Home and Homelessness in the Medieval and Renaissance World (review)

The home, both as a physical space and figurative concept, might be oneof the most ubiquitous and powerful human phenomena in history. Yet, asNicholas Howe argues, the temporary nature of built structures and the culturally-constructed metaphors of home make it a difficult subject to study. Howe, a professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley, has edited this volume to demonstrate several approaches to the concept of home and encourage scholars to explore the subject in all of its various meanings.

Howe states that the volume is not an extensive compilation of case studies but rather a call to a greater appreciation of the physical, metaphorical, and psychological influence of home on human beings. Howe purposefully arranged the five essays in reverse chronological order, from sixteenth-century Venice to tenth-century England, in order to lead the reader "in a process of continuing defamiliarization." The arrangement simultaneously moves "from the more materially situated studies of home as a built phenomenon to the more philological and textual studies of home as a category of the imagination" (8). The essays indicate the varieties of evidence and various methodological approaches that can be utilized to explore the relationship between space, time, and identity.

The first essay, by Patricia Fortini Brown, relates the physical spaces of homes to the social and political structures that constituted Renaissance Venice. Brown outlines how rich and poor, Venetian and foreigner, maintained their identities and lived in peaceful coexistence in the metropolitan merchant city. MaryElizabeth Perry surveys the domestic spaces of Moriscos, Hispano-Muslims who converted to Christianity, in sixteenth-century Spain. Perry argues that Morisco resistance took place in the home, which remained a refuge from authority and a place to express cultural identity. Early colonial Peru is the location for Sabine MacCormack's very insightful survey of poverty and vagrancy practices. In a comparison between European and Andean systems of poor relief, MacCormack finds that Christian concepts of charity and almsgiving were reexamined in light of Andean notions of home and homelessness. William Miller continues the theme of vagrancy with an examination of medieval Iceland, where European settlers faced a dramatically different set of circumstances than the Spanish in Peru. With early Icelandic law as his source, Miller argues that the home formed the basis of a legal code that required everyone to be attached to a household. While this facilitated the construction of legal communities, it also codified the homeless as outlaws. The dearth of architectural and legal evidence for England from 700 to 1100 leads Howe to examine the home in the imagination of Anglo-Saxons. Old English literature often described the home in figurative religious terms rather than fixed domestic spaces. Howe peppers his essay with comments that contrast the Anglo-Saxon notions of home with the other essays in the volume and the assumptions of the twenty-first-century reader. In this way Howe's essay also serves as a conclusion, which the volume lacks.

Although the individual essays are of the highest quality, the volume will disappoint anyone seeking a comprehensive survey of this very important subject. Howe clearly states that this is not an exhaustive study (indeed, one can think of an extensive list of topics omitted from the book), but he does not explain what were the criteria for the selection of these particular essays. The only indication is a note that several contributions were originally delivered as lectures at Ohio State University (11). In addition, despite the claims of the press release that the volume contains original essays, one of the articles is only "slightly altered" from a book chapter (48). In this thin volume Howe suggests numerous topics for further studies, so one wonders why he included an essay published in another work. Another questionable editorial decision is the brief, anecdotal introduction to a very complex subject. A more...