Persuasive Fictions: Faction, Faith and Political Culture in the Reign of Henry VIII (review)

Reviews 267 meditative faculties to guide it according to reason, but intuitively contemplates or knows the idea. Donne brtiliantly 'makes structure 9peak' in the final sections of the 'Second Anniversary', where the soul's reason, m e m o r y and wtil become one. H e leaves behind his 'this-worldly' meditation to simulate the nature of the soul in 'otherworldly ' ecstasy. The upshot of all this that the structure of the 'Anniversaries' is analogous to the spiritual progression they articulate and the right perception of the poems is only achieved by therightreader reading rightly. As a book-length reading of the 'Anniversaries', Tayler's argument is sensible, neatly arranged and well worth reading. H e is always aware w h e n he flies in the face of current fashions, but the coherency and credibility of his interpretation of the 'Anniversaries' does much to justify his resistance to current political correctness in literary criticism. L. E. Semler Department of English and Cultural Studies Macquarie University Walker, Greg, Persuasive Fictions: Faction, Faith and Political Culture the Reign of Henry VIII, Aldershot, Scolar Press, 1996; cloth; pp. xv, 213; 19 b / w plates; R.R.P. £45.00." Thetitleof this coUection of essays is both apt and ironic. M u c h of the subject matter of this book—verse, iconography, prisoners' confessions—consists of elaborate constructs designed to persuade and even to deceive. Each of the nine essays in the volume also addresses modern historiographical fashions, such as notions of faction, the deliberate management of the royal image, and the existence of a vigorous proto-Protestantism in England before the 1530s. til Walker's hands, these persuasive ideas come to seem increasingly fictional. This book not only challenges these intellectual articles of faith, but advances alternative analyses, developing several themes across a number of different chapters. Walker's title suggests that these ideas must take their place with the other 'persuasive fictions' contained within the book. This implicitly confronts the 268 Reviews reader with a simple question: are we, in the end, persuaded by his 'fictions'? More than hah of this book has already appeared in print. One of the essays, that on John Skelton, Thomas More and the 'lost' history of the early Reformation in England, was published in a previous volume of this journal. Other essays, such as the pieces on the 'expulsion of the minions' and the heresy trial of Thomas Bilney in 1527, wtil also be familiar to many readers. The new essays include a combative introduction which launches a full-blooded attack on explanations of early Tudor politics which rely on notions of 'faction'. The targets here are E. W . Ives, David Starkey, Retha Warnicke and, especially, Joseph S. Block. Instead of seeing Henry's court as riven by factional rivalries, Walker emphasises the fluid inter-action between Henry and his leading courtiers and the 'continuing process of improvisation' by which they conducted politics. Personal rivalries and divergent views were not an impediment to Henry's actions, but a resource for better counsel and a vital means of maximising the king's space for political manoeuvre. Put bluntly, Henry was neither a puppet nor a puppet-master, but a forceful figure w h o made sure that he remained at the centre of political action. Steven Gunn has recently advanced very similar ideas elsewhere. Walker attacks easy assumptions about the provenance and purpose of royal portraiture in a new essay on the iconography of Henry VTII. H e argues that artists had a similar creative autonomy to poets and dramatists, and that there was no deliberate 'propaganda revolution' in the 1530s. Nineteen black and white plates support this argument well. For Walker, the key theme—as in his discussion of faction—is that of political negotiation, of artists and advisers seeking to counsel the king and believing that he would be receptive to their ideas. This theme is also explored in another new essay on 'the moratisation of the physical environment'. This explores the ways in which murals, hangings, inscriptions and artworks were intended to serve an educative purpose and the humanist ideals of 'counsel' which underlay this practice. Although m a n y...