The Renaissance Text: Theory, Editing, Textuality ed. by Murphy, Andrew (review)

Reviews 169 While Book 4 begins with the knights Priamond, Diamond, and Triamond perpetually killing one another over an unat tainable woman, it ends with Marinell, who shifts from depending on his mother to helping his lover Florimell, a rela tionship that Krier determines as ethical. Krier's final turn to Hermione's overdetermined role in The Winter's Tale as alternately hated and idealized object of Leontes's infant rage proves fanciful ifnot completely per suasive. Keen on revealing her to be a "good enough" moth er, Krier argues that Hermione, in the Winnicottian spirit, achieves agency through the proxy mother Paulina. It is through Paulina that Hermione "gathers her forces of aggression in order to create an enclave of air for her daugh ter and herself (248). Yet even Krier herself must admit that "[t]his logic is speculative . . . since we aren't privy to Herrnione's seclusion and the extraordinarily complex psy chic life that it implies" (246). Krier issues numerous explanations for the study's orga nizational scheme?for example, "the sequence of chapters traces increasingly intricate mechanisms of nostalgia" (20)? but despite the tidy circularity of the mother /daughter rela tionships that begin and end the book, it is hard to quantify what seem in each chapter to be indistinguishably difficult "mechanisms." Yet the book, in engaging an unlikely dia logue between Winnicott and Irigaray, successfully provides an alternative to a mother that is, in so much psychoanalyt ic criticism, desperately in need of theoretical counterparts. Murphy, Andrew, ed. The Renaissance Text: Theory, Editing, Textuality. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2000. $65.00. Reviewed by Victoria E. Burke Many of the essays in this volume position themselves in opposition to the New Bibliography. The editor, Andrew Murphy, acknowledges the accomplishments ofW.W. Greg, A.W. Pollard, and other New Bibliographers in paying close attention to the book as physical object, but critiques them for penetrating the "veil of print" to construct a single, ideal 170 The Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies text, severed from its contexts. Acknowledging that no one theory or approach to editing could ever serve all texts (and so not wanting to label his volume part of the "New Textualism"), the editor presents varied responses to the question of how editing can engage with recent concepts of textuality and theoretical concerns. The collection begins with John Pitcher's discussion of the process of editing Samuel Daniel. Daniel's works appeared inmultiple forms, with altered title pages, changed order ofworks, and altered poems (some of the sonnets inDelia appeared in five different versions). Pitcher highlights a change in the 1607 Works: Daniel constructs a "Reader" who remembers all of the ver sions of every line of poetry and drama he has published, standing in for an "intertextual field" in the way that a hyper text edition might do. But Pitcher explains why a printed edi tion is desirable, evocatively using Daniel's own conception of his poems and plays as a building to explain how his own edi tion reveals both Daniel's foundation and his renovations. On the issue of hypertext editions Graham Caie argues in their favor and Gary Taylor against them. Caie's perspective as a medievalist is very welcome as he explains the particular suit ability of texts inOld and Middle English to the fluidity ofhyper text. Pointing out that the concept of "text" is post-Conquest, Caie explains that the open-ended interactivity ofhypertext bet ter allows editors to record the organic medieval page. The Canterbury Tales Project, which is collating eighty-seven fif teenth-century manuscripts in addition to early printed ver sions, is obviously well-served by electronic publishing, but there may not be many early modern projects as naturally suit ed to thismedium. In a passionate and confessional manifesto, Gary Taylor argues for the dangers of digitalism. Informed by his experience as general editor of the delayed Oxford edition of the works ofThomas Middleton, he points out that the enforced obsolescence of technology necessitates change, which takes time and resources; we will be able tomaintain fewer files due to the expense, and the number of old texts that can be edited to...