Trans/acting Culture, Writing, and Memory: Essays in Honour of Barbara Godard ed. by Eva C. Karpinski etal (review)

Reviewed by: Rituals of Politics and Culture in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Honour of Edward Muir ed. by Mark Jurdjevic and Rolf Strom-Olsen Gregory Murry Rituals of Politics and Culture in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Honour of Edward Muir. Edited by Mark Jurdjevic and Rolf Strom-Olsen. (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies. 2016. Pp. 440. $49.95. ISBN 978-0-7727-2185-3.) Rituals of Politics and Culture in Early Modern Europe, a compilation of essays in honor of Edward Muir, takes as its theme a subject to which Muir has contributed as much as any living historian: the relation of ritual to the political and cultural life of early modern Europe. Contributors include both distinguished scholars of early modern Europe and several young scholars (largely former graduate students of Muir at Northwestern University). The high quality of the essays testify to the centrality that ritual has come to occupy as a hermeneutic for understanding culture and politics in the early modern period and as a vindication of the anthropological turn in history, to which Muir's work has been fundamental. The volume begins with an editorial introduction to the work of Edward Muir, then turns to a number of essays inspired by Muir's interests and methodologies. The range of categories to which the framework of ritual is applied is impressive. We have here some familiar suspects: studies of the ritual aspects of early modern processions, religious ceremonies, coronations, and pastoral visitations. But the volume also includes a number of essays that analyze topics whose ritualistic aspects have been less well-appreciated: the production of book manuscripts, the procedures associated with granting pardons for sex crimes, the historiographies of the Burgundian ducal court, and the "deep play" of the Renaissance gaming table. One major theme that emerges from this collection of essays is the polyvalent nature of most early modern rituals. The success of any given ritual often seems to have depended on a certain slipperiness in its meaning: thus, as both Patricia Fortini Brown and Monique O'Connell point out, political rituals might simultaneously function to project the dominant state's power and to affirm the local traditions and concerns of subject communities. Similarly, Celeste MacNamara's study of rural confraternities in the Veneto shows that the Counter-Reformation flourishing of rural devotion played out largely in the spaces of "mutually beneficial compromises" between Church and community. Or, as Susan Karant-Nunn demonstrates, the veiled faces at a Saxon elector's funeral might simultaneously represent an expression of real grief, a calculated conformity to the societal expectation to cry, or even some hybrid emotion generated from the ritualized cultivation of grief in the funeral procession. Thus, the volume as a whole seems to affirm that rituals were most successful when the same ritual could be molded in different ways to meet the needs and expectations of diverse audiences. This work will likely be of much more use to historians of early modern Italy than to others, since the preponderance of essays are on Italian topics. Nevertheless, on the whole, this impressive work contains much excellent scholarship by many leading historians, and though a few essays in the volume do stray from the topic [End Page 375] of ritual, even in these cases, the meeting of ideas with Muir's work remains a welcome constant. Gregory Murry Mount Saint Mary's University Copyright © 2019 The Catholic University of America Press

Call for ManuscriptsContemporary Black British Women's Writing Special Issue of Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature Edited by Elisabeth Bekers, Elizabeth-Jane Burnett, and Helen Cousins This special issue aims to appraise the burgeoning field of Black British Women's Writing in a collection of essays that considers the literary innovations of British women of African and African-Caribbean descent since the 1990s. The issue will highlight the centrality of aesthetic creativity in writing by black British women in order to acknowledge their investments in innovation and their challenges to literary tradition. We invite essays that recognize and celebrate the aesthetic qualities of this writing alongside or instead of the more usual socio-critical investigations, which understand the politics of these texts as a type of sociological information. However, the focus on innovation and experimentation should not neglect the political intent of writing that challenges social, political, and cultural issues. On the contrary, the special issue will be framed by an understanding that literary aesthetics, race, and gender intersect to produce/question particular social and material in/exclusions in specific historical and sociocultural contexts. We welcome essays on the full range of genres (including novels, plays, poems, performance, life writing, essays) that are adopted, and adapted, by contemporary black British women writers. We also seek to draw attention to a wide range of writers, beyond individuals who have gained prominence in recent years; therefore, we encourage contributions discussing authors with developing reputations. Topics might include but are not limited to: • Innovation in literary form, for example, through hybrid cross-genre writing, linguistic play, anti-realism, narrative and structural modes that create fragmentation. • The ways in which the formal experiments of black British women's writing ask challenging questions of society. • The intersection of race and gender with ideas of literary aesthetics in black British women's writing. • How alternative reading practices can open up explorations of black British women's aesthetic innovations. • The effects a critical focus on aesthetics and innovation has on canon formation for black British women's writing and beyond. [End Page 253] • The traditions and norms that limit black British women writers' artistic expression to "authenticity" and cultural representation. Initial queries and abstracts are encouraged though final acceptance will be determined by the completed essay. Essays should be 6,000-9,000 words (excluding notes), should conform to the endnote style of the 17th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style, and should be submitted as a Microsoft Word document. Please submit essays through email by 1 October 2019 to elisabeth.bekers@vub.be and H.Cousins@newman.ac.uk. [End Page 254] Copyright © 2019 The University of Tulsa

Journal Article New Views of Mormon History: A Collection of Essays in Honor of Leonard J. Arrington Get access New Views of Mormon History: A Collection of Essays in Honor of Leonard J. Arrington. Edited by Bitton Davis Beecher Maureen Ursenbach. (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1987. xvii + 480 pp. Charts, tables, notes, bibliography, index. $19.95.) Valeen Tippetts Avery Valeen Tippetts Avery Northern Arizona University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Western Historical Quarterly, Volume 20, Issue 2, May 1989, Pages 216–217, https://doi.org/10.2307/969346 Published: 01 May 1989

Reviewed by: Unarrested Archives: Case Studies in Twentieth-Century Canadian Women’s Authorship by Linda M. Morra Andrea Beverley Linda M. Morra. Unarrested Archives: Case Studies in Twentieth-Century Canadian Women’s Authorship. Toronto, Buffalo, and London: University of Toronto Press, 2014. 244pp. $29.95. Linda Morra opens the first case study of Unarrested Archives by describing an enticing archival lead that suddenly went cold: the material in question was simply missing from the fonds. This anecdote epitomizes Morra’s own approach to the cultural politics of archives. That is, she doesn’t shy away from the gaps and peculiarities of the record but instead highlights the circumstances that affect the formation and reformation of particular archives over time, especially as women writers have negotiated their presence in public and for posterity. Morra situates her contribution in terms of archive theory generally (including engagement with Foucault and Derrida) and scholarship on Canadian women writers’ archives more specifically, to which she has already made an important contribution (Morra, Rule). As the book’s title indicates, she develops terminology around arrest/unarrest that provides a conceptual framework for her [End Page 140] analyses. Beginning with Derrida’s discussion of the etymology of “archive,” which evokes documents that would have been under “house arrest” in a magistrate’s home, Morra plays with the varied definitions of “arrested” to situate different archives and their resonances. The “unarrested” archive is non-institutionalized—but archived material might also be “unarrested” as it is mobilized by researchers. As she deploys these terms, arrest/unarrest is not a staid binary; rather, it provides vocabulary for addressing the creation and uses of archives in very different circumstances. In other words, this terminology is productive because Morra exploits its slipperiness. It provides a continuity to the volume, as do the recurring themes of feminist self-agency, the national imaginary, institutional frameworks, and archival formation. Organized chronologically, the five case studies that make up the monograph draw on archival material that spans more than a century. The first case study uses Diane Taylor’s concept of “scenario” to offer a “critical repositioning” of Pauline Johnson’s public performances, particularly “A Cry from an Indian Wife.” The chapter is a wonderful combination of historical contextualization and innovative close reading that explores gaps in Johnson’s “arrested” archive, as well as her on-stage transgressions of gender, race, and class norms. The second chapter draws on Judith Butler’s notion of kinship to discuss how Emily Carr navigated her reliance on Ira Dilworth to legitimate her writings in the public sphere. In its discussion of Carr’s Klee Wyck and Growing Pains, the chapter reflects on the masculinist underpinnings of the genre of autobiography and the extent to which Carr’s narratives subvert those assumptions. The following chapter also traces a writer’s recourse to male authority to manage her writings: this time, Sheila Watson’s interactions with Fred Flahiff. Here, Morra suggests the especial collaborative nature of research in this particular archive: Watson deposits fonds with gaps (or “imminence”) that lend themselves to future “unarresting” by researchers. Morra’s longest chapter synthesizes extensive archival material on Jane Rule’s interactions with her literary agents over the course of her career. The main focus is on Rule safeguarding her “literary integrity” by resisting censorship, maintaining final authority over her publications, and conserving (“arresting”—in a positive sense) her archives for posterity. The chapter is bookended by accounts of Canadian state seizure (“arrest” in the negative) of some of Rule’s written material in two instances: when authorities targeted the gay liberation periodical The Body Politic in 1977 and when they seized books destined for the Little Sisters Book and Art Emporium in 1986. Morra’s final case study invokes a similar sense of the [End Page 141] fraught relationship between a writer and the nation-state. It focuses on Marlene NourbeSe Philip, and particularly the aftermath from the 1995 radio broadcast in which Michael Coren made reprehensible comments about NourbeSe Philip. NourbeSe Philip authorized Morra to peruse five of her own boxes of records. Although Morra characterizes this archive as strategically “unarrested” because NourbeSe Philip has refused to lodge it with an institution...

Reviewed by: Modern Spanish Women as Agents of Change: Essays in Honor of Maryellen Bieder ed. by Jennifer Smith Alexander M. Cárdenas Smith, Jennifer, editor. Modern Spanish Women as Agents of Change: Essays in Honor of Maryellen Bieder. Bucknell UP, 2019, Pp. 236. ISBN 978-1-68448-032-6. Modern Spanish Women as Agents of Change: Essays in Honor of Maryellen Bieder is a collection of eleven essays that present new approaches to assess Spanish writers’ and social activists’ literary and political contributions to feminism in nineteenth-century Spain. As Jennifer Smith points out in the Introduction, this collection is a tribute to the prolific academic Maryellen Bieder, one of the most relevant scholars of nineteenth-century Spanish literature, whose influential works on female Spanish writers, such as Emilia Pardo Bazán and women writers who lived through the Spanish Civil War, revolutionized literary criticism by exploring issues of female identity, feminist discourse, the interplay of gender and nationality, among others. In chapter 1, Akiko Tsuchiya examines María Rosa Gálvez’s and Faustina Sáez de Melgar’s antislavery plays titled “Zinda” (1804) and “La cadena rota” (1879), respectively. As the author reveals, these plays gravitate around themes regarding gender, race and colonialism. Tsuchiya focuses, in particular, on the ways in which the female playwrights strategically deployed Romantic and neo-Romantic melodrama as a means to advocate for the rights of the colonized, the slave, and women. Christine Arkinstall relates in chapter 2 the impressive academic life of journalist, fiction writer and women’s rights activist Sofía Tartillán (1829–1888). In particular, she analyzes the ideological background that shaped Tartillán’s writings, which fiercely defended, among other rights, women’s education. Influenced by the values of Enlightenment, Realism, Krausism, Freemasonry and Republicanism, Tartillán fought for women’s inclusion in the Spanish political sphere as primary “educators of future citizens and makers of national well-being” (47). In chapter 3, Roberta Johnson explores the intertextuality among Carmen de Burgos, Georg Simmel and Gregorio Marañón with respect to defining the nature and social and individual effects of fashion. In her description of Burgos’s conception, Johnson is able to identify similarities but also radical differences with Simmel’s social interpretation and Marañón’s biological understanding of fashion. In her feminist essay La mujer moderna y sus derechos (1927), Burgos expounds fashion as closely tied to feminism, as a means through which women could emancipate themselves from patriarchal and heteronormative rules and create their own sexually empowering image. Fashion, moreover, undermines class distinctions. Susana M. McKenna studies in chapter 4 Emilia Pardo Bazán’s literary theory as drafted in “Apuntes,” which is the prologue to Los pasos de Ulloa (1886), and the ways in which such a theory in fact reflects narrative techniques (such as the framing device), metaliterature, intertextuality, and reading modalities constructed in Pardo Bazán’s fiction, especially the story “El baile del Querubín” (1891). For McKenna, the unfounded defense of the traditional over the modern and the socially accepted enclosure of women in the domestic sphere, both of which are handled with irony in the story, in fact correspond to real situations that Pardo Bazán experienced and fought to change in her fiction. In chapter 5, Linda M. Willem deploys Armine Kotin Mortimer’s concept of the second story in her analysis of some of Pardo Bazán’s stories. In the two pairs of stories explored here, namely “Presentido” (1910)—“En coche-cama” (1914) and “Confidencia” (1892)—“Madre” (1893), Willem is able to postulate that the second story in each set (published at a later date) reveals a new approach to a theme already taken in its counterpart. Furthermore, they require an active reader who could fill in the gaps, question the reliability of the narrators, distinguish between framing and embedded narrations, and find the hidden and true resolutions [End Page 291] of the conflicts in each story. Denis DuPont explores in chapter 6 the parallelisms between Pardo Bazán’s novel Dulce sueño (1911) and the French Joris-Karl Huysmans’s novels À rebours (1884), Là-bas (1891), En route (1895), La cathédrale (1898...

Reviewed by: Weaving the American Catholic Tapestry: Essays in Honor of William L. Portier ed. by Derek C. Hatch and Timothy R. Gabrielli Katherine G. Schmidt Weaving the American Catholic Tapestry: Essays in Honor of William L. Portier. Edited by Derek C. Hatch and Timothy R. Gabrielli. Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2017. 356 pp. $41.00. This collection of essays in honor of William L. Portier, currently of the University of Dayton, is an indispensable volume for the study of Catholicism in America. It will be of interest to anyone interested in American Catholicism, as well as the reader interested in inculturation more broadly. The essays—written by Portier's closest colleagues and former students—perform what can only be described as historical "theology à la Portier" (to borrow a phrase from the volume's editors). To this end, the volume manages to honor the scholar on its cover in the best possible way: by contributing substantively to the contextual theology to which Portier has dedicated himself over the past five decades. Weaving the American Catholic Tapestry appears on the surface a project of ressourcement, of recovering many overlooked sources from the American Catholic context. The volume is better understood, however, as a representation of Portier's larger theological project, namely to reflect on the question of the relationship between nature and grace with careful attention to the context in which the question is asked. The apparent ressourcement, therefore, contributes to this broader and perennial question. The volume is a select dramatis personae for Catholicism in the United States, including Orestes Brownson, Dorothy Day, Abbe Felix Klein, and many others. The volume's final essay by Sandra Yocum on Joseph McSorley, however, may provide the best illustration of "theology à la Portier." Yocum [End Page 93] focuses on McSorley's writings about prayer, opting for a source overshadowed by others that may be perceived as more "scholarly" or "relevant" to academic theology. In so doing, however, Yocum provides new insights for understanding McSorley's role in the Modernist crisis, insights that refer us back to the nature/grace question at the heart of all theological reflection. Yocum is not the only essayist in the volume to mention the Modernist crisis, given that Portier's scholarly work has focused so much on that period. In a sense, Weaving the American Catholic Tapestry may even function talmudically for Portier's book-length treatment on the subject, Divided Friends. In addition, the volume's strength comes not only from its rich historical theology but also from its display of Portier's legacy as a teacher—from both students and colleagues. The collection is a testament to many students turned scholars formed by Portier's pedagogy. If one wants to understand "theology à la Portier," one need look no further than the theological temperament and methodology of his students, whose essays make up more than half of the volume. Given the many passing references to Portier's affinity for things like Bruce Springsteen and baseball, however, the volume could have benefitted from an essay expressly on theology and popular culture. Indeed, given his deeply sacramental imagination as an American theologian, one assumes that these elements are not secondary to Portier's thought but are, in fact, another example of the inculturation that pervades his scholarly life. Ultimately, the collection will be of great utility for graduate students in both theology and history. Instructors will find its essays helpful additions to coursework on both individual and collective bases. Katherine G. Schmidt Molloy College Copyright © 2018 American Catholic Historical Society

Reviewed by: Jane Austen Sings the Blues: Essays in Honour of Bruce Stovel Jocelyn Harris (bio) Nora Foster Stovel , editor. Jane Austen Sings the Blues: Essays in Honour of Bruce Stovel, with companion CD featuring blues performers Graham Guest and Grant Stovel, producers University of Alberta Press. 2009. 283 + CD. $26.95 [Erratum] As I write, the CD I found tucked inside the cover of Jane Austen Sings the Blues is playing on my computer. That title combines Bruce Stovel's enthusiasm for eighteenth-century English literature with his passion for the blues, for as Nora Stovel puts it, in Edmonton her husband 'landed in a blues brier-patch,' where he ran a blues radio program for a decade. Jazz musician Graham Guest comments, 'I can see Bruce hosting a dinner party with Jane Austen, Muddy Waters, and Howling Wolf. Muddy is saying, 'Miss Austen, I have to thank Bruce for introducing me to your novels. Now I have eternity to read them." Both Austen and the blues, says Nora Stovel, have 'a common love of life, a profound understanding of human nature, and a wicked sense of humour' - like Stovel himself. Those who attended the famous conference that Bruce Stovel and Juliet McMaster organized at Lake Louise for the Jane Austen Society of North America in 1993 are envied by those who did not. Jane Austen Sings the Blues is a tribute volume of forty-two essays and poems. Isobel Grundy speaks for all those family members, colleagues, students, and friends remembering Bruce Stovel, who died suddenly in 2007, when she says that he was 'someone that everybody liked, that everybody trusted, that everybody was always glad to see - and that everybody had banked on seeing around for a whole lot longer.' The Austen section contains a variety of treats, with two essays by Stovel himself displaying his gift for attentive reading. In 'Secrets, Silence, and Surprise in Pride and Prejudice,' he argues persuasively that these literary concepts 'form a single entity at the very heart of the notion of plot'; and in 'Emma's Search for a True Friend,' he concludes that the notion of friendship serves to 'crystallize the moral issues' in that novel, with Emma finding her best friend in Mr Knightley. In spite of their brevity, all the essays in the collection are just as substantial and nicely turned. Margaret Drabble goes to Kew Palace to find out about the jigsaw puzzles in Mansfield Park; Peter Sabor follows in Stovel's footsteps as he comments on Austen's prayers; Mary M. Chan explores Austen's notions of height, perception, and power in 'Insignificant Dwarves and Scotch Giants'; Laura Capello Bromling identifies Austen's 'spirit of complicity' with readers in her treatment of quixotism; and Natasha Duquette demonstrates Austen's changing use of the sublime. [End Page 312] For the movies, Jessica Wallace discusses narrative point of view in Joe Wright's film of Pride and Prejudice; Kelly Taillefer discovers creative 'reinventions' in adaptations of Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion, and Mansfield Park; and Kelsey Everton shows how dancing is a visual equivalent to Austen's language. Amy Stafford reads the complexity of marriage in the novels as Austen's commentary on that institution, and Juliet McMaster writes in champagne style about the 'endlessly comparable and endlessly different' husbands to be found in Austen. In "Our Miss Austen': Women Writers Reading Jane Austen through Two Centuries,' Isobel Grundy tells how women writers were hurrying even in the 1820s to share their 'word-of-mouth discovery' of a little-known novelist. They wrote, she says, 'to pinpoint and express the meaning of their lives, and their reading was an important constituent of that meaning.' Inspired by Stovel to read Austen afresh, all these contributors appear to be doing the same. Doug Barbour's ventriloquizing of a triumphalist Mrs Bennet and Elaine Bander's singing of Anne Elliot's blues, 'Been sittin' here, seven long years alone,' launch tributes by jazz friends, one of whom takes Stovel the Austen scholar into Sneeky Pete's, a 'dingy, dark, and not particularly inviting' blues joint, where he was just as much at home as in the classroom. Conversely, Stovel's transferable...

New Views of Mormon History: A Collection of Essays in Honor of Leonard J. Arrington. Ed. by Davis Bitton and Maureen Ursenbach Beecher. (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1987. xix + 480 pp. $19.95.) Mario S. De Pillis Mario S. De Pillis University of Massachusetts, Amherst Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 75, Issue 4, March 1989, Pages 1298–1299, https://doi.org/10.2307/1908660 Published: 01 March 1989

Reviewed by: The Unknown Sayings of Jesus, and: Hidden Sayings of Jesus: Words Attributed to Jesus Outside the Four Gospels, and: Sayings of Jesus: Canonical and Non-Canonical: Essays in Honour of Tjitze Baarda Sheila E. McGinn Marvin Meyer, The Unknown Sayings of Jesus. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1998. Pp. xxvi + 182. $18.00. William G. Morrice, Hidden Sayings of Jesus: Words Attributed to Jesus Outside the Four Gospels. London: SPCK; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1997. Pp. viii + 247. $18.95, paper. William L. Petersen, Johan S. Vos and Henk J. de Jonge, editors, Sayings of Jesus: Canonical and Non-Canonical: Essays in Honour of Tjitze Baarda. Leiden/New York/Köln: Brill, 1997. Pp. xxvi + 344. Nlg 176; US $103.50. These three volumes provide but a sample of the plethora of recent studies and collections of Jesus materials, canonical and non-canonical. Both Meyer and Morrice create collections of sayings from various sources, whereas Petersen et al. provide a collection of essays concerning the sayings material. Morrice includes sayings from the NT gospels, Acts, and the Pauline corpus, as well as sayings from the NT Apocrypha, and even a few Arabic texts. He does not spell out his selection criteria. Of the book’s eighteen chapters, five are devoted to sayings from the Gospel of Thomas. A total of 253 fragments are presented, each of which Morrice “grades” as to its authenticity. To only thirty-six of those not known from the NT does he give an “A” or “B” grade. This fact somewhat undercuts the value of Morrice’s work, since the vast majority of these A-B grade sayings are available in prior collections. The primary value Morrice himself seems to see in his collection is a case for viewing the GThos as not “gnostic”—and therefore as valuable for interpretation of the NT parables. Since the texts are available elsewhere and Morrice provides very little in the way of interpretation of individual sayings, this collection does not seem particularly useful—neither for “historical Jesus” scholarship nor for analysis of wider movements in the early Christian period. Meyer bemoans the “unfortunate canonical shadow” which falls over Morrice’s collection (xiii), and attempts to avoid this limitation in his own collection by excluding those sayings found in the NT, Q, or the Coptic GThos. Instead, Meyer turns to the NT Apocrypha—including the Gospels of Mary, Peter, Phillip, Hebrews, Ebionites, Eve, Egyptians, Nazoreans, and Thomas (Gk); the Acts of Peter, Thomas, and John; the Dialogue of the Savior; Book of Thomas and the First Book of Jeu; Secret James; the Martyrdom of Peter; the Epistles of the Apostles; Papyrus Oxyrhynchus, Papyrus Egerton, the Bruce Codex and Berlin 20915; Pistis Sophia—as well as the Didache, four additions to the canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and a variety of other Christian sources from the Clementine Epistles to Ephrem the Syrian and Augustine of [End Page 615] Hippo. Among his 200 selections, Meyer also includes two sayings from the Babylonian Talmud (no. 181–182), one inscription from a mosque in India, and seventeen sayings from the Arabic writers áAbd al-Jabba\r, al-Ghazzali, and al-Ibshihi. The collection is certainly much more eclectic than that of Morrice, but it does not advance the historical discussion much. One would have liked to have Meyer’s criteria for selection of these diverse sayings. Instead of delineating his own criteria for determining the historicity of a given saying, he outlines three different sets garnered from Duling/Perrin, Crossan, and Funk, but he never evaluates them. Essentially Meyer seems to follow Funk’s method, which is the least sophisticated of the three choices. Subjective and formal criteria are intermixed with each other with no apparent hierarchy for their application. No ground-breaking work this, perhaps the most noticeable feature of the sayings culled from patristic sources is their paucity. The Festschrift for Tjitze Baarda, edited by Petersen, Vos and de Jonge is a collection of essays of which Prof. Baarda can be rightfully proud. The Baarda bibliography alone would have made this volume a solid contribution to the field; the essays make it even more valuable. This is a substantial work, with...

REVIEWS 286 point to a possible raid on a large ransom delivery for the captured French king. Giannino, despite having spent a considerable sum to outfit himself with three different suits of armor (one made of turtle shells) was unable to attend. The battle’s outcome was hardly desirable: the routiers had taken Pont-Saint-Esprit, which possessed one of the four bridges that crossed the Rhône, thus making it profoundly important both for military and trade reasons. Pope Innocent VI declared a crusade to recapture the bridge and the town, but response was lukewarm, and once the commander was taken in by a trick and killed, the Pope bribed the rest of the mercenaries to leave. The effect on Giannino was cataclysmic . He was imprisoned first in Provence, then, in Marseille at the Pope’s behest, kept in irons for over four months, tortured, and accused (for want of a clearer crime) of counterfeiting and heresy. After a transfer to Naples in 1362, where he was better treated, Giannino began to write his memoirs. Nothing is known of his death. That’s the story, anyway. As Falconieri clearly states, we have little to go on in terms of sources about the little king: the primary resource is a manuscript mostly likely (in Falconieri’s view) derived from Giannino’s lost memoirs and compiled by a close relative. He makes a compelling case: the final line of the Istoria del re Giannino di Francia ends with Giannino’s imprisonment and the line, “And I am chained here inside,” which is certainly not the usual way to end a late medieval history. But nothing is that easy, especially not in a tale that seems pulled straight from contemporary romances and oral folktales. Giannino himself, befitting his mercantile roots, placed great faith in the written word, and forged documents to help him establish his credibility. It seems a contradiction , but it is nearly impossible to disagree with Falconieri’s portrayal of the hapless would-be king as something of a wily Forrest Gump, mixing innocence and skill with astonishing acumen. The admixture of truth and lies, of documents that must be read as fakes but trusted to impart something real, of a forger who must make truth out of whole parchment, provides a unique glimpse onto the creation of bureaucratic, royal, and civic identity as constructed through seals (and who owns them), documents (and who writes them and why), and receipts (for goods purchased and monies given). The innumerable characters and personages addressed in the text all seem to traffic in lies, halftruths , and deceptions, but what emerges is a vivid portrait of the complex interplay of power relations across Europe. It is difficult to strain the fact from the fiction in terms of the specifics, particularly as far as Giannino’s own convictions are concerned, but The Man Who Believed He Was King of France traces a telling and evocative paper trail across class lines, national boundaries, and shifting allegiances, and makes from it all, a thrilling read. KATHERINE MCLOONE, Comparative Literature, UCLA Florence and Beyond: Culture, Society and Politics in Renaissance Italy. Essays in Honour of John M. Najemy, ed. David S. Peterson with Daniel E. Bornstein (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies 2008) 518 pp., ill. Peterson and Bornstein’s collection of essays in honor of John Najemy offers an interesting mix of articles focused on Renaissance Florence and its environs. REVIEWS 287 The work begins with an introduction that includes an affectionate overview of Najemy’s career and contributions to the study of Florentine and Renaissance history over the last thirty years, and then goes on to describe the collected texts which aim to pay homage to Najemy through their adherence to the close reading of primary source texts. Though these essays cover a range of interesting topics associated with Renaissance Florence, they do so with such specificity that their utility to a reader generally interested in understanding the period is doubtful. With few exceptions, the articles contained in this collection are less interesting for their content (many of the subjects are extremely narrow) but are useful as guides for how primary sources can, and should...

Reviewed by: Learning and Understanding in the Old Norse World: Essays in Honour of Margaret Clunies Ross Randi Eldevik Learning and Understanding in the Old Norse World: Essays in Honour of Margaret Clunies Ross. Edited by Judy Quinn, Kate Heslop, and Tarrin Wills. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2007. Pp. xiv + 456; 6 illustrations. $116. This collection of essays by twenty scholars active in Old Norse studies quickly announces its ambition to be something more coherent and organized than the random mélange one ordinarily expects a Festschrift to be. Divided thematically into sections ("Theoretical Frameworks for Understanding Old Norse Literature"; "Old Norse Myth and Society"; "Oral Traditions in Performance and Text"; "Vernacular and Latin Theories of Language"; "Prolonged Traditions") and commencing with an introduction that provides a rationale for the choice of topics and for the significance of "Learning and Understanding" as the overall theme that links the essays together, this book clearly is the consequence of considerable thought and attention from its editors. It is a pity that, having gone as far as they did, the editors' efforts did not extend just a bit further. One of the most striking features of this collection is the frequency with which writers talk past one another. By that I do not mean "disagree with one another," for disagreeing implies a modicum of engagement with another scholar's ideas, if only to dispute them. What I mean is that quite a few of the contributors to this volume often seem totally oblivious to what other contributors have written-either works that would be helpful in clinching a particular argument, or works that contradict it and therefore must be refuted. The editors of this collection, with their comprehensive grasp of what the collection contains, could easily have nudged certain contributors in the right direction by pointing out writings of other contributors that needed be taken into account if the essays by the negligent contributors were to be watertight. For example, in one of this book's outstanding essays, "Structuralist Approaches to Saga Literature," Lars Lönnroth has occasion to refer to an earlier work of his own, the illuminating Njáls saga: A Critical Introduction, with which anybody working in Old Norse studies should be familiar. Mats Malm's contribution to the "Vernacular and Latin" section of the Festschrift, a rather weak essay called "The Notion of Effeminate Language in Old Norse Literature," would have been greatly enriched and rectified by consulting the discussion of elaborate descriptive language (which is what Malm means by "effeminate language") in Lönnroth's book, but Malm and/or the editors evidently overlooked it. A comparable situation involves two essays found side by side in the "Oral Traditions" section, Edith Marold's meager and disappointing "Mansǫngr-a Phantom Genre?" and the far superior "The Art of Poetry and the Sagas of Icelanders" by Gudrún Nordal. Nordal's essay frequently mentions the poetry found in Grettis saga, yet Marold never mentions Grettis saga in the part of her essay that is concerned with obscene poetry, which is one of the possible meanings of mansǫngr. [End Page 267] Marold claims that verses of this kind existed orally but were legally suppressed and thus cannot be found in any extant Old Norse texts; but the salacious verses occasioned by the encounter between the lusty wench and the saga's protagonist Grettir certainly seem to fill the bill. If for some reason these verses do not qualify as mansǫngr, it would be nice to have an explanation of why. Likewise, Vésteinn Ólason's relatively weak essay "The Icelandic Saga as a Kind of Literature with Special Reference to its Representation of Reality" would have benefited greatly from consultation of works by the two scholars whose contributions immediately follow his in the "Theoretical Frameworks" section of the Festschrift. These two are Lars Lönnroth, whose essay has already been mentioned, and Torfi Tulinius, who contributed an essay on Eyrbyggja saga that shows, by means of a structural analysis, the enduring value and usefulness of Lévi-Strauss's approach. Mimesis and historical change, not structuralism, are the issues taken up by Vésteinn Ólason-specifically, the question of...

Reviewed by: Spirit and Story: Pentecostal Readings of Scripture; Essays in Honor of John Christopher Thomas ed. by Blaine Charette and Robby Waddell Susan Wendel blaine charette and robby waddell (eds.), Spirit and Story: Pentecostal Readings of Scripture; Essays in Honor of John Christopher Thomas (New Testament Monographs 41; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2020). Pp. x + 253. £70/$90/€80. In this festschrift, colleagues and former students of John Christopher Thomas honor him for his outstanding scholarly work and his significant contributions to the articulation and advancement of Pentecostal theology. Accordingly, in the opening chapter, "In Celebration of John Christopher Thomas," Lee Roy Martin provides an overview of Thomas's illustrious career, along with a summary of his description of the essential characteristics of Pentecostal theology. The next eight chapters offer "Pentecostal readings" of various biblical passages: Rickie D. Moore, "The Spirit of the Story of Rizpah in 2 Samuel 21.1–14"; Blaine Charette, "The Kingdom of the Son of Man and the Vocation of the Church in Matthew"; Robby Waddell, "The Coming of the Son of Man in Mark's Gospel"; Andrew T. Lincoln, "Leading or Following? Some Aspects of the Spirit's Role in John's Gospel"; J. Ayodeji Adewuya, "The Devil, Disease, and Deliverance: James 5.14–16 in the Context of Contemporary African Christianity"; Melissa L. Archer, "'Worship in Spirit and Truth': The Role of Worship in the Fourth Gospel in Concert with the Liturgy of the Apocalypse"; Robert W. Wall, "A Pneumatic Discernment of the Spirit-Beast of Revelation 13.11–17"; and Amos Yong, "'To Him Who Loves Us and Freed Us from Our Sins by His Blood …': A Pentecostal Unveiling of Apocalyptic Love." While the Pentecostal perspectives of many of these scholars have an impact on their interpretation of the Scriptures, most combine their theological readings with other methodological approaches (e.g., narrative, historical, intertextual, comparative). The majority of these early chapters engage seriously with the biblical text even as the contributors integrate their specific Pentecostal outlooks with a range of other methods. For example, Moore explores how the "gaps in the text" provide space for recognizing "the elusive character and presence of YHWH" (p. 25). Notably, this approach responds to the invitation to active engagement in interpretation, which is latent within the text itself. Subsequently, Waddell fuses "narrative and intertextual analysis" with his "theological hermeneutic" (p. 44) to explore how the title "Son of Man" in Mark's Gospel produces a fresh understanding of the identity of Jesus. Such methodological rigor, paired with careful exegesis, produces insightful biblical interpretation. The next six chapters broaden the discussion to considerations surrounding Pentecostal theology: Chris E. W. Green, "Hearing God's Word in the Presence of Our Enemies: Protest, Compassion, and Reconciliation"; William K. Kay, "Pentecostal Eschatology and Historical Events"; Kimberly Ervin Alexander, "Receiving the Spirit in Her Early Pentecostal Body: Sanctification, Spirit Baptism, and the Lamb Slain for Sinners"; Kenneth J. Archer, "The Cleveland School: The Making of an Academic Pentecostal Theological Tradition"; Daniela C. Augustine, "'Restorying' Life and Death: From the Iconoclasm of Violence to Love as the Life of the New Creation"; and Frank D. Macchia, "Signs of Grace in a Graceless World: The Charismatic Structure of the Church in Trinitarian Perspective." As some of the titles imply, these chapters include a more explicit treatment of the impact of Pentecostal spirituality and practices upon biblical interpretation. In particular, the latter chapters include discussions of historical trends that influenced [End Page 349] the development of interpretive traditions within the Pentecostal movement. For example, Alexander explores how the bodily experiences of some early Pentecostals influenced their reception of the Bible; Kay considers Pentecostal readings of Daniel and Revelation during the first quarter of the twentieth century; and Archer reviews the development of an academic Pentecostal theological tradition known as the "Cleveland School." This school of thought began in the 1990s with a group of four scholars, including John Christopher Thomas, who founded the Journal of Pentecostal Theology and its supplement series. Although, at first glance, this festschrift might be construed as a collection of essays from a narrow circle of Pentecostal interpreters, the volume in fact contains a lively array of exegetical discussions and...

Reviewed by: The Renaissance in the Streets, Schools, and Studies: Essays in Honour of Paul F. Grendler Paul Nelles (bio) Konrad Eisenbichler and Nicholas Terpstra, editors The Renaissance in the Streets, Schools, and Studies: Essays in Honour of Paul F. Grendler. CRRS Publications, Victoria University in the University of Toronto 2008. 374, xii. $37.00 This collection of essays by former colleagues and students pays tribute to a scholar who has made a lasting mark on the study of Renaissance Italy through scores of articles and a number of highly influential books on the history of printing, censorship, and education. For more than thirty years Paul Grendler taught Renaissance history at the University of Toronto; he has also served as editor of a number of widely disseminated reference works that have brought the Renaissance to a broad audience. [End Page 254] The essays gathered here all intersect in meaningful ways with Grendler's work. Grendler's scholarship has focused on institutions, groups, and processes rather than individuals, an orientation echoed in many of the essays in this volume. Nicholas Terpstra offers a nuanced social and political analysis of a Bologna confraternity, one of many such lay organizations in Renaissance Italy, that offered spiritual solace to condemned prisoners on the eve of their execution. Thomas Deutscher explores the workings of a northern Italian episcopal tribunal, and Paul Murphy examines Jesuit entanglement in a popular pilgrimage site at Loreto. James Farge charts the emergence of censorship in France by tracing the uneasy alliance struck by the Sorbonne Faculty of Theology, the Parlement of Paris, and the Crown. Farge's conclusions about censorship in France echo Grendler's findings for Italy: though censorship was a creaking and imperfect process, it nonetheless had a real impact on authors, printers, and readers. Much of Grendler's work has explored the relationship of culture and politics in the Renaissance. Here, Ronald Witt deftly ties the arrival of lay history writing in the early Renaissance to an emerging class of well-educated notaries and to social and political tensions in the Italian city states. Mary Hewlett roots a failed 1546 attempt to undermine Medici political dominance in the humanist inclinations of the plot's originator, whose musings on classical authors reveal a figure eager to establish a free, pan-Tuscan federation on the model of the ancient Etruscans. The essays by Konrad Eisenbichler, Erika Rummel, and Antonio Santosuosso explore cultural reception; Eisenbichler's study of the legacy of written responses to popular theatrical performances in diaries and confraternity records suggests that the social staging of theatrical events was likely far more important to Renaissance audiences than the play itself. In recognition of Paul Grendler's enduring contribution to our understanding of Renaissance education in two important monographs on schools and universities, several essays tackle the subject of education directly. Margaret King explores the maternal role in education over four centuries, showing how mothers gradually came to assume a central role in early education - until challenged by the kindergarten system in the nineteenth century. Mark Lewis compares the careers of two humanist teachers in the Jesuit colleges of the society's Neapolitan province. Lewis sheds light on the shifting fortunes of the teaching mission of the society, and on how humanism both aided the Jesuit preaching mission and rendered the Jesuit colleges attractive to social and political elites. John O'Malley, in an insightful essay on the state of Renaissance studies over the course of Grendler's career, shows that while the importance of education for Renaissance humanists had long been recognized, few [End Page 255] before Grendler had broached the issue of what actually went on in Renaissance schools. Building on both Grendler's work and his own, O'Malley argues convincingly that the most significant legacy of the Renaissance is to be located in the successful institutionalization of the humanist program in schools spanning the breadth of Europe. The volume fittingly concludes with an appreciation of Paul Grendler's contributions to academic life at the University of Toronto by William Callahan. Paul Nelles Paul Nelles, Department of History, Carleton University Copyright © 2011 University of Toronto Press Incorporated

Reviewed by: Understanding the Somalia Conflagration: Identity, Political Islam, and Peacebuilding by Afyare Abdi Elmi, and: Milk and Peace, Drought and War: Somali Culture, Society and Politics: Essays in Honour of I. M. Lewis ed. by Markus Hoehne and Virginia Luling Terrence Lyons Afyare Abdi Elmi. Understanding the Somalia Conflagration: Identity, Political Islam, and Peacebuilding. Oxford: Pluto Press, 2010. xvii + 193 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $90.00. Cloth. $35.00. Paper. Markus Hoehne and Virginia Luling , eds. Milk and Peace, Drought and War: Somali Culture, Society and Politics: Essays in Honour of I. M. Lewis. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010. xi + 437 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $55.00. Cloth. The field of Somali studies has been shaped to a remarkable degree by I. M. Lewis’s lineage-based structural paradigm and more recently by the “collapsed state” conceptual frame. Hoehne and Luling have edited an excellent set of essays that revisits Lewis’s paradigm while simultaneously finding innovative ways to draw fresh ideas from standard texts. Elmi’s monograph draws in part from the tradition of searching for the root causes and [End Page 186] possible solutions to the problem of state collapse in Somalia. These two works suggest that while “clan-based politics” and “state collapse” are deeply problematic concepts, they have an enormous influence in contemporary scholarship on Somalia. Elmi promises to take a fresh look at the story of Somalia’s collapse, and the monograph does a good job in tracing the general story and specifically in incorporating the historical dynamics of political Islam. As is common to most accounts by regional specialists, he emphasizes endogenous dynamics behind state collapse. Counterterrorism policies advocated by Washington and Addis Ababa, Elmi argues, benefit the Islamists by allowing them to position themselves as the defenders of Somali nationalism. The disastrous Ethiopian intervention and the U.S. prioritization of counterterrorism goals over peace-building provide the impetus for much of Elmi’s analysis. “As long as Islamists are challenged by external actors and hated warlords, they will enjoy the support of the Somali people,” he says. “This makes Islamist rule basically inevitable in Somalia” (72). Failed international interventions and what Elmi sees as Ethiopia’s intention to keep Somalia weak and divided receive much of the blame for the “Somalia conflagration” referenced in the book’s title. The Hoehne and Luling edited volume seeks to reexamine the work of I. M. Lewis, the doyen of Somali studies. The book succeeds as both a festschrift and also as a set of extraordinary contributions by some of the most notable scholars of Somalia from across the social sciences and humanities. Lewis’s legacy is diverse, and the scholarship here includes history, politics, culture, language, and social organization at a deep structural level. All interested in Somalia will find something of interest in this collection of essays and reflections. The question of the “clan paradigm” associated with Lewis’s work has been at the center of heated debates within Somali studies and politics. Some argue that the principles of kinship constituted the overarching logic of Somali nationalism and modern nation-state politics, while others emphasize transformation and the autonomous role of the state and market. This volume acknowledges this question but does not seek to resolve it. As noted by Menkhaus (88), “taking a position on how to handle clanism” is unavoidable for scholars of Somalia, and Geshekter asks, “like it or not, aren’t we all now Lewisites?” (399). Many of the contributions emphasize fine-grained analysis of specific practices such as spirit possession, Somali poetry, or specific communities and periods of time. Menkhaus writes on the Somali Bantu, Abdurahman M. Abdullahi on 1975 family law, Boobe Yusuf Duale on the poetry of Timocadde, Luling on the Gibil Cad group in southern Somalia, and Hoehne on Somali nicknames and their meaning. Each of these essays provides valuable insights and careful research into the specific, but the overall contours of Somalia as a subject remain elusive. Broader treatments of the subject here include Prunier’s treatment of comparative colonial legacies and Cassanelli’s excellent essay that presents Lewis in his historical setting. [End Page 187] Healy also takes the opportunity to work on...

REVIEWS Kristjana Gunnars, ed., Crossing ihe River: Essays in Honour of Margaret Laurence. (Winnipeg: Turnstone Press, 1988). xvi, 213. $12.95 (paper). Collections of essays have poured out in honour of Margaret Laurence in the years following her death in 1987. One of the most interesting of these is Crossing the River: Essays in Honour of Margaret Laurence, edited by poet, novelist, editor, translator, and critic Kristjana Gunnars for Turnstone Press. Originally, Gunnars intended, upon hearing of Laurence’s terminal illness, to produce a Manitoba Festschrift, a tribute by Laurence’s fellow Manitobans to be placed in her hands. After learning of Laurence’s death, Gunnars broadened the scope of the collection to include essays from writers across Canada and beyond: It was somehow important to show our appreciation for what she had accomplished in her life. Margaret Laurence has been a founding mother of Canadian literature. She has given voice to the Manitoba prairie. She has raised the value of till sectors of society by showing the full humanity of the most neglected and forgotten among us. From her example we have learned the value of Canadian literature and culture; the importance of art to that culture; the necessity of honesty in a dangerous time in history; the truth of fiction and poetry. Perhaps her greatest gift has been the way in which she showed us the depths and passions of the place in which we are living: Manitoba, through her, has taken full part in the human drama. We no longer needed to look elsewhere. (viii) Including twelve essays in all, all previously unpublished, the collection is structured within the framework of an introductory and a concluding article focussing on Margaret Laurence as a person in her earlier and in her last years: “Knowing through Writing: The Pilgrimage of Margaret Laurence” by Walter Swayze and “The Final Days: Margaret Laurence and Scandi­ navia” by Per Seyersted. In “Knowing through Writing: The Pilgrimage of Margaret Laurence,” Swayze focusses on the Christian convictions that, he argues, underlie all of her fiction. Her protagonists, while critical of Christian conventions, “at moments of abject hopelessness experience what seem to be Christian E n g lish St u d ie s in C a n a d a , x v iii, 3, Septem ber 1992 illuminations and gain a sense of freedom and strength to go on confidently, evenjoyously” (9). Swayzeasserts that, in her later years, Laurence acknowl­ edged that “most of her convictions were Christian, that she really believed in Divine Grace, and that she wanted to join publicly in Christian worship in her local community” (10). Swayze shares with the reader Laurence’s last words from her 1986 Manitoba convocation address: Know that your commitment is above all to life itself. Your own life and work and loves will someday come to an end, but life and work and love will go on, in your inheritors. The struggle for peace and social justice will go on, provided that caring humans still live. . . . You are among my inheritors. I give you my deepest blessings, my hope and my faith. (21) In “The Final Days: Margaret Laurence and Scandinavia,” Seyersted cel­ ebrates the typical courage and generosity with which Laurence faced death. In a letter to Seyersted dated November 18, 1986, just six weeks before her death, Laurence explains that the diagnosis of terminal cancer prevents her from attending a Scandinavian seminar on The Stone Angel. She concludes courageously: In this period of my life, I sometimes feel regretful that I won’t have more time, and I hate the “passage”, even though I am deeply a Christian, albeit an unorthodox one. I don’t believe in an individual immortality, but I do believe in the Holy Spirit. This has been shown to me over and over again in the last months. I feel sometimes overwhelmed by love. In this terrifying world, I still feel that there is hope. (212) The remaining ten essays provide a rich variety of topics and approaches. Approximately half the articles focus on individual novels, while the other half discuss general topics. The Stone Angel deserves two essays — “Hagar ’s Old Age: The Stone Angel as Vollendungsroman” by...