Literature and society in Renaissance Crete (review)

146 Reviews whose significant expertise is confined to one area. It remains to be seen whether the challenge he has issued can be taken up creatively. Elizabeth and Michael Jeffreys Department of Modern Greek University of Sydney Holton, David, ed., Literature and society in Renaissance Crete, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991; cloth; pp. xii, 339; 1 map; R.R.P. AUS$135.00. Crete, within striking distance from Europe, Asia, and Africa, has from the earliest times been open to invasions and cross-cultural influences, though it has been Greek-speaking since the second millennium B.C. Among the most fertile centuries for cultural mingling were those of Venetian rule, which began after the Fourth Crusade, was consolidated by 1211, and ended with the island's capture by the Turks in 1669. Throughout that time there was a constant interchange of officials and others between the island and Venice, with greater or less cultural interpenetration depending on class, literacy, and personal taste. From a literary point of view this cross-fertilisation culminated in works from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, generally said to belong to the Cretan Renaissance, where current Cretan language and attitudes mingled with the Byzantine heritage and new ideas and forms from contemporary Venice. The best known of these works are comedies, tragedies, and the Erotokritos, a romantic epic, all written in a vigorous vernacular Greek strongly marked by Cretan dialect. The resultant tradition survived the upheavals of 1669. It was transplanted to the Ionian Islands and remained alive, especially at the popular level, to provide a background to the literary endeavours of the emergent Greek state early in the nineteenth century. This book is a collection of essays organized to provide a full survey of the culture of this period. The topic is one of major importance for students of medieval and modern Greek, and of Italian, cultural history. But it also provides the background for a crucial phase in the history of the classical tradition throughout Europe. Cretan scribes and men of letters were responsible for copying many of the manuscripts in which authors from classical Greece have survived and for establishing in Venice some of thefirstprinting presses for Greek texts. It is thus rather astonishing that this is thefirstattempt for thirty years to cover this period as a whole in any language, and rather shocking that this is the first comprehensive study of the topic in English. David Holton is to be congratulated on his enterprise and perseverance in initiating this endeavour and bringing it to fruition. He and his colleagues have combined new research, broad learning, and good sense on all topics covered, at a uniformly high level. Papers Reviews 147 are included on the background to the period: a general overview by Holton himself, a more specifically historical introduction by Chryssa Maltezou, another on the literary antecedents by Arnold van Gemert, and an overall conclusion by Margaret Alexiou dealing with the relationship between literature and contemporary popular tradition. There are also studies on specific literary genres: the pastoral mode and dramatic interludes by Rosemary Bancroft-Morris, comedy by Alfred Vincent, tragedy by Walter Puchner, religious drama by W i m Bakker, and romance by Holton again. As may be seen from the full bibliographies, all the contributors to this volume are at the cutting edge of the work that has been done in recent years in placing the cultural manifestations of Venetian Crete within a framework of the abundant Venetian archive material. Surprises continue to emerge. The volume is a very useful specialist handbook. However, its primary significance is as a vital watershed in the opening up of an important subject for those whose interest is tangential, perhaps linguistically limited. It will remain for the forseeable future an essential starting-point for all explorations of this field. Elizabeth and Michael Jeffreys Department of M o d e m Greek University of Sydney Kendall, Calvin B., The metrical grammar of 'Beowulf (Cambridge studies in Anglo-Saxon England, 5), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991; cloth; pp. xvi, 318; R.R.P. AUS$135.00. Professor Kendall's concerns with Old English metre arose originally out of the oral-formulaic discussions which dominated...