838 Reviews Lowenstein reveals the emergent sense of nationality inMilton's England, which was 'intensified by unprecedented political and religious upheavals' and 'fuelled by apocalyptic and millenarian language and ideas' (p. 27). Milton's own sense of Protestant national identitywas forged in this febrile political and religious at mosphere, though as Lowenstein demonstrates, thiswas no simple, linear process: in his major controversial writings, such as Of Reformation Touching Church Discipline inEngland (1641), Milton is constantly struggling and experimenting with, revising and reinterpreting, his relation to the nation. To a greater or lesser extent, all of the other essays build on this theme ofMilton's tortuous, though also, and often, triumphant, striving towards resolution over the place of the nation in English culture and politics. Itwas a personal and literary challenge which many of his contemporaries?along a broad political and religious spectrum?also met, but very few ifany of themwith such moving devotion or sagacity. Birkbeck, University of London Philip Major Quoting Death inEarlyModern England: The Poetics ofEpitaphs beyond theTomb. By Scott L. Newstok. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. 2009. xiv+228 pp. ?45. ISBN 978-0-230-20325-9. How do different cultures confront the perennial dyad ofmortality and remem brance? In the case of earlymodern England, as Scott L. Newstok argues in this engaging new study,by employing a diverse range of genres which, while falling under the umbrella of the epitaph, extends far beyond the locale of tombstone and cemetery. Religious upheaval, inevitably,was the catalyst for this efflorescence ofmemorialization. As Newstok shows, a new post-Reformation preoccupation with textual remembrance led to a saturation of epitaphs in all kinds of printed circumstances' (p. 28). This proliferation is amply illustrated in the author's sharp analyses of dramatic scripts, a political speech, treatises on rhetoric and poetics, historical chronicles, and elegiac verses. Newstok is especially insightful on the rhetorical possibilities ofwhat he terms the epitaphic gesture', which, while routinely incorporating the instantly recog nizable phrase 'here lies', simultaneously 'becomes open to amanipulation akin to metaphor, or even synecdoche' (p. 58). A striking example of this is provided by the occasion of the 'death rehearsal' of Elizabeth I. In giving a series of speeches to Cambridge University and toParliament between 1563 and 1573 which anticipated her own death, Elizabeth found a politically effectivemode of asserting the durabi lityof her virginity,which was not in factmirrored on her final tomb inscriptions. Effective, Newstok claims, because such a calculated 'intimation of immortality' (p. 74) allowed theQueen to head offpressure to name a successor, ormarry and have children, which would have dissipated her authority and ultimately led to the 'disestablishment of her own reign' (ibid.). Useful context isprovided by Elizabeth's long interest in 'thephilosophical issue of remembrance' (p. 73), which manifested itself in, among other things, her assiduous attention to detail in orchestrating the MLR, 105.3, 2010 839 funerals of relatives, though the force of the author's argument is diminished by too few direct quotations from the speeches he assesses. Birkbeck, University of London Philip Major The Drama ofCoronation: Medieval Ceremony inEarlyModern England. By Alice Hunt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2008. x+242 pp. ?50. ISBN 978-0-521-88539-3. Alice Hunt's first monograph is an engrossing and superblywritten account of the sixteenth-century Tudor coronation ceremony. Undertaking in-depth case studies of the five coronations that took place in England between 1509 and 1559, Hunt shines a bright torch on the complex and contested relationships between cere mony, the Reformation, and monarchical authority. In doing so, she scotches the popular notion that theReformation sounded the death knell of ceremony, and in particular that itvitiated the political and religious importance of the coronation. Instead, an ongoing process of renegotiating both the intrinsic value and propa gandist potentiality of the coronation, in the lightof religious transformation, took place: 'Far from being fixed or static, the coronation encompasses a contractual space where a kings power and sacredness are celebrated, created, negotiated, interpreted, and limited' (p. 38). The author charts with consummate skill the often delicately calibrated shifts between continuity and change in the coronation format, as the reign ofHenry VIII, which also saw the crowning ofAnne Boleyn, was followed by...