Proceedings of the British Academy, 117: 2001 Lectures (review)

This volume collects sixteen lectures, of which eight relate to medieval or early modern topics. This concentration gratifyingly recognizes the continuing importance of our area in the world of learning – though it is also induces discouraging thoughts about the lack of such recognition in Australia, not only in public discourse but even from our academic peers in other areas. The lecturers are of course selected because they are distinguished scholars in their fields, who present their work on a prestigious occasion and presumably with a broader audience than they would normally encounter. Some use the opportunity to take a general overview of their field; others to communicate their own current work. It is an unusual experience to read through a series of such writings, in fields adjacent to one's own, and I recommend it. It must have something in common with the experience of reading one of the great nineteenth-century quarterlies: one can imagine oneself in a world where it is feasible to keep up to date with work across a wider spectrum than is in practice the case. This review can only take up a sample of the medieval and early modern lectures in the volume.

In 'The Life of Learning', Keith Thomas contributes a masterly overview of the rise and place of historical learning in early modern England. Thomas emphasizes the primacy of religion both in the patronage of scholarship and as the subject of scholarship, and he emphasizes the utility that was accorded to classical learning. To these well known areas he adds 'the study of the English past: its laws and institutions, its local antiquities, and the history and genealogy of its leading families… Most of it was designed to give legitimacy to ruling families, to foster pride in English distinctiveness and to enhance the sense of identity in the local communities' (p. 215). In all these cases, scholarship therefore had a public utility. Rather surprisingly, Thomas contrasts even this aspect of early modern with late modern learning, in which he claims that scholars follow the logic of their own interests or of their discipline, not of a 'political establishment'. It may be different for a Fellow of All Souls like Keith Thomas, but less exalted scholars surely find this freedom much curtailed by the definitions of national benefit mandated by research funding bodies. In this respect, the history of learning is tending to repeat itself.

Another broad-brush lecture is J. R. Maddicott's 'Prosperity and Power in the Age of Bede and Beowulf', which reviews the evidence that England in the seventh and eighth centuries enjoyed an exceptionally high level of prosperity. To a non-expert, a salient point about this lecture is the continuing expansion of knowledge through archeology. My assumption that knowledge in such a field would be modified only at the margins or through new interpretations of well-known evidence is altogether misplaced. A great number of Maddicott's references are to archeological findings of the past 20 years.

A more detailed approach to a more delimited question is Paul Binski's 'How Northern was the Northern Master at Assisi?' What must be, at some 15,000 words, a much expanded version of his lecture deploys with impressive authority, precision, and range the traditional scholarly discourse of art history: comparisons between iconographical features, halo design, leaf forms, painted tracery. Binski also takes into account unexpected new evidence uncovered by the 1997 earthquake at Assisi. Marshalling all these kinds of evidence, he queries the role of a supposed 'Northern Master' in the paintings of the north transept of the Upper Church of San Francesco at Assisi.

Richard Wilson's Shakespeare Lecture, 'A World Elsewhere: Shakespeare's Sense of an Exit' confirms the advent of a new tendency in Shakespeare studies. Beginning from moments of departure and evocations of exile in Shakespeare's plays, Wilson builds toward an argument that claims a close relation between...