Nicholas D. Brodie

The Chivalric Biography of Boucicaut, Jean II le Meingre eds. by Craig Taylor and Jane H. M. Taylor (review)

Sokolov’s ambitious book establishes a previously overlooked medieval influence on early modern Petrarchan poets. Although fascinating, the poetic link often appears tenuous. With each chapter starting with a fresh area of in-depth research, Sokolov goes to great lengths to make his thesis convincing. Despite this criticism, Renaissance Texts, Medieval Subjectivities: Rethinking Petrarchan Desire from Wyatt to Shakespeare is a thought-provoking and entertaining study with many important insights. Therefore, the wide-ranging research will stimulate fresh debate on early modern Petrarchan poetry. It is also valuable to students and academics interested in early modern religion, economy, melancholy, Anglo-Scottish sovereignty, legal practices, pathology, and the notion of a medieval Shakespeare. fraNK swaNNacK, University of Salford

Other picture boards in Van Diemen’s Land: The recovery of lost illustrations of frontier violence and relationships

Art history is replete with works whose prior existence is affirmed only by text, most commonly through titles and descriptions in catalogues, but also by passing mentions in other sources. A significant Australian colonial illustration of this phenomenon of textually surviving lost art concerns ‘Several Paintings on Panel’, described in detail by a colonial witness, which depict scenes intended to convey government messages to Indigenous Tasmanians during the Vandemonian War. These descriptions do not match the better known and frequently reproduced Tasmanian Picture Boards, typified in Figure 1, which survive in several archives around the world and have been the subject of considerable study and commentary. Their iconographical recovery is, we argue, an important correction to the imagery of frontier relations in 1820s and 1830s Van Diemen’s Land specifically and colonial Australia more generally.

Power and Rural Communities in Al‑Andalus: Ideological and Material Representations eds. by Adela Fábregas and Flocel Sabaté (review)

It is unhelpful to imagine the contours of a different book while reviewing the one that exists, but it is undeniable that if Eggert’s subject matter were to be treated by an historian or a scholar of Western esotericism, the results would likely be more convincing. While her book is well written, intelligent, and interesting to read, for this reader at least, the sweeping argument proposed is not effectively vindicated by the evidence adduced to support it, and the term ‘disknowledge’ itself does not seem warranted. However, scholars of early modern English literature may well find the book productive of new readings of well-known texts. carole m. cusack, The University of Sydney

Sir Edward Coke and the Reformation of the Laws: Religion, Politics and Jurisprudence, 1578–1616 by David Chan Smith (review)

Barker College. Semler describes in particular the initiative of ‘Bard Blitz’, in which system creatures from both school and university settings, students and teachers, came together to explore ways of promoting a deeper engagement with Shakespeare’s texts than is usual in high school environments so often beset with the dysfunctions of system logic. In Chapters 4 and 5, Semler describes another attempt at the making of ardenspace, this time in the teaching of a particular unit (on Marlowe) at the University of Sydney. Here, the focus was on strategies for encouraging ‘an authentic personal encounter with Marlowe’s texts’, beyond merely a cognitive engagement with the scholarly debates about his work. These chapters show, compellingly, how such personal encounters (and their meaning as ‘learning’) can be invalidated in university classrooms as much by system-attuned students as by system-attuned lecturers. The central concept here is what Semler calls ‘the band of perceived relevance’ (p. 98), that shapes, like a discourse, what is and is not worth talking about. To expand ‘learning’ so as to explore ‘beyond the band’ and discover the sort of personal–rational encounters with literature that are suppressed by system logics of different kinds operating in educational institutions is elsewhere described lyrically as ‘petrol poured on talent and beauty on desire’ (p. 32). This is a short book, but it is extremely rich. Some may find its theorising language heavy-handed, though I found that it suited the style of argument and its humorous, anecdotal style is perfectly suited to the ‘Shakespeare Now!’ series. The book’s strength lies in combining a personal and reasonable exhortation to an urgent revision of what ‘learning’ can be with a refusal to simplify the issue into merely a matter of resistance. The voice/s that speak here recognise that ‘there is no entirely fresh start for system creatures and no easy road for exiles’ (p. 129). The ‘imperative’ rather is ‘that we use our humanity and imagination to rediscover potential in learning – outside, inside and between systems’ (p. 130). That is surely an important goal if we are to articulate afresh to succeeding generations, and before it is too late, what literary studies uniquely offer.

Manuscript Miscellanies in Early Modern England ed. by Joshua Eckhardt and Daniel Starza Smith (review)

(erroneously, Dockray-Miller concludes) as the donor of the Abbey’s most prized possession, the relic of the Holy Blood. Dockray-Miller describes Judith as a ‘middle-tier aristocrat’, who ‘consciously and successfully deployed artistic patronage as a cultural strategy in her political and marital manoeuvres in the eleventh-century European political theatre’ (p. 2). Despite the failed campaigns of her two husbands, Dockray-Miller argues, Judith’s strategy of asserting her social status through artistic patronage was successful, and allowed her to overcome any implications of defeat. Noticeably, Judith’s wealth seems to have served more to assert her own social status than to shore up the power and prestige of her successive husbands. Dockray-Miller argues persuasively that she gave the Monte Casino Gospels to the Dowager Empress Agnes in 1072 to supplement Welf’s diplomacy. But Judith is not known to have donated any of her treasures to Weingarten Abbey during her lifetime, despite its close links with Welf’s dynasty. Durham, according to Symeon, received many splendid gifts from Tostig, as well as from Judith, but only one of these, a set of gold and silver crucifixion sculptures, is described as a joint donation. So, too, Judith’s gospel books were designed for display in her household and private chapel, although, to understand their full effect, we probably need to recall St Margaret of Scotland’s habit of carrying her favourite gospel book in public. As Dockray-Miller points out, the gospel book depictions of Judith contrast markedly with analogous contemporary portraits, which depict married couples as co-donors. Nor is there any evidence that Judith aided Tostig’s bid for the English throne, even though her wealth derived from Tostig’s treasury, as well as from her father. Perhaps the explanation for the individualistic nature of her patronage, and for the autonomous manner in which she is said to have contracted her marriage to Welf IV, is her independent possession of a significant amount of portable wealth. Perhaps, too, the possession and donation of portable treasures, rather than land, was not only characteristic of ‘middle-tier’ aristocrats but the practical choice of ruling-class women like Judith whose marital alliances took them far from home into foreign lands.

Reassessing 27 Henry VIII, c.25 and Tudor welfare: Changes and continuities in context

The English Parish Rate for the relief of the poor was first instituted by statute in 1536. Scholars of English welfare have seen in this a great discontinuity with the statute of 1531, and have suggested the 1536 Act was the product of humanist thinking about the nature of poverty. Humanist features have long been attributed, in particular, to a draft bill of 1535, seemingly bolstering this argument. The bill was seen as ahead of its time, explaining the Act’s apparent failure. This article revises these interpretations of the 1530s legislation, seeking to align scholarly understanding of the 1530s legislation with continental scholarship of welfare reforms, scholarship of English humanism, and the growing body of research that shows continuities in local practices and attitudes from the late medieval period regarding poverty and the poor. It does this through a revision of the broader legislative context, and through situating the 1535 draft in closer relationship to the legislation passed and contemporary repair works underway at Dover harbour.

The Latin Religious Orders in Medieval Greece, 1204–1500 by Nickiphoros I. Tsougarakis (review)

Review(s) of: The Latin religious orders in medieval Greece, 1204-1500 (Medieval Church Studies, 18), by Tsougarakis, Nickiphoros I., Turnhout, Brepols, 2012, hardback, pp. xxiv, 394, 5 b/w illustrations, 7 b/w line art, R.R.P. 100.00, ISBN 9782503532295.

Poverty and Prosperity in the Middle Ages and Renaissance by Cynthia Kosso and Anne Scott, eds (review)

throughout the play. After all, this is comedy with a clear ideological lesson, and for all his hilarity, Maldonado champions free will and responsible individual choice as the key to happiness both for the individual and for society at large. Credit must go to editors Warren S. Smith and Clark Colahan for the beautiful presentation of the original Latin text of this essential text, together with Maldonado’s own footnotes and marginalia, while also providing an excellent English translation and a succinct but useful introduction to Maldonado’s play. Carles Gutiérrez-Sanfeliu School of Languages and Comparative Cultural Studies The University of Queensland

Approaching the Holy Mountain: Art and Liturgy at St Catherine's Monastery in the Sinai ed. by Sharon E. J. Gerstel and Robert S. Nelson (review)

on, for example, Freud, Lacan, Fradenburg, and Žižek. And the approach is compelling. Edmondson draws on such concepts as jouissance, Nebensmensch, the Freudian ‘Thing’, desire, the Other, and the Lacanian second (symbolic) death to deliver a challenging framework for his exploration into textual neighbourliness. At times quite dense, ultimately the book is an exercise in negotiating theory. This reviewer is still struggling with the array of jouissances (for the first chapter alone: Cresseid’s, the Narrator’s, Henryson’s – each jouissance differing in respect of their own specific categories of neighbouring) and the seeming paradox (described also as ambivalence – whose?) in jouissance as pleasure, as burden, and as suffering. Indeed, this complexity itself implies an ideal reader who shares the specialized ‘in’ psychoanalytic knowledge fundamental to the argument. But (and I am not speaking here as an expert) I wonder if Edmondson’s use of psychoanalysis is not at times a trifle over wrought. Nevertheless, this is a valuable contribution to the field and a book that well repays deep engagement, critique, and debate, for there is a level of erudition here that is not easy to put to one side, and which calls out for further discussion. But its strength is also its weakness. The density of critique can itself be a disincentive to the interested but time-poor reader, and the publisher’s reliance on endnotes results in a constant and annoying shuffle to get to the depth and fullness of Edmondson’s argument.

Law and sovereignty in the middle ages and the renaissance [Book Review]

Review(s) of: Law and sovereignty in the middle ages and the renaissance, by Sturges, Robert S., ed., Arizona Studies in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance 28, Turnhout, Brepols, 2011, hardback, pp. xviii, 302, 13 b/w illustrations, R.R.P. 70.00, ISBN 9782503533094.