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  • Cultural Capitals: Early Modern London and Paris
  • Tracey Hill
Karen Newman . Cultural Capitals: Early Modern London and Paris. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007. xii + 200 pp. index. illus. map. $35. ISBN: 978-0-691-12754-5.

Chapter 1 of Cultural Capitals begins with an anecdote in a style that reminds one immediately of the dominant mode of Greenblatt, Montrose, et al in the 1980s: "On April 29, 1665, the architect and sculptor Bernini left Rome for Paris" (11). By defending the "hermeneutic practice" of new historicism from Fredric Jameson, Karen Newman may teasingly imply that hers too is a new historicist methodology, but this nomination undersells her book. Indeed, the occasional citation of new historicism becomes an unnecessary weak flank. I would certainly dispute the claim that new historicism "has prompted work not only on . . . Jonson [End Page 1435] but . . . [also] Heywood, Middleton, and others" (92): critics of this tenor were bardolaters to a (wo)man — and since when was Margot Heinemann (see 177, n.1) a new historicist?

Despite this, Newman's handsomely produced volume is a true work of cultural history: wide-ranging and purposefully interdisciplinary. As such it can be usefully read alongside Emily Cockayne's Hubbub, another recent work of great scope which uncovers hitherto neglected aspects of urban life. In addition, it is scholarly and well-informed, and written with lucidity and style.

Newman boldly attempts to locate the beginnings of the "ways of thinking, believing, and acting that we have come to call modern" in the early modern city (5). She offers a densely-argued but valuable critique of the ways in which cultural theory — and cultural geography in particular — has conceptualized space, time, and place. Her book thereby utilizes the insights of writers like Lefebvre, Foucault, and de Certeau, although as a revisionist (of sorts) I was glad to see her cautious proviso — which in itself marks how far scholarship has advanced from the days of new historicism — that "what we seek in the past is always an object that cannot be found, [and] that grand narratives are provisional and partial" (7). Newman reads (relatively) canonical texts such as Donne's satires and the plays and poems of Jonson alongside Stow's Survey, maps, and the popular texts, like ballads, that were a ubiquitous feature of metropolitan culture. Her resultant emphasis on "everyday urban life," and her willingness to embrace diverse topics ranging from bridges to walking to death, are highly instructive.

In such a cornucopia of a book I did note a few errors, which might derive in part from the large expanse of ocean that separates Newman from her locales: Julia Merritt has become male (163 n. 51); the walls of London did not readily "mark off ritual boundaries" in all the ways in which Newman posits (25); she claims that English monarchs explicitly avoided using London Bridge during royal entries when the bridge was not part of any ritual route in this period (56); and Munday's (first) "continuation" of Stow's Survey was published in 1618, not 1615 (23). At times her readings needed more direct quotation from the contemporary texts rather than, for instance, Munday via Manley or Dekker via Twyning. When she uses Early English Books Online, she does not (or could not?) provide page references from the text so accessed (see 27 and 164 n. 65); similarly, no reference at all is provided for a lengthy quotation from Samuel Purchas (31–32; repeated on 111–12). I did wonder why, of all early modern playwrights, she chose Shakespeare — surely one of the most indifferent to the City — for sustained discussion. I was also a little puzzled by the assertion that "urban historians have largely ignored the early modern city" (3): surely the extensive body of scholarship cited here has already disproved this?

To an extent these are quibbles. Newman has produced a stimulating, thoroughly illustrated account of these capital cities at a time when both were on the brink of major change. Indeed, one of the innovative aspects of this book is precisely this juxtaposition. In bringing early modern London and Paris together [End Page 1436] so productively, she has, as she intended, made...

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