Catholics Writing the Nation in Early Modern Britain and Ireland by Christopher Highley (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 549 editions. Her generous quotation from story versions of the plays may also stimulate consideration of how one might "interpret" the actions of characters to elicit moral lessons. Whether her effort is Love's Labor's Lost or Love's Labor's Won will depend on each reader's willingness to accept her as guide through this unfamiliar gallery of texts and illustrations from earlier eras. She will in any case raise "salient" and "cogent" considerations why Shakespeare deserves place as "paragon of writers:' who "givespleasure, moral guidance, and inspiration-perfect reading for children" as he was in the era when "English literature was admired and its academic study developed" (310). James L. Hedges Azusa Pacific University Catholics Writing the Nation in Early Modern Britain and Ireland. ByChristopher Highley. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-19-953340-4. Pp. ix + 231. $99.00. As politicians are often surprised to discover, Catholics can be highly contentious, perhaps most of all amongst themselves-and difficult to predict. Catholic belief and practice never fit seamlessly with prevailing concepts of national identity, and in certain historical periods the fault lines open· wide to expose all sorts of anxieties and bitterness. The most striking feature of Christopher Highley's Catholics Writing the Nation in Early Modern Britain and Ireland is just how highly contested-how unobvious and unpredictable-every term in the book's title turns out to be. Throughout this concise yet far-ranging study, Highley's basic tendency is to take a concept that seems fairly complicated from the start-like the Catholic understanding of "Englishness" or "Irishness" or "exile"-and show that it is actually far more complex than most of us (that is, nonspecialists) ever would have suspected. Even the idea of "writing" turns out to be surprisingly unfamiliar, uncertain, and interesting. As Highley notes, quite a few historians and sociologists-including Richard Helgerson, Anne Dillon, and Michael Questier-have already covered in considerable detail many of the religious controversies, as well as the problems of identity and community, that plagued Catholics throughout this period. Also, in Catholicism, Controversy, and the English Literary Imagination, 1558-1660 (l999), Alison Shell has considered the era's debates about Catholic literary tradition and canon formation. But these studies generally depend upon the familiar assumption that, as England is "Protestantized" in the Elizabethan period, "Catholicism comes to seem antithetical to the very idea of English nationhood" (1). Catholicism, then, becomes "irrevocably associated in the cultural imagination with the non-English" 550 CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE (1). Highley convincingly demonstrates that this view is too simple. These previous studies do not account sufficiently for the often peculiar ways that English Catholics, especially those in various states of exile, come to see themselves not only as the preservers of the one true faith but also as the most truly "English:' Moreover, many of the Catholic writers in exile turn out to be intensely engaged and highly prolific, so their work should not be viewed merely as marginal, passive protest: in many ways, they are able to "imagine themselves within larger national communities" and, in doing so, they often manage to shape the "discourse of Englishness" (2). If this book has a central point of reference or "starting point:' it can be found, not surprisingly, in the early years of Elizabeth's reign, when for English Catholics the problem of national identity became pervasive and especially fraught. Highley clearly realizes that those Catholics who remained in England had their own debates and differences, which extended beyond the familiar categories of "conformists" (that is, those who generally participated in Church of England services) and "recusants" (those who generally did not). For instance, some "conformists" would attend Mass but did so irregularly. Some would attend but refuse to receive communion. Some would split the difference, even during Mass, by silently performing acts of specifically Catholic piety, especially during the sermons, when it was easiest to cultivate a divided attention. In fact, there seem to have been no end to the devices by which these "stay-at-homes" would try to reconcile their faith with their Englishness, usually in the hope that the nation would eventually come round...