth L’Estrange, University of Birmingham, Renaissance Quarterly
"Deborah McGrady’s analysis of patronage practices during the last quarter of the fourteenth century and the first quarter of the fifteenth, as evidenced not only by authorial dedications and presentation miniatures but also archival records, texts themselves, and manuscript witnesses, offers keen insight into the politically fraught institution hiding behind the nostalgic idea of medieval mecenat."
S.C. Kaplan, Rice University, French Studies
"Deborah McGrady’s rich, meticulously researched, and lucidly written monograph addresses this surprising gap in modern studies of late medieval book communities. She shows that the decades surrounding Charles V’s translation project constitute a crucial moment of change in medieval patronage practices, characterized by a tension between spontaneous artistic expressions freely offered by the poet and transactional commissions undertaken for the pleasure of the patron."
Julie Slinger, Washington University in St. Louis, H-France Review
"The Writer’s Gift or the Patron’s Pleasure? Makes important contributions to the fields of literary studies, economic history, art history, and the history of the material text—it is a pleasure to read and a gift to the scholarly community."
Sarah Wilma Watson, Speculum, Vol. 96, No. 2
"The Writer's Gift or the Patron's Pleasure? is a much-awaited book, in the sense that medieval French studies has been waiting for someone to grasp the nettle of patronage practices in a strongly conceptualised, integrated and comparative way, looking across successive Valois reigns, between different important authors of the period. The Writer's Gift or the Patron's Pleasure? is definitely worth this wait, and is hugely impressive for what it achieves conceptually and materially."
Helen Swift, Medieval and Modern Languages, St Hilda’s College, Oxford
"The Writer's Gift or the Patron's Pleasure? brings together a number of centres of interest. The most immediately obvious, of course, is patronage studies. But it also adds an important chapter to our knowledge of the life of Charles V. Although his status as a patron of literary translation has long been noted, this study brings our understanding of the king’s project to a new level."
Tracy Adams, Department of French, University of Auckland
