The English Renaissance: 1500-1620 (review)

Short Notices 251 overstate their case. This book is also a highly successful interdisciplinary exercise. It will be necessary reading for medievalists and Early M o d e m historians as well as literature experts. Most significantly, it will be key reading for anyone who does extensive research on letters. The reader is left with no doubt about the rewarding and multi-faceted nature of correspondence as a source for writing about the past. Pamela Sharpe School ofHumanities, History The University of Western Australia Hadfield, Andrew, The English Renaissance: 1500-1620, Oxford, Blackwell Publishers, 2001; paper; pp. xxiii, 310; R R P US66.95 (cloth), US29.95 (paper); ISBN 0631220232 (cloth), 0631220240 (paper). This is a useful textbook which I would happily recommend to my students. It contains a wealth of accurate information, presented clearly and without overt hobbyhorses. Three incisive chapters develop a culturally pointed 'History of the English Renaissance', charting political and religious developments, the roots of colonialism in the period, and the notion of 'British Isles'. Then short biographies are given of some 40 writers, not neglecting w o m e n such as Elizabeth Cary, Mary Sidney Herbert, Aemilia Lanyer, and Isabella Whitney. Where, though, is Rachel Speight and Margaret Cavendish, for example, w h o might have edged out John Bale and Alexander Barclay? They m a y lie just outside Hadfield's terminal date, 1620, but this date m a y seem too early to incorporate what w e think of as 'the Renaissance'. There is a kind of egalitarianism in giving everybody two or three pages, though Hadfield clearly thinks some are in need of ampler space in order to find the critical attention they deserve - Skelton, for example. Sensible analyses of about 20 'Key Texts' follow, and there is a refreshing eclecticism about a list that includes A Mirror for Magistrates alongside Utopia, The Tragedy of Miriam beside The Tempest. The Shakespeare inclusions may seem arbitrary to some and they exclude, for example, Hamlet and A Midsummer Night's Dream, but Hadfield probably assumes these are not in need of positive discrimination. 252 Short Notices 'Topics' - like Humanism, education, rhetoric, printing conventions, w o m e n and gender, and the stage - come next, followed by a chapter on- 'Current Issues in the Criticism of Renaissance Literature', which is critical but respectful of many approaches. It illustrates the 'issues' by reference to differing readings of specific poems, a way of focusing equally on contexts and texts. However, while the theoretical content is tactfully presented, the chapter is too brief to reflect thefieldof contemporary thinking as a whole. In the current climate ofteaching, contexts are emphasised as never before, but Hadfield, while providing some ofthese, also allows writers and their works to emerge as the raison d'etre for study of the period in literature departments. R.S. White English, Communication and Cultural Studies School of Social and Cultural Studies The University of Western Australia Kery, Lotte, Canonical Collections of the Early Middle Ages (ca. 400-1140): a Bibliographical Guide to the Manuscripts and Literature (History of Medieval Canon Law), Washington, DC, The Catholic University of America Press, 1999; cloth; pp. xxxv, 311; R R P US$34.95; ISBN 0813209188. Canon law is not a subject that inspires much excitement among medievalists. The discipline tends to evoke images of crusty lawyers, beavering away at vast volumes of ecclesiastical legislation. As a subject of academic study, medieval canon law tends to be the reserve of a relatively small group of specialists, interested in what justification some Pope or bishop had for asserting his own authority. While most medievalists may be familiar with the name of Gratian, few have actually had occasion to read the Decretum, let alone to dip into the vast ocean of canon law collections compiled between the fifth century and Gratian's own day. The term 'canon law' is itself misleading, in being the product of an age that separated out theology from law as distinct disciplines. In fact, a 'canonical compilation' tended to include teaching and decisions covering a vast range of topics, from classic issues of Christian belief, to the thorny debates over property and political authority. In...