MLR, 100.2, 2005 479 account ofthe complexities of Malory's understated characterization. A broader theo? retical base would allow fora useful analysis of more of Malory's knights and damsels, as well as of characters who do not fitinto either category. Also because gender will not be equally important in all situations, a more convincing study would distinguish between the parts of the Morte Darthur in which gender roles are crucial to the story and those in which they are merely present. University of Wales, Bangor Ralph Norris Forgetting in Early Modern English Literature and Culture: Lethe's Legacies. Ed. by Christopher Ivic and Grant Williams. (Routledge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture) London and New York: Routledge. 2004. x+ 195 pp. ?60. ISBN 0-415-31046-6. Near the end of the Phaedrus Plato, speaking through Socrates, fears that writing may ironically serve to 'atrophy people's memories' because 'trust in writing will make them remember things by relying on marks made by others, from outside themselves, not on their own inner resources, and so writing will make the things they have learnt disappear from their minds' (Phaedrus, trans. by Robin Waterfield, World's Classics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 275A). However much the publishing in? dustry that would drive Renaissance humanism struggled to rebut this challenge, the spectre of forgetfulness continually haunts the age's quest to recover a lost classical legacy. Perhaps unavoidably, current scholarly preoccupation with the topic of me? mory has discovered the urgency of this concept's more problematic twin, forgetting, to our understanding of early modern culture. The essays assembled here address the matter in many voices, illustrating splendidly the fresh readings that it enables. Although drawn together from a number of disparate panels, the resulting sequence resembles more the proceedings of a single, co-ordinated conference. The collection sports all the virtues of such a structured event. Distributed under the general rubrics 'Embodiments', 'Signs', 'Narratives', and 'Localities', the essays none the less integrate to provide a neat balance of focus and breadth. William Engle's opening treatment of the subtle distinction between forget? ting and oblivion serves as an excellent conceptual gateway. We encounter expected topical loci in Philippa Berry's well-targeted discussion of the engineered 'fragmen? tary memory' problematizing A Midsummer NighVs Dream, and in both Elizabeth Harvey's and Jennifer Summit's provocative reassessments of Spenser's Castle of Alma episode. For the most part, however, the papers steer through strikinglyunanticipated terrain. Grant Williams's own contribution rethinks Robert Burton's and Thomas Browne's curious regard fortextuality itself,suggesting how for these para? doxical authors 'The printing press has proliferated throughout knowledge an unmanageable excess, which only the violence of book burning can eliminate' (p. 75). Garrett Sullivan likewise turns towards the physiological aspects of forgetfulness in his treatment of 'lethargic corporeality' in the drama. Christopher Ivic explores the relationship between remembering and forgettingdelineated amid 1 Henry IV's pro? ject of national-identity formation. Zackariah Long draws upon early anti-theatricalist anxiety that dramatic spectacle' inculcates habits of memory that undermine the social order' (p. 153) to explicate more precisely Rosalind's erotic responsiveness in As You Like It. David Baker revisits the predicament of Donne's alleged effortsto 'forget' his Catholic origins to fashion a more sympathetic picture of the writer's negotiations with his adopted faith. And Amanda Watson's study of 'rhyme, distraction, and for? getfulness' brilliantly animates tedious period controversy over the appropriateness of rhyme to English verse by recovering the mnemonic issues at stake within the debate. 480 Reviews The principal reservation one might have about the volume as a whole involves the nascent subject's need for a more sharply defined discourse. Ivic and Williams express in their useful introduction how the essays aim 'to challenge and expand the present critical vocabulary with which we understand early Modern English culture and its literature' (p. 14). But while the contributors all acknowledge distinctions between many forms of 'forgetting' (oblivion, denial, suppression, distraction, and so forth), the subtle discriminations do not always conspicuously obtain within the individual papers. As the problem compounds across subdivisions, the topic comes to seem somewhat nebulous and...