Reinventing the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: Constructions of the Medieval and Early Modern Periods (review)

208 Reviews mystical and irrational sides to Kepler, Newton and others are pointed out by Gatti, yet such a side in Bruno is not shown. However, to be fair, so m a n y other works only see the Hermetic side of Bruno that this one book hardly sets the balance straight. Gatti transforms Bruno from a Yatesian Hermetical Magus, or even a non-mathematical enthusiast, into the first fully fledged modern philosopher of science, dealing with subjects that would be ignored for over three hundred years. While m a n y of the conclusions are speculative and arguable, overall this is a bold work that covers a wide range of Bruno's writings in depth and with intelligence. David Tulloch Department ofHistory Victoria University of Wellingt Gentrup, William R, ed., Reinventing the Middle Ages and the Renaissanc Constructions ofthe Medieval and Early Modern Periods (Arizona Studi in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance 1), Turnhout, Brepols, 1998; board; pp. xx, 243; 4 b / w plates, 2 b / w illustrations; R.R.P. not known. Consistent with postmodernist scholarship, this volume of essays seeks to understand documents as texts, rather than as means of 'source study' and, hence, to 'focus on h o w and w h y the present of any period uses the past to promote its o w n opinions, beliefs, doctrines or views' (p. x). As the editor observes in his Introduction, the appropriation of the past often tells us more about the age in which the reconstructions were produced than the one received or revisited (p. ix). The fourteen essays in this collection discuss various ways in which the medieval and Early Modern past has been re-invented. One such means is through the 'myth of origins'. Typical of such a genre is John Niles' insightful piece on Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae. As Niles demonstrates, Geoffrey's history of Britain suppressed four and a half centuries of Saxon rule and affirmed a noble genealogy that placed Norman lords on an equal footing with French nobles. Niles labels Geoffrey an 'arch re-inventor' in the latter's projection of twelfthcentury politics into the past so as to legitimise Norman claims to British Reviews 209 land and the British past. In a similar search for the 'myth of origins', Richard Clements' article examines thefirstglossary of the Anglo-Saxon language which w a s compiled by seventeenth-century philologist, Richard Verstegan. Despite the influence of Danes, Normans, Germans and Saxons, Verstegan believed the Anglo-Saxon language was still pure because these races were all formerly 'one and the same people' (p. 31). Thus, Clements concludes, Verstegan re-created the past to give his nation an ancient and noble lineage that 'fired the imagination and inspired the creation of a new historical vision of the English nation' (p. 36). In like manner, Daniel Melia focuses on h o w both medieval scribes and modern scholars have interpreted the marginal notation '.r.'. The original meaning, Melia observes, comes from the Latin word require ('to search further'); this warned the reader to check the reading, which was not reliable. Scribal misunderstanding, however, caused this notation to be interpreted as retoiric ('rhetoric') or rosc/roscad ('archaic poem'). In designating the existence of a poetic or epic tradition in medieval Welsh language, Melia explains, this textual verifying device took on a significance it never actually had. Such an influence, he ascribes to patriotic motives for the desire for 'origin stories' (p. 57). The second means of re-inventing the past analysed in this volume is through the construction of the identity of the individual or society. Thomas Prendergast examines the changing interpretations of Chaucer's political and moral character from that of a political opportunist to a loyal, albeit selfserving , royal subject. Following this study of an individual's identity, Kenneth Graham looks at society's construction ofitselfin the Early Modern period. Specifically, he examines the notion of 'discipline' as exemplified in Foucauldian theory. Graham discerns that Foucault's failure to treat the Reformation in his Discipline and Punish means that his analysis can give only a partial picture of society's construction of itself at this time (p. 88...