Selected Letters and Other Papers by Edmund Spenser, Christopher Burlinson, Andrew Zurcher

Abstract

832 Reviews codicological study,buttressed by solid annotation and a bibliography that runs to over fifty pages. Brantley's detailed analysis of themanuscript's various combina tions of texts and images suggests user-friendly dimensions to their presentation (the packaging of material into 'flowcharts', or handily apportioned 'bite-sized' elements of learning, for instance), and isolates a concentration on genres such as dialogue and 'disputation' inwhich voices have a special importance. Although she is unable to add more specific information towhat has already been surmised about the provenance ofMS Add. 37049 (northern, probably Carthusian), her study offers reliable analysis of its contents, and has new things to say about many of them. One strand of the book's argument?and another level on which itmay be read?deals with the extent to which Carthusian texts and reading practices might have been distinctive. Brantley's survey here covers both England and the Continent, and helps to confirm why the relationship between private and public devotion was of particular moment inCarthusian environments. Brantley's most pressing concerns arewith what it meant in the lateMiddle Ages to 'read' combinations ofwords and images, whether in public contexts or in the private contemplation of a book. She takes on previous attempts to understand the texts and pictures inMS Add. 37049, and with reference to W. J. T. Mitchell's notion of the 'imagetext', and the significance of themedieval term 'pagent', forges an interpretationwhich hinges on the centrality of'performance' toboth themanu script and the readers who might have used it.Consideration ofMS Add. 37049 in terms of performance allows Brantley to point out analogies between some of its contents and a variety of play-texts, fromWisdom to Thomas Chaundler's closet drama. Italso permits her to articulate ways inwhich texts and pictures?especially in conjunction?can 'perform'meaning, and to argue that the processes in play when a reader internalizes what appears in a book constitute a 'performance' in their own right, comparable towhat takes place when a spectator witnesses the celebration ofmass, or other forms of public spectacle. The theorizing of this is handled carefully. Brantley recognizes and exploits the multiple connotations of 'performance', using them actively to prompt questions about reading and devotional practice. Many of these questions remain in the end unanswerable, but the speculations towhich theygive rise are informed and reveal ing, carefully paced, and advanced throughout with admirable lucidity.Above all, Reading in the Wilderness gives centre stage to the 'small and roughlymade book' which is MS Add. 37049, ensuring bymeans of copious quotation and illustration thatmodern readers can gain some sense of itsextraordinary richness and impact. Queen Mary, University of London Julia Boffey Selected Letters and Other Papers. By Edmund Spenser. Ed. by Christopher Burlinson and Andrew Zurcher. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2009. ix+292 pp. ?125. ISBN 978-0-19-955821-6. The firstcollections of Spenser's letters appeared in 1580. Three Proper, and Wittie, Familiar Letters and Two Other, Very Commendable Letters cashed in on the sue MLR, 105.3, 2?io 833 cess of The Shepheardes Calender (1579), giving the reader the flattering illusion of privileged access to the literarydiscussions between 'Signor Immerito, Spenser's then preferred alias, and Gabriel Harvey. As thework of scholars such as Richard Rambuss (Spensers Secret Career (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993)) and more recently JaneGrogan (Exemplary Spenser: Visual and Poetic Pedagogy in 'TheFaerie Queene' (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009)) has emphasized, letter-writing and the genre of the letter are at the centre of Spensers work, from E.K.'s in troductory Epistle to The Shepheardes Calender through to Spensers own archly familiar letter, the 'Letter to Ralegh', appended to the 1590 edition of The Faerie Queene. Though Selected Letters and Other Papers gathers a different kind of correspondence?centring on the Elizabethan government of Ireland during the 1580s?the publication of these documents as the works of 'Edmund Spenser' shares something of the opportunism of the 1580 letters. Apart from the final three pieces, these are letters transcribed by Spenser in his role as secretary to Arthur, Lord Grey of Wilton, Lord Deputy of Ireland in the early 1580s and other Elizabethan administrators in Ireland. Despite this sleight of authorial hand...