At the Margins: Minority Groups in Premodern Italy ed. by Stephen J. Milner (review)

REVIEWS 179 The book’s only weakness appears in several chapters that devolve into protracted catalogs of titles, authors, dates, and descriptions. This bibliographic strategy seems to imply that Arabic literature could not have experienced a period of decay because there was so much of it! Happily, most of the essays avoid this dry presentation. The case studies of popular prose explore individual masterpieces with such precision that the reader instantly apprehends their inherent worth and interest. Th. Emil Homerin’s essay on religious poetry (chap. 3) is a gem for the same reason. Homerin’s magnificently-translated citations from Jewish, Christian and Muslim poetry leave the reader in no doubt about the brilliance of Arabic letters, which even shines through the “Dark Ages” of Arabic literature. Arabic Literature in the Post-Classical Period is an outstanding introduction to a rich yet underestimated corpus. Many of the essays offer seminal insights of great value to scholarship in Arabic literature as well as broader literary study. The fine bibliography and index further establish the volume’s usefulness as a resource. Vivid descriptions of post-classical Arabic literature and the theoretical issues that arise within it will certainly stimulate future research of these texts. JESSICA ANDRUSS, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures The Ohio State University At the Margins: Minority Groups in Premodern Italy, ed. Stephen J. Milner (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 2005) x + 282 pp. The historiography of premodern Italy is dominated by a focus on centers of Renaissance society: the Medici, banking, and republican government, to name a few. This approach is increasingly being overturned through the study of groups outside the center and at the margins of society. At the Margins is a collection of essays that explore social distinctions and the porous nature of identity. The book grew out of a 1998 conference on premodern minorities at the University of Bristol, and is divided into four sections. The first section acts as a framework for understanding the role of marginals in contemporary cultural theory and ideas about identity formation. The remaining sections address specific minority groups and are divided into negotiating the margins, marginal voices, and minority groups. Stephen J. Milner explores the impact of focusing on marginal groups on the larger study of Renaissance Italy in his essay, “Identity and the Margins of the Italian Renaissance Culture.” Postmodernism allows scholars to examine groups which were previously ignored, while questioning the cultural hegemony of the Italian Renaissance. The cultural centers of humanism and the Renaissance were essential to the formation of the identity of those trying to distance themselves from this center. Exploration of minority groups also creates new narratives which “question the modernity of the Renaissance Man and the rationality of the Renaissance state” (16). Derek Duncan uses Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose to discuss issues such as how society organizes space and how this organization is related to habitation. Duncan raises topics for further work, such as the effects of living in a marginal space and having a marginal identity. REVIEWS 180 Peter Burke addresses the relationship between the Grand Narrative of Renaissance history and postmodernism. Burke recognizes that every history is written with a regard to present concerns. The contemporary interest in postmodernism affects Italian historiography through the critique of the Grand Narrative and the linguistic turn. Questioning the modernity of the Italian Renaissance allows historians to reframe or rewrite the period. The shift in focus also permits scholars to see the Renaissance as interacting with other movements—Gothic, Byzantine, and popular, for example. The linguistic turn compels scholars to focus on the power of language and “discursive construction .” It also forces historians to reject the notion of fixed identities. Beyond the methodological impacts of postmodernism, scholars have begun to question the focus on Venice and Florence and turn to study other Italian cities. In part II, “Negotiating the Margins,” the authors focus on the porous nature of social boundaries in specific studies. Michael Rocke explores sodomy in Florence. He asserts that in the fifteenth century most Florentine males had some sort of same-sex sexual relationship. These homosexual connections were not marginal but part of most men’s life experiences. However...