Culture and belief in Europe, 1450-1600: an anthology of sources (review)

Reviews 155 unobtrusive learning on Restoration matters, from the pervasive political anxieties of the period to the times when the mails left London for provincial towns. Keeble concludes with pregnant suggestions about Marvell the letterwriting M . P. as another Marvellian persona. Christopher Wortham foUows the evolution of Marvell's attitudes in the major Cromwell poems, relating them to his generic practice. Wortham writes interestingly on the 'Horatian Ode' as a Hobbesian text, but not persuasively on its Pindaric character. Pindar's strophe and antistrophe rarely serve the thematic function Wortham attributes to them. MarveU's admission of the 'contrary view' in his treatment of Charles is less Pindaric than Horatian. Compare Horace's admiring treatment of Cleopatra at the end of an ode celebrating her death (Carm. i.37). Annabel Patterson expands, with admirable curiosity and resourcefulness, an earlier discussion of the arrangement of Marvell's Miscellaneous Poems of 1681. Her scrutiny uncovers layer upon layer of significance in the volume, though her new 'compromise hypothesis' about the problematic 'Tom May's Death' is too cursory to be fuUy understandable, much less convincing. The book is noteworthy overall, perhaps, for the alertness with which the contributors attend to MarveU's generic virtuosity and for the complexity of the continuities and discontinuities they discern between the Commonwealth and the Restoration Marvell. The longer essays, however, would have benefitted from more stringent editing and the book's twenty or so misprints or miseditings are, regrettably, not excessive by current standards. Anthony Mdler Department of EngUsh University of Sydney Englander, David, D. Norman, R. O'Day and W. R. Owens, eds, Culture and belief in Europe, 1450-1600: an anthology of sources, Oxford, Basil Blackwell in association with the Open University, 1990; cloth/paper; pp. xvui, 486; 8 dl.; R. R. P. AUS$130 (cloth), $29.95 (paper); [distributed in AustraUa by Allen & Unwin]. Teachers at the Open University developed this anthology of sources to use in their interdiscipUnary course entided Culture and Belief in Europe 1450-1600. The editors' introductory comments and explanatory notes are helpful without being lengthy and intrusive, thereby leaving more space for the sources. The editorial poUcy for sources in English is to modernize some spelUngs but to try to maintain something of the original flavour. The focus of the anthology is clearly the sixteenth century, although the sources themselves range from the thirteenth century to 1615. Although the editors express their hope that the book wdl be of interest to general readers, most of those who purchase it wiU be students either taking the course at the Open University or taking a similar 156 Reviews course for which the teachers have selected this book as required or recommended reading. The anthology contains extracts from the obvious figures in the religious and cultural developments of the sixteenth century: Luther, Calvin, Erasmus, More, Montaigne, Machiavelli, etc. However, at times, the selections are refreshingly surprising. Instead of Erasmus' In praise ofFolly, for example, the editors included passages from his coUoquies on marriage and courtship. I found other pleasant surprises, such as the Jesuit Jose de Acosta's attempt to reconcile the existence of Amerindians and the unique fauna of the N e w World with the biblical accounts of creation and Noah's ark. The anthology contains some serious omissions, however. It has nothing on the Anabaptists or other radical groups of the Reformation. Another serious omission is a section on 'Art', even though one of the editors is an art historian. It is true that the section on 'Europe and the wider world' does contain extracts from Diirer's diary of his trip to the Netherlands and the section on 'The crisis of authority: France' does contain passages from Cellini's autobiography. However, Leonardo's 'On painting', Alberti's 'On architecture', selections from Vasari's Lives, and other sources would have been a welcome addition in this anthology, designed after all for use in an interdisciplinary course. A. Lynn Martin Department of History University of Adelaide Ennen, Edith, The medieval woman, trans. E. Jephcott, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1989; cloth; pp. 327; 24 plates; R. R. P. AUS$79.95. This is a strangely uneven book. It is hard, at times...