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210 LETTERS IN CANADA 2000 polemic against papal law and authority itself. Because Roye=s translation of the infamous German heretic is >the first full-scale English rendering of a complete Lutheran work,= its reception and impact would have been considerable. Parker=s old-spelling critical edition uses the British Library version as the copy text; five others were collated. The lucid and uncluttered introduction not only discusses the English versions of Erasmus and Luther in turn, but also explores >Context, Content, and Structure,= and follows the texts with a pointed, brisk >Commentary= glossing words, themes, and doctrines as well as providing extended page-length commentaries on Roye=s relations with the other expatriate reformers, for example, or contextualizing Luther and Tyndale in their historical moment. The sections on >Bibliographical Descriptions= and >Variants= help the professional scholar, while the >Glossary= assists contemporary students substantially. Parker=s attention to Roye=s rhetorical mannerisms and his additions /deletions to or from both Erasmus and Luther distinguish this handsome and durable edition. Of belletristic note are Roye=s >frequent doublings and his love of the rhetorical device of synonymy,= which become in the rendering of Erasmus >Roye=s own peculiar linguistic tic,= and his fondness for >building into his translation imagery and metaphors drawn from the Bible itself.= Overall, concludes Parker, >Roye=s English is more poetic, more figurative, and more colourful than Erasmus=s Latin.= Those qualities of a rendering that is more than a mere translation characterize Roye=s approach to Luther=s text as well. The expected doublings and synonymy are there, as well as >five instances of sayings or proverbs in Roye=s version not found in Luther.= Parker=s point that these >show his awareness of his English audience and readership= is skilfully taken. Both Fisher and More would have found discomfort or shock in the pairing of the cautiously conservative Erasmus and the arch-heretic Luther, but it is useful to be reminded how diverse the impulses actually were that animated the conflicting passions for reform. The sixteenth-century readers of Roye=s translations, including Tyndale and his fellow critics, could process Erasmus and envisage how >the plowman wold singe a texte of the scripture at his plowbeme,= or re-evaluate classical eloquence (replacing it with Christian rhetoric), or attack scholastic disputation. Luther, in turn, encourages the English voice of reform to repudiate not only clerical celibacy but also papal laws, culture, and authority altogether, and to begin discussing, as Parker notes of Paraclesis, >how society can transform itself into a true Christian community.= With a few more editions of early Reformation polemic, dialogue, and devotion as useful as his four previous ones, the assiduous editor from Laurentian University is in danger of giving the designation of publication by the Parker Society a revived meaning. (PETER AUKSI) Peter N. Moogk. La Nouvelle France: The Making of French Canada B HUMANITIES 211 A Cultural History University of British Columbia Press. xx, 340. $38.95 There=s gold in Peter Moogk=s La Nouvelle France: The Making of French Canada B A Cultural History. The book represents a lifetime of research in the archives of Canada and France. The study ranges not just along the St Lawrence but across the outlying settlements of Acadia and the Illinois country. Photos of items from Moogk=s own collection, and his clear interest in events ever since the Conquest, indicate a questing mind and a passion for French Canada. The notes are a trove for scholars, and a chapter or two will fascinate a wide audience. Such riches require mining, for the book contains its share of disappointing ore. The author claims his study of a long-vanished colony is timely, since >there are still elements of compassionate authoritarianism, of Christian humanity, of family solidarity, and of dogmatic idealism that are traceable to la Nouvelle France.= The same homogenous society that in the seventeenth century formally excluded Protestants insists on linguistic homogeneity today. Absolutist traditions lived on when Quebec embraced authoritarian rulers such as Maurice Duplessis. The family was the strongest institution; and small, unambitious family businesses that hired relatives and shunned banks remained a Quebec pattern in the 1950s. The civil...

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