Translating Investments: Metaphor and the Dynamic of Cultural Change in Tudor-Stuart England by Judith H. Anderson (review)

Reviews Judith H. Anderson, TransUtingInvestments: Metaphorandthe Dynamic ojCultural Change in Tudor-StuartEngland. NewYork: Fordham University Press, 2005. isbn: 0-8282-2421-x. $55. This 'exploration ofcultural metaphor' (3) traces the rhetorical and cognitive functions of a handful of especially polysemous words in religion, politics, literature, and economics in Tudor-Stuart England. With theoretical sophistication and rigorous attention to the nuances oflanguage, Anderson illustrates with exhaustive detail the fecundity and dynamism ofearly modern English as it was lived. As the title indicates, 'Translating' figures prominently in this analysis, both as an emblem ofthe appropriation ofLatin words by Renaissance English writers, and as a theoretical paradigm describing the potential for figurative language to expand beyond the boundaries ofintended meaning. Although focusing on only a few root words, Anderson's analysis illustrates the profusion ofpossible meanings produced when they are transferred ('translated') from one context to another. Her many examples document with painstaking detail the subtle and not-so-subtle shifts in meaning these words acquire as a consequence ofpreviously unrealized metaphoric associations, simultaneously charting how other meanings fade or wither altogether. The main title's second term, 'Investments,' orients the reader to the primary exemplar ofthe phenomenon ofmetaphoric polysemousness she elucidates. Tracing the word's Latin and Italian etymology, she identifies its flourishing in English in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century, noting how its association with clothing was adopted in English to express the idea of capital outlay in support of commercial ventures. She proceeds to show how Shakespeare's multiple uses of the word in Hamlet and 2 Henry TVenlarges and reshapes this basic association between clothing and risk to include any attempt to improve one's status of authority by assuming the appearance or apparel of that station. The network ofmeanings associated with Shakespeare's use of'invest/ment' is but one example ofthe kind of'surplus ofnuance' (25) thatAnderson uncovets and revives in her analysis of the metaphoricity ofearly modern English. While her treatment of Shakespeare, which follows a brief introductory chapter, sets the stage for her subsequent analyses, it also illustrates the theoretical problematic that both frames and complicates them: the debate between Ricoeur and Derrida over the relationship between the meaningofa metaphorical word and its material origins. Each subsequent chapter analyzes an example of the metaphoric capacity of a wotd being warped arthuriana 16.1 (2006) 71 72ARTHURIANA or stietched. In the thitd chaptei, which will bring a wry smile of recognition to those who recall Bill Clinron's equivocal testimony about 'what the meaning ofthe wotd "is" is' duting the Lewinsky affair, she investigates Reformation debates about the linguistic representation of the sacramenr, in particular the significance of the word 'is' in the sentence, 'This is my body.' Chapter 4 extends and expands this examination by considering differences between Luther's, Zwingli's, and Calvin's attitudes toward metaphor as a cognitive mechanism for religious understanding, then tutns to Donne's Devotions upon Emergent Occasions as an illustration of how his self-aware tropology expresses humanity's relationship to the ineffability ofthe divine. The fifth chapter returns to the metaphot of(in)vestment developed in chaptet two through an examination ofJohn Foxe's treatment, in his Actes andMonuments, ofthe vestiarian controversy and the attendant martyrdom ofArchbishop Thomas Cranmer and Bishops John Hooper and Nicholas Ridley. Ifchapter five histoiicizes the role rhetoric played in the public struggle over ecclesiastical authority during the Reformation, chapters six and seven focus on a question of interpretive authority genetated by metaphot itself: its uniuly potential to violate of abuse propel sense ot meaning when it slides into catachtesis. The sixrh chaptef examines catachresis in Spenser's depiction of the House of Busirane in the Faerie Queene. Chapter seven surveys influential Elizabethan translations of Roman rhetorics, especially those of Cicero and Quintilian, in an attempt to identify properly, contra recent readings biased by deconstfuctive theory, early modern understandings of the propriety of metaphor. The final chapter focuses on the economic writings of the merchant, Gerrard de Malynes, in particular his robust, yet simultaneously distrusting, use of figurative language—a conflicted attitude that forAnderson exemplifies the turbulent social, religious, political, and economic worlds ofTudor-Stuart England. The sustained rigor of Anderson's...