Novel and Society in Elizabethan England by David Margolies (review)

Book Reviews107 least, that agonizing self consciousness which is the hallmark of the deconstructionist critic clearly leads to a healthy form of disenchantment rather than simply another abyss. JOHN RAMAGE Montana State University DAVID MARGOLIES. Novel and Society in Elizabethan England. Totowa, N.J.: Barnes and Noble Books, 1985. 196 p. David Margolies' study of the Elizabethan novel reflects the current interest in a broader social spectrum in the sixteenth century than that in earlier studies of fiction. Among the works included, those by John LyIy are probably the only ones composed explicitly in terms of court readers, and even they became of interest to the bourgeoisie. Although Sidney's Arcadia also was (in addition to being in some sense a popular form), aimed primarily at aristocratic readers, much of the other fiction of the period was not. Margolies points out that such writers often addressed "gentlemen" readers, but with a clear understanding that most of them had only gentlemanly pretensions. Richard Johnson, for example, addressed The Nine Worthies of London to gentlemen readers "as well Prentices as others." One of the ways the hierarchical conception of society was blurred or weakened is that many of the authors of Elizabethan fiction were struggling with the social gap between themselves and possible aristocratic readers. Inevitably they tended to broaden their audience. At the same time, the values they expressed within what they understood to be didactic form began to partake of some attitudes not held by aristocrats. Margolies says, for instance: "The novel could present not only what Sidney understood as virtue; it became a perfect vehicle for presenting a view of the world that differed from or even attacked official ideology, and for embodying in a seemingly objective tale that which a prudent author would not say in his own voice" (44). Margolies joins those critics, who, like Stephen Greenblatt in his Renaissance Self-Fashioning (and, to some extent, also in his book on Ralegh), are exploring the potentialities within Renaissance literature for subversion. Robert Greene, for example, the first writer to make a living through commercial sale of his work rather than depending on court patronage, had, according to Margolies, "not only to promise, but also to give his public what they wanted" (110). Although he began by speaking "up" the hierarchy, he came to make his living by speaking "down. ' ' He presented plenty of moralizing in his tales, but he also allowed his public to get their kicks. His was the somewhat paradoxical balance that by now is a familiar formula of the popular "soap" market: lust made palatable by moral or moralistic context. Even after 1590, when he responded to pressure to reform and published both Greene's Mourning Garment and later Greene's Farewell to Folly (1591), he emphasized his reformation, but nevertheless continued the titillating subject matter within a moral context. In addition to LyIy, Sidney, and Greene, Margolies includes chapters on Thomas Nashe and Thomas Deloney. Deloney especially focuses several more interesting aspects of social change. He presented the main character ?? Jack of Newberry as a fully heroic image of virtue, but Jack was, as other critics have 108Rocky Mountain Review agreed, a new bourgeois image of virtue. Margolies characterizes him as "hardworking yet sociable, open handed yet thrifty" (148). It is not fair, however, to present Margolies only in terms of his reading of Elizabethan fiction as social history. He is not guilty of seeing fiction as merely reflective of social norms and values. In fact, he makes an effort to comment upon relationships between style and what critics have called most broadly life. This effort is particularly visible in his chapter on Nashe, in which, in commenting on The Terrors ofthe Night, he says that "style is everything" (102). He goes on to characterize Nashe's sense of his own style as that of the biting satirist, but, curiously, as a somewhat toothless one. As a stylist Nashe is individualistic and isolated, without a clear notion of an actual audience. His own audience remains his own fiction. In general, however, what Margolies adds to the common critical perspective on Elizabethan fiction is a fresh emphasis upon the lively imaginative constructions as commentary...