:The Present State of Scholarship in Sixteenth-Century Literature

Abstract

In addition to much useful bibliographical information, this book gives us an insight into the ways in which six scholars perceive recent developments in their fields. Not only do many of them approach the problem of how to define the field (what is the Renaissance, for example), but more disturbingly, many of the scholars represented do not seem to like what is going on in their fields. This trend is most evident in Theodore S. Beardsley's statistically organized essay on Spanish literature, which laments the decline in traditional scholarship (graduate students cannot read Gothic script any more), and decries the fact that most work is being done on a few major authors. The need for more critical editions of minor authors is repeated by Richard J. Schoeck in his historically oriented essay on English literature, which also laments the fact that young scholars cannot read foreign languages well enough any more to engage in truly comparative scholarship. The theme of comparative or inter-disciplinary study is one which most of the scholars represented approach warily. Many repeat some version of Professor Jones' statement in the introduction that interdisciplinary studies are producing new vocabularies (p. x). But the book itself is organized along strictly national lines, demonstrating the fact that for professional purposes at least, most scholars must remain within traditional boundaries. Another area related to the question of natural boundaries is that of political and sometimes religious bias attributed by these American academics to much of the scholarship coming out of the countries of literary origin. The late Beatrice Corrigan, in her portion of the essay on Italian literature, points out the way in which political upheaval in twentieth-century Italy clouds its perception of the same upheavals in Renaissance Italy. Bonner Mitchell, in his continuation of Professor Corrigan's essay, goes further to criticize Italian scholarship for the stereotypical mediterranean quality of disorganization, and for inability to finish bibliographic projects. Eli Sobel repeats the problem of political bias in his essay on German literature. Particularly, of course, there is a need to distinguish between the interests of East and West German scholarship. Not only do East German writers over-emphasize class conflict in the sixteenthcentury, but their major focus is on literary products associated with the Volk. Unlike the three scholars discussed so far, however, Professor Sobel seems generally satisfied with what is going on in his field, pointing to good progress in critical editions, attention to minor writers, and important research on the reading public of the time. Like that of Professor Sobel, Donald Stone's aesthetic approach appears to be in step with what is going on in his field, French literature. Unlike Professor Sobel, however, he mainly surveys the literature on the major French writers of the century, and is not quite so disturbed by the absence of research on minor figures as Professors Beardsley and Schoeck. More importantly, he makes explicit the split between traditional and contemporary approaches we hav enoticed underlying the other essays, and gives examples of the alarming extent to which feelings run high (p. 53), particularly in Rabelais studies. Lawrence V. Ryan's concluding essay on Neo-Latin literature is perhaps the most enthusiastic of the six, defining the special linguistic problems of Neo-Latin and pointing to progress in the field, especially on interrelationships with vernacular literature. Thus Professor Ryan's essay, of necessity, is the only one illustrating the comparative approach, and paradoxically he recognizes the validity of modern critical methods in what would seem to be a very conservative field. To sum up, reading this book does pose an initial problem in that each essay is written from a different methodological point of view: When individual essays are written by different authors, and a single plan is not carefully adhered to, different sections can be quite uneven (p.