Literary Theory/Renaissance Texts ed. by Patricia Parker, David Quint (review)

106 LETTERS IN CANADA 19~6 Patricia Parkerand David Quint, editors. Literary Theory/Renaissance Texts Johns Hopkin~ University Press. 399· us $30.00, $12.95 paper This volume could as well be entitled Contemporary Theory/Renaissance Tests, as a series of experiments (mostly responsible) with highly fissile materials; sometimes literally, as in Ulrich Langer's essay on 'Gunpowder as Transgressive Invention in Ronsard: or in Rene Girard's essay on revenge in Hamlet, which is really about nuclear deterrence. Ido not mean to be frivolous. David Quintand Patricia Parker deserve respect for seeing that we need to come to terms with the consequences of what is now generally known as 'theory: that is, criticizing other people's writing by the standards of post-Kantian and post-Hegelian epistemologies. That there are consequences is frequently registered here, not without anxiety. David Quint's fine introduction, which announces each essay with justice and dispatch, concludes that the volume rejects contemporary theory's 'most radical conclusions and consequences' (p 15), and 'remotivates the idea of a humanist canon' (p 16); Victoria Kahn's final essay on the 'resistance to theory: both now and in Renaissance Europe, addresses itself to our pedagogy and regrets that 'theory has for too long been associated with (even as it reacts against) ... a speculative model of the truth' when what it ought to be producing is a 'metapractice' that admits 'desires, interests, intentions to persuade' (p 389). And Louis Montrose concludes his essay on Spenser and Elizabeth I with the hope that, among the currently competing theories, the New Historicism's emphasis on practices may protect us from the 'nagging sense of professional, institutional , and political impotence' experienced by 'those who profess "the Humanities" - within a system of higher education increasinglygeared to the provision of ... technological and preprofessional training' (p 332). The essays reprinted or solicited especially for this volume also tell a story about where we have been going and might still have further room to move. They cover, first, both the early and late Renaissance throughout Europe, mostly represented by major canonical figures: Petrarch, Ariosto , Machiavelli, Rabelais, Ronsard, Skelton, Montaigne, Spenser, Shakespeare, Cervantes (though refreshingly here, the Persiles), and Milton . They also cover, of the currently operative 'theories' or critical practices , deconstruction (three essays), several versions of the new historicism , feminism (two superb essays), one misappropriation of the Marxist theory of 'primitive accumulation' to poetics, and, by default, psychoanalysis, since Stephen Greenblatt's essay on Martin Guerre and impersonation is an attempt to put psychoanalytic criticism in its (belated) place. And the fact that Rene Girard is present both as an influence and (inimitably) in person shows the otherwise unspoken presence of an institutional narrative that extends for more than a decade. HUMANITIES 107 Of the previously published essays (six out of sixteen), the oldest is the late Eugenia Donato's 1972 piece on Ariosto's Orlando Furioso. While 1972 may not seem very long ago, the stakes ofcritical sophistication have been going up so fast that a pioneering or classic essay can sometimes seem, in an ungrateful world, rudimentary by comparison with those who have learned from it. Donato preceded Parker herself in perceiving the relevance to Ariosto of Derrida's attack on epistemological closure, but the major theoretical influence he acknowledges is that ofGirard's ubitiquous and unfulfillable desire. The appropriateness of this model to Ariosto's labyrinthine narrative is confirmed by the Furioso's extraordinary lexical emphasis on desiderio and its cognates; and while it suffers a little in terms of argumentative deftness by comparison with Parker's tracking of 'dilation ' (a variant of Derrida's 'differance') in Shakespeare and Ben jonson, Donato's essay stands up well to the expectations fostered by postmodernism , better, perhaps, than does that milestone of Petrarch criticism , john Freccero's 'The FigTree and the Laurel.' At the other end ofthe chronological spectrum, the essays written for this volume generally eschew trendiness, and take their task of assessing where we now stand with an admirable seriousness. Stylistic high jinks are avoided; there is an unspoken desire for controls. Some puns are present, but usually only when they really are present, as in jonson's 'die late/dilate' in...