Sybil M. Jack

The Last Days of the Smaller Monasteries in England

The dissolution of the monasteries in England was a dramatic action which both at the time and since has captured popular imagination. A persisting myth pictures the monks turned out by the agents of Henry VIII departing, slowly chanting, into the snow-bound countryside which shrouded their later fate from human eyes. Historians, who have been equally drawn to the subject, have given the picture a different slant. The story of the suppression has been fitted into a wider background of fast-moving religious and secular change in the decade 1530 to 1540, and can be seen as one of a number of moves which were designed at once to strengthen the kings control over the Church and to improve his finances. By 1536, indeed, the religious were already accustomed to the passage of royal commissioners and had had the power of the crown brought forcibly home to them by a number of direct royal interventions in matters of internal monastic discipline.

Edmund Campion: A Scholarly Life by Gerard Kilroy (review)

extended Danby family’s dispute over a will and the division of property for the ways that reputations were built and lost over the use and abuse of family estates. Another extended family case study is presented by Katie Barclay who uses the letters of Dorothy Salisbury, a servant of the Duke of Hamilton in the early eighteenth century, who had had to leave the Duke’s household when she became pregnant outside of marriage. While away, she wrote a series of letters to other servants and members of the household. This unusually full letter series allows Barclay to conduct a fascinating study into the ways that gossip reinforced the ties of intimacy within these large households. This important volume sheds new light on the subject of reputation, talk, and public opinion in early modern European societies, and how contemporaries used them, and does so from a wide range of angles and disciplines. Each essay is supported by a bibliography that will be useful to students and scholars alike.

Catholic Reformation in Protestant Britain by Alexandra Walsham (review)

the early 1500s. Annie Sutherland and C. M. MacRobert both consider the ways polemic was deployed in fierce debates over the vernacular translation of scripture, the former in late medieval England and the latter in sixteenthcentury Muscovy. Sean Curran’s contribution uncovers polemic in the unexpected genre of the motet. Curran’s original and intriguing analysis suggests that polemic could be expressed in and enhanced by musical devices, and used as a way to guide the performing clerics to recognise and amend their own corruption. Polemic is a richly realised collection that is a model of interdisciplinary scholarship. It contributes significantly not only to our understanding of polemic and linguistic violence in a broad range of past social, cultural, and political contexts, but also provides invaluable historical context for modern debates about polemic, ‘hate speech’, and its ethical consequences.

Animals and Early Modern Identity ed. by Pia F. Cuneo (review)

In Part III, ‘Birthing Habsburgs’, María Cruz de Carlos Varona examines the visual and material culture of maternity, from votive images to fertility amulets, that permeated the court and placed pressure on its women to fulfil their reproductive duties. Two studies of the maternal authority developed by Mariana of Austria as regent for Carlos II of Spain provide the bridge to Part IV, ‘Visual and Sartorial Politics’. Firstly, Silvia Z. Mitchell reassesses the achievements of Mariana’s regency against an unfavourable historiography, situating her power within contemporary legal structures, appropriate cultural values, and her determined personality. Mercedes Llorente then analyses Mariana’s portraiture, in which she kept herself visibly present as a ruler depicted seated at her work desk, reprising visual cues of power adopted by Philip II. Laura Oliván Santaliestra shifts focus to sartorial politics with a fascinating essay on the body politics of dress, gesture, etiquette, and image by which the French princess Isabel de Borbón became a Spanish Habsburg queen. Cordula van Wyhe contributes the final study of the range of designs, styles, and fabrics of religious clothing chosen by Habsburg men and women to present their spirituality with subtly varied nuances of continued engagement with the world. The essays are of a consistently high standard, showing varying degrees of engagement with recent gender scholarship. All finish with a discrete bibliography, making them convenient stand-alone texts to set for student readings. Many of the volume’s findings will also pertain to women in other early modern contexts, yet in some aspects the particularities of this dynasty’s concerns and operations are unique. As more is published about these important women, the broader nature of female political behaviour at this period can be teased out in nuanced and exciting ways.

The Last Judgement in Medieval Preaching ed. by Thom Mertens et al. (review)

is that Jonson uses mind-travelling to educate his audience in Englishness, history, and morality. By contrast, Heywood had actually travelled abroad. In many of his plays, McInnis finds that Heywood uses the concept of travel as a fantasy of escape or indulgence for his characters. Chapter 4 tackles McInnis’s twin concerns of ‘mind-travelling at the theatre and the staging of voyage drama’ (p. 123). He finds in Richard Brome’s The Antipodes an ideal play to extend his argument. Contrary to many critics who see only satire in Brome’s play, McInnis argues ‘that The Antipodes should be regarded as one of the most accomplished early modern travel plays’ (p. 124). Through its protagonist Peregrine, he claims the play focuses on mindtravelling rather than physical travel. Peregrine’s reading of The Travels of Sir John Mandeville leads to an enhanced appreciation of the over-familiar home, and the life-changing qualities that a change of scenery can offer. In Chapter 5, McInnis investigates the correlation between painted scenery in the theatre and sightseeing abroad. He examines these similarities in plays by William Davenant, Saint Évremond, Sir Robert Howard, and John Dryden. Of particular interest is the Periaktoi, a revolving prism that could depict three different scenes. McInnis, though, is at pains to point out that painted scenery ‘acts as a form of external memory’ to aid the playgoer’s imagination rather than replace it (p. 161). Chapter 6 examines Aphra Behn’s The Widow Ranter and Oroonoko. McInnis finds in Behn’s voyage dramas a reinvention of older genres with which to address New World issues. Tragicomedy is used to depict English colonisation in terms ‘of the domesticated exotic, not the colonised exotic’ (p. 193). In the conclusion, McInnis argues for a reconsideration of voyage drama as a genre in its own right. He claims theatrical travel made sightseeing popular before overseas travel became available to the masses. McInnis provides an important new insight into how travel was regarded in the early modern period. A strange omission from the bibliography is John Gillies’s Shakespeare and the Geography of Difference (Cambridge University Press, 1994) that seems appropriate to McInnis’s thesis. Even so, MindTravelling and Voyage Drama in Early Modern England is a ground-breaking study that will appeal to students and academics alike.

Writing Royal Entries in Early Modern Europe ed. by Marie-Claude Canova-Green, Jean Andrews, and Marie-France Wagner (review)

Review(s) of: Writing royal entries in early modern Europe (early European research, 3), by Canova-Green, Marie-Claude, Jean Andrews, and Marie-France Wagner, eds, (Early European Research, 3), Turnhout, Brepols, 2013, hardback, pp. xviii, 420, 1 colour, 17 b/w illustrations, 1 b/w table, 1 b/w line art, R.R.P. 115.00, ISBN 9782503536026.

George Buchanan: Political Thought in Early Modern Britain and Europe by Caroline Erskine and Roger A. Mason, eds (review)

Review(s) of: George Buchanan: Political thought in early modern Britain and Europe, by Erskine, Caroline and Roger A. Mason, eds, (St Andrews Studies in Reformation History), Farnham, Ashgate, 2012, hardback, pp. 342, 6 b/w illustrations, R.R.P. 65.00 pounds, ISBN 9780754662389.

Medieval Legal Process: Physical, Spoken and Written Performance in the Middle Ages ed. by Marco Mostert and P. S. Barnwell (review)

Review(s) of: Medieval legal process: Physical, spoken and written performance in the middle ages, by Mostert, Marco and P. S. Barnwell, eds, (Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy, 22), Turnhout, Brepols, 2011; hardback; pp. ix, 299; 5 b/w illustrations, 5 b/w tables; R.R.P. 85.00; ISBN 9782503541747.

Court poetry in Late Medieval England and Scotland: Allegories of authority [Book Review]

Review(s) of: Court poetry in Late Medieval England and Scotland: Allegories of authority, by Hasler, Antony J., (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature, 80), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2011, hardback, pp. 268, R.R.P. 55.00 pounds, ISBN 9780521809573.

Birthing bodies in early modern France: Stories of gender and reproduction [Book Review]

Review(s) of: Birthing bodies in early modern France: Stories of gender and reproduction, by Read, Kirk D., (Women and Gender in the Early Modern World), Farnham, Ashgate, 2011, hardback; pp. xiii, 205, 14 b/w illustrations, R.R.P. 55.00 pounds, ISBN 9780754666325.