Cosmographical Glasses: Geographic Discourse, Gender and Elizabethan Fiction by Constance C. Relihan

Abstract

482 Reviews works iftheywere entitled toprofit frompublic recognition of literaryproperty: this is themain contention of thepresent work, which profitsnot only froman exhaustive knowledge of existing secondary bibliography, but also from archival research. The book is divided into two parts, devoted respectively to a historical-legal survey and to three case studies of particular eighteenth-century authors. The firstpart recalls and examines in detail-the history of the regulation of the press from the times of Henry VIII to the expiring, in I695, of the last regulatory bill inEnglish history, a fact which put an end topre-publication censorship. The key figureof thispart isSir Roger L'Estrange, Surveyor of thePress toCharles II and author of Considerations andProposalsin Order tothe Regulation of thePress (i 663); in thiswork he concentrates on the difficulty that previous attempts at regulating the press had come to a stop against, thatof identifying the author, defined by L'Estrange as 'the fountain of our troubles' (p. 20). JodyGreene also considers a number of court cases, which go to show the effortsof the judiciary at identifying authors bymeans of the prosecution of printers of books which disturbed authority. A period of regulatory instability followed I695, inwhich 'anotion of literaryproperty emerged J.. .] that transformed the relation between author and work' (p. 5). This in turn led to thepassing, in I7I0, of a Copyright Act, formallyknown asAct for theEncouragement of Learning. The second part of thebook considers the cases ofDaniel Defoe, Alexander Pope, and JohnGay in their relation toparticular publication issues. For Defoe, the author considers works prior to thepassing of theCopyright Act: the anonymous and dan gerous The Shortest Way with theDissenters (I702), with the story of how itsauthor came toacknowledge it;and, ingreater depth, An Essay on the Regulation of thePress (I704), which is probably one of the texts that brought theAct into existence, its message summarized thus byGreene: 'WhatDefoe calls forhere is a balanced trade offbetween authorial property rights and authorial answerability' (p. I iO). Greene then goes on to explore the first two cases of the judicial consequences of theAct of I7IO, those of Pope and Gay. Regarding Pope, Greene considers the history of the publication of theDunciad in I728 and I729 and the trialwhich followed. The book concludes with thehistory of thepublication ofGay's Polly (I729), the sequel to The Beggar's Opera, which was published in book formbut was never allowed to be performed on stage: again a trial followed, which likewise showed the author of a potentially dangerous book trying to transfer responsibility for itonto itsprinter. UNIVERSITY OF MILAN MARIALUISA BIGNAMI Cosmographical Glasses: Geographic Discourse, Gender and Elizabethan Fiction. By CONSTANCE C. RELIHAN. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press. 2004. ix+ I48 pp. $29. ISBN 978-O-87338-8II-9. Geography, in recent critical literature, has developed a metaphorical dimension. Geography asmetaphor, rather than as practice, then generates metaphors of other practices such asmapping, location, topography, and culture. The location of narra tives in earlymodern romance has similarly ceased to be regarded as a contingent effectand extends its power to determine cultural identities that, in turn, construct the identityof its readers. There is some justification for these procedures in the texts that Constance C. Relihan's book explores. These texts, she claims 'enunciate a desire to educate their readers about places and customs with which they have no immediate contact, but they also express moral goals' (p. I9). However, the clearly articulated exemplary function of these texts is extended in her analysis tomore fundamental cultural ef fects such as the 'violent exercising ofmale desire and power' (p. 41 ) or the 'means of characterising the abject Otherness of theEast' (p. 42). MLR, I02.2, 2007 483 These large and tendentious statements load significance onto the elegantly real ized detail of the landscapes described in the texts themselves. The accounts of 'the sweetness of the air' inArcadia or the 'aboundance of Catell without keepers' that William Lithgow saw theredisappear behind thedetermined effortto 'develop amore fully rounded picture of the polyvocal ways inwhich theArcadian world would have resonated within earlymodern England and theway inwhich these ethnographical and fictional glasses blend' (p. 48). Yet what ismost interesting in this book is less the syncretic significances thatoverlie the texts...