Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1353/cjm.2023.a912684
Sarah Bischoff
Reviewed by: Fictions of Consent: Slavery, Servitude, and Free Service in Early Modern England by Urvashi Chakravarty Sarah Bischoff Urvashi Chakravarty, Fictions of Consent: Slavery, Servitude, and Free Service in Early Modern England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022), ix + 295 pp. Fictions of Consent examines the contradiction between early modern England’s reliance on compulsory service and the claims that English air was “too pure for slaves to breath [sic] in” (John Lilburne’s Star Chamber Case of 1638, cited in Chakravarty, Fictions of Consent, 1). Urvashi Chakravarty highlights that this is [End Page 215] a matter of belief—not just of legislation. This belief made slavery in England (supposedly) an impossibility, despite the immense amount of historical and literary material that attests to compulsory labor and service on the island during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Chakravarty examines this fissure, showing that the philosophical, legal difference between bound service and slavery is, per the title, supposed consent. Chakravarty thus argues that the primary operative fiction is that all persons on English soil willingly serve their betters all the way up to the monarch, who in turn willingly serves god. Such a structure legitimized the paradigm of the supposed impossibility of slavery on English soil—which legally and philosophically rendered enslaved people invisible—but still managed to enforce servitude through many avenues. One example she cites is the often brutal vagrancy and begging laws of the sixteenth century that punished and put to work the “masterless,” or those living outside socially acceptable systems of labor (often the houseless and/or beggars) (4). This coercion, however, is coincidental to the fiction and the mythos of English freedom, even as it is the fundamental contradiction that makes up the very matter of willing servitude. The ideological dependence upon this hairsplitting is that the idea of consent honed the fictions that underwrote and authorized compulsory servitude, even as it made slavery ostensibly impossible. This consent is a fiction in multiple senses of the word, Chakravarty argues: it is, as mentioned, an imagined reality that makes up the legal structures that forbid slavery on English soil, despite there being documented presences and an evident economic reliance on enslaved people; it is a rhetoric that turns compulsory labor into willing devotion and service; it becomes integral to the emergences of what will define the family, genealogy, and race. Of particular importance, also, is that these fictions reshape social reality as time continues, even as their artificiality stands out. These fictions can (and do) defend both the naturalization of racialized slavery and the naturalization of somatically marked race itself. These traced emergences make Chakravarty’s text a useful one for following questions of service and slavery across multiple centuries, from Engl
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Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1353/cjm.2023.a912674
Sarah Bischoff
Abstract: Optimistic Shakespeareans have taken to going “a-queering” with his work, reading his poetry and plays for subversion of erotic expectations. This article looks at the racializing consequences of such reading, focusing particularly on the ways Romeo and Juliet has been read queerly not for the homoeroticism that inundates the play, but for the titular lovers’ death-fixated deviation from the genealogical imperative of heteronormative time. This article does not dispute this reading; it instead looks at the ways that such a reading dovetails with racializing fixtures of how the bodies of the lovers, labeled white, become idealized, and are mourned by both the story’s families and the audience. The eroticism laid out in Romeo and Juliet forms what Sharon Patricia Holland calls a “project of belonging”: the process of making personal and community identity through an assumed erotic connection, even if that eroticism takes on unexpected forms.
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Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1353/cjm.2023.a912686
Hillary Cheramie
Reviewed by: World Medievalism: The Middle Ages in Modern Textual Culture by Louise D’Arcens Hillary Cheramie Louise D’Arcens, World Medievalism: The Middle Ages in Modern Textual Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), 201 pp. Louise D’Arcens’s thorough investigation of medievalism beyond European chronology provides a timely model for reframing how scholars can attentively engage the “Middle Ages.” Drawing from a rich and diverse archive, D’Arcens masterfully unpacks the capacity of the Middle Ages to conjure contradictions. By carefully illuminating these contradictions and holding them aloft, she creates a framework to analyze how medievalism can at once bolster and displace the legacies of nationalism, racism, and colonialism. World Medievalism is poised to query the many developments of the global turn in medieval studies over the last twenty years and forge a path toward ethically making a world capacious enough for spatial and temporal localizations that resist Euro-Anglo hierarchies. The world, D’Arcens argues, can transcend the globe’s teleology because it can encompass the “transhistorical experiential state” of medievalism (22). This phenomenological aspect can be constructed sensorily, as it is at a heritage tourism site, or imaginatively, as it is in the world of a novel. In each of her four case studies, D’Arcens analyzes the contradictions and tensions of the transhistorical experience of medievalism. The first half of the book examines the use of the Middle Ages in the Northern Hemisphere to in one instance attempt to maintain Eurocentric legacies, and in the other instance displace Eurocentric legacies with interculturalism. The book’s second half is concerned with medievalisms that have emerged from the Global South, specifically the Asia-Pacific region. These medievalisms illuminate the possibilities and pitfalls of the transtemporal straddling of premodernity. The first chapter focuses on how right-wing French nationalism uses medievalism in reaction to identity crises spurred on by threatening globalization. D’Arcens’s selection of novels is astute in that each demonstrates the different contradictions arising from French nationalist medievalism. The thread that binds them together is déclinisme, a sense that in a teleological societal progression France is worsening, which manifests on the Right as melancholy for lost imperialism. Jérôme Ferrari’s Sermon on the Fall of Rome (Le Sermon sur la chute de Rome, 2012) aligns post-Roman France and post-colonial Corsica and, D’Arcens argues, imagines that a neomedieval future will develop from this power vacuum. Michel Houellebecq’s Submission (Soumission, 2015) satirizes [End Page 221] concerns of a neomedieval future in his depiction of France on the eve of becoming an Islamic polity. D’Arcens shows how medievalism is invoked to “disorient” clichéd antagonism between Europe and Islam and ridicule the contradiction inherent to the Islamophobic Right’s traditionalism. Th
回顾:世界中世纪:中世纪在现代文本文化由路易丝·达森希拉里·谢拉米路易丝·达森，世界中世纪:中世纪在现代文本文化(纽约:牛津大学出版社，2021年)，201页。路易丝·达森的中世纪超越欧洲年代学的彻底调查提供了一个及时的模型，重构学者如何能够专心从事“中世纪。”从丰富多样的档案中，达森巧妙地揭示了中世纪制造矛盾的能力。通过仔细阐释这些矛盾，并将其高举起来，她创建了一个框架来分析中世纪主义是如何同时支持和取代民族主义、种族主义和殖民主义的遗产的。世界中世纪主义准备对过去二十年来中世纪研究的全球转向的许多发展提出质疑，并在伦理上开辟一条道路，使世界足够宽敞，可以进行空间和时间的本地化，从而抵制欧洲-盎格鲁等级制度。阿森认为，世界可以超越全球的目的论，因为它可以包含中世纪主义的“超历史经验状态”(22)。这种现象学方面可以感性地构建，就像在遗产旅游景点一样，也可以想象，就像在小说的世界里一样。在她的四个案例研究中，德阿森分析了中世纪超历史经验的矛盾和紧张。本书的前半部分考察了在北半球使用中世纪，一方面试图维持欧洲中心主义的遗产，另一方面用跨文化主义取代欧洲中心主义的遗产。这本书的后半部分关注的是来自全球南方，特别是亚太地区的中世纪。这些中世纪主义揭示了前现代性跨时期跨越的可能性和陷阱。第一章主要讨论法国右翼民族主义如何利用中世纪主义来应对全球化威胁引发的身份危机。阿森的小说选集是精明的，因为每一部小说都展示了法国民族主义中世纪产生的不同矛盾。把他们联系在一起的是一种悲观情绪，在目的论的社会进步中，法国正在恶化，这在右翼表现为对失落的帝国主义的忧郁。Jérôme法拉利的《罗马陷落的布道》(Le Sermon sur la chute de Rome, 2012)将后罗马时代的法国和后殖民时代的科西嘉结合在一起，达森认为，新中世纪的未来将从这种权力真空中发展出来。米歇尔·维勒贝克(Michel Houellebecq)的《提交》(Soumission, 2015)在描述法国成为伊斯兰政体前夕，讽刺了人们对新中世纪未来的担忧。达森展示了中世纪主义是如何被用来“迷惑”欧洲与伊斯兰教之间的陈腐对立，并嘲笑伊斯兰恐惧症右翼传统主义固有的矛盾。这一章以一部小说结束，这部小说同样挣扎于“中世纪作为民族认同的起源和实现的矛盾角色”(71)。D’arcens揭示了Mathias Enard’s Compass (La Boussole, 2015)核心的盲目的“反东方主义”(60)。这部小说不仅仅是为东方主义道歉，它还探讨了受十字军东征影响的东西方关系的遗留问题，以及在权力和资源分配不均的情况下，如何在这种关系中继续发展。第二章转向塔里克·阿里的《伊斯兰五重奏》中中世纪主义的重新定位，并将世界中世纪主义的“世界”归结为“流散的阿拉伯-伊斯兰小说”(76)。阿里的小说创造并填充了拒绝西方年表和制图等级制的历史世界，为排除阿拉伯知识和对伊斯兰教的误解和扁平化提供了另一种选择。通过关注塔里克·阿里的当代政治和激进主义，阿森斯将《伊斯兰五重奏》定位为对现代东西方关系的思考。《五重奏》重新唤起了时间和地理上的希望——一个没有被拉丁基督教世界剥夺权利的中世纪。阿森强调，贯穿阿里小说的便利为未来提供了希望，这尤其受欢迎，紧随第一章关于抑郁和忧郁。《石榴树的阴影》(1992)以15世纪晚期的穆斯林安达卢斯为背景，通过……
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Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1353/cjm.2023.a912680
Catherine Powell-Warren
Reviewed by: Women’s Lives: Self-Representation, Reception and Appropriation in the Middle Ages ed. by Daniel Armenti and Nahir I. Otaño Gracia Catherine Powell-Warren Daniel Armenti and Nahir I. Otaño Gracia, eds., Women’s Lives: Self-Representation, Reception and Appropriation in the Middle Ages (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2022), 325 pp. Mysticism, in the abstract, conveys notions of self-improvement, of fore-knowledge, of healing, and of peace, notions that are as appealing today as they likely ever were—evidenced, for example, by the popularity of shops selling healing and energy crystals that dot most high streets. This mysticism, however, is altogether different from the deeply religious form of mysticism that animated the likes of Hildegard of Bingen and St. Catherine of Siena. To these women and their medieval contemporaries, mysticism was above all a state of being, a mechanism of transmission through which they became conduits for God. Importantly, as Elizabeth Petroff revealed in her extensive studies and writing, being recognized as a female mystic had critical implications for these women’s ability to exercise agency, autonomy, leadership, and authority—qualities otherwise impossible due to their gender. The essays collected in Women’s Lives: Self-Representation, Reception and Appropriation in the Middle Ages are appropriately dedicated to her. In her seminal work Body and Soul: Essays on Medieval Women and Mysticism (Oxford University Press, 1994), Petroff revisited and expanded upon her already considerable body of work on medieval female mystics. She examined what she termed the “rhetoric of transgression” that animated much of the writings of the female mystics and the circumstances of their daily existences. Petroff concluded that medieval women’s mysticism was significantly tied to freedom: the freedom to live lives outside of marriage and motherhood, the freedom to lead religious communities, and the freedom to write and engage with a number of public spheres, none of which would have been possible outside of the path between conformity and transgression that the mystics navigated carefully. The editors of this volume write in the introduction that Petroff, in an echo (or perhaps an homage) to the mystics who attempted to (re)negotiate the boundaries of gender, displayed a “passion to help women and minority individuals to study medieval literature and culture.” Given the lack of inclusivity and diversity that continues to pervade not only medieval studies (together with many of the humanities), this is indeed a legacy worth acknowledging and celebrating. The volume consists of an introduction, a helpful reproduction of the first and eighth essays from Petroff’s Body and Soul (“Women and Mysticism in the Medieval World” and “Male Confessors and Female Penitents: Possibilities for Dialogue”), and ten essays divided into three thematic groupings: “Self-Representation,” “Reception,” and “Appropriation.” True to Petroff’s
书评:《妇女的生活:中世纪的自我表现、接受和占有》，作者:丹尼尔·阿门蒂和纳希尔·I. Otaño格拉西亚凯瑟琳·鲍威尔-沃伦·丹尼尔·阿门蒂和纳希尔·I. Otaño格拉西亚主编。《女性的生活:中世纪的自我表现、接受和占有》(加的夫:威尔士大学出版社，2022年)，325页。抽象的神秘主义传达了自我完善、预知、治愈和和平的概念，这些概念在今天和以往一样具有吸引力——例如，在大街上随处可见的出售治疗和能量水晶的商店就证明了这一点。然而，这种神秘主义与宾根的希尔德加德(Hildegard of Bingen)和锡耶纳的圣凯瑟琳(St. Catherine of Siena)等人的宗教形式的神秘主义完全不同。对于这些女性和她们的中世纪同时代人来说，神秘主义首先是一种存在状态，一种传递机制，通过这种机制，她们成为上帝的管道。重要的是，正如伊丽莎白·彼得罗夫在她广泛的研究和写作中所揭示的那样，被公认为女性神秘主义者对这些女性行使代理、自主、领导和权威的能力有着至关重要的影响，而这些品质由于她们的性别而不可能实现。《妇女的生活:中世纪的自我表现、接受与占有》一书中的文章恰当地献给了她。在她的开创性著作《身体与灵魂:中世纪女性与神秘主义论文集》(牛津大学出版社，1994年)中，彼得罗夫重新审视并扩展了她已经相当可观的中世纪女性神秘主义著作。她研究了她所谓的“越界的修辞”，这种修辞活跃了许多女性神秘主义者的作品，以及她们日常生活的环境。彼得罗夫总结道，中世纪女性的神秘主义与自由紧密相连:在婚姻和母性之外生活的自由，领导宗教团体的自由，写作和参与许多公共领域的自由，如果没有神秘主义者小心翼翼地驾驭的顺从与违背之间的道路，这些都是不可能的。这本书的编辑在前言中写道，彼得罗夫是对那些试图(重新)协商性别界限的神秘主义者的一种回应(或者可能是一种敬意)，他表现出“帮助女性和少数民族研究中世纪文学和文化的热情”。鉴于中世纪研究(以及许多人文学科)仍然普遍缺乏包容性和多样性，这确实是一项值得承认和庆祝的遗产。该卷包括一个介绍，从彼得罗夫的身体和灵魂(“妇女和神秘主义在中世纪世界”和“男性忏悔者和女性忏悔者:对话的可能性”)的第一和第八篇文章的有益复制，和十篇文章分为三个主题组:“自我表现”，“接受”和“挪用”。忠实于Petroff的精神，编辑们聚集了来自不同背景、地理位置和职业阶段的贡献者。在大多数情况下，他们的文章适合连贯在各自的分组，这使得卷提供了一个很好的概述在中世纪妇女研究的关键主题。引言虽然非常个人化，但对于理解和定位彼得罗夫对中世纪研究的批判和理论影响，以及随后的文章，并不是特别有用的指南。读者对彼得罗夫对作者的个人意义有了一个清晰的认识，但对彼得罗夫在其职业生涯中的学术成就(即，超越了《肉体与灵魂》)以及该卷的论文对学术成就的贡献，却有相当有限和模糊的认识(如果有的话)。在“自我表征”的标题下，三位作者研究了早期现代神秘主义者如何行使代理和管理他们的自我表征。Borja de Cossío认为特蕾莎·德·卡塔赫纳作为一个有才华的作家的自我表现(而不是被宗教裁判所指控的剽窃者)是通过与她的赞助人胡安娜·德·门多萨的联系而受到影响的。安德里萨斯·阿米塔伊·威尔逊重新审视了宾根的希尔德加德的作品，不仅将其视为博学之士的独特作品，而且将其视为一位老练的作者的作品，她盗用了权威的概念，从而暗示她的文本和愿景是由……
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Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1353/cjm.2023.a912681
Livia Stoenescu
Reviewed by: Portrait Cultures of the Early Modern Cardinal ed. by Piers Baker-Bates and Irene Brooke Livia Stoenescu Piers Baker-Bates and Irene Brooke, eds., Portrait Cultures of the Early Modern Cardinal (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021), 381 pp., 59 ills. + 12 color plates. This thought-provoking volume stands out as a commemorative gesture to Piers Brooke and to the scholarship of the late Professor Clare Robertson, whose pioneering work on the cardinalate complements her seminal work on artists and ecclesiastical patrons of Rome and the Counter-Reformation. Within the burgeoning field of early modern studies from the last decades, the driving forces behind portraiture research have been the material origins and imaginative properties of portraits. Notably, cardinalate portraiture remains a topic ripe for critical attention, even though the experts have reached a consensus about the early modern portrait as a genre predicated upon verisimilitude rather than likeness. To be sure, this volume does more than fill a lacuna as it sheds new light on the historical, aesthetic, religious, and humanistic underpinnings of ecclesiastical portraiture within which emerged the cardinal portrait as a discrete category. The editors convincingly argue that “as material objects, cardinal portraits were clearly embedded with meanings specific to the class of individuals represented” (23). Comprising an introduction, four thematic sections, and a conclusion, the volume encompasses aspects of the intricacies of individual likeness and collective identity in “Individuality and Identity: Florence and Rome,” the effect of political allegiances in “Divided Loyalties: Venice and Rome,” the role of wealth, art collections, and ritualistic display in “Collecting and Display: Portraits and Worldly Goods,” and the impact the religious climate of the Council of Trent (1545–63) had on the depiction of cardinals in “Post-Tridentine Piety: The Devout Cardinal.” In “Introduction: Cardinals and Their Images,” Piers-Baker Bates and Irene Brooke lay out the visual legacy of early modern cardinals in the media of painting, engraving, medals, and sculpture. As the editors acknowledge, the tradition of painted portraits established by Raphael’s Julius II formed the fundamental basis for a typology of cardinal portraits, quickening the originality of Sebastiano del Piombo and Scipione Pulzone’s painted portraits and, likewise, of Bernini’s sculpted busts depicting living cardinals such as Scipione Borghese. Evolving parallel to the powerful presence of portraitists, alternative formats for memory and preservation in the ancient format of medallic portraits would become integral to the post-Tridentine practice of worshipping the cardinals’ portraits as miracle-performing objects. The introduction includes a second essay, Miles Pattenden’s “The Early Modern Cardinal: An Historical Appraisal,” which [End Page 208] discusses the cardinal as partaker of the papal acumen in bo
回顾:早期现代红衣主教的肖像文化由皮尔斯贝克-贝茨和艾琳布鲁克Livia Stoenescu皮尔斯贝克-贝茨和艾琳布鲁克，编辑。，肖像文化的早期现代红衣主教(阿姆斯特丹:阿姆斯特丹大学出版社，2021年)，381页，59弊病。+ 12色板。这本发人深省的书作为对皮尔斯·布鲁克和已故教授克莱尔·罗伯逊的奖学金的纪念姿态而脱颖而出，他在红衣主教方面的开创性工作补充了她在罗马和反宗教改革的艺术家和教会赞助人方面的开创性工作。在过去几十年蓬勃发展的早期现代研究领域中，肖像画研究背后的驱动力是肖像画的物质起源和想象属性。值得注意的是，红衣主教肖像仍然是一个值得关注的话题，尽管专家们已经达成共识，认为早期现代肖像是一种基于真实性而不是相似性的流派。可以肯定的是，这本书不仅仅填补了一个空白，因为它揭示了教会肖像的历史、美学、宗教和人文基础，其中出现了枢机肖像作为一个独立的类别。编辑们令人信服地认为，“作为实物，主要肖像显然嵌入了所代表的个人阶级的特定含义”(23)。包括一个介绍，四个主题部分，和一个结论，卷包括个人相似和集体身份的错综复杂的方面在“个性和身份:佛罗伦萨和罗马，”政治忠诚的影响在“分裂忠诚:威尼斯和罗马，”财富的作用，艺术收藏和仪式展示在“收集和展示:《肖像与世俗物品》，以及特伦特会议(1545-63)的宗教气氛对《后三叉戟虔诚:虔诚的红衣主教》中对红衣主教的描绘的影响。在《导言:红衣主教和他们的形象》一书中，皮尔斯-贝克·贝茨和艾琳·布鲁克在绘画、雕刻、奖章和雕塑等媒介中展示了早期现代红衣主教的视觉遗产。正如编辑们所承认的那样，拉斐尔的《朱利叶斯二世》所确立的绘画肖像传统构成了红衣主教肖像类型学的基本基础，加速了塞巴斯蒂亚诺·德尔·皮昂博和西皮奥内·普尔宗的绘画肖像的独创性，同样地，贝尔尼尼描绘红衣主教(如西皮奥内·博尔盖塞)的半身像雕塑的独创性。与肖像画家的强大存在并行发展的是，另一种形式的记忆和保存在古代的金属肖像形式中，将成为后三叉戟节崇拜红衣主教肖像作为奇迹表演对象的实践的一部分。介绍包括第二篇文章，Miles Pattenden的“早期现代红衣主教:一个历史评价”，其中[End Page 208]讨论了红衣主教作为教皇在促进主教事业或不加区分地打破权力平衡以降低其下属声誉方面的敏锐参与者。Pattenden敏锐地注意到早期现代教皇政策的影响，这些政策将红衣主教肖像推广到制度塑造和创造另一个身份的话语中，并且，在频谱的另一端，将主教置于对其权威的持续争论模式中(53)。第一部分，“个性和身份:佛罗伦萨和罗马，”完全符合卷的主题强调记忆的概念和逼真的特殊真理。布莱恩·杰弗里·马克森的《十五世纪佛罗伦萨红衣主教的视觉和语言肖像》反映了文艺复兴艺术中杰出的肖像中心——佛罗伦萨红衣主教的视觉和文学文化。马克森强调了红衣主教肖像在艺术作品中的作用，其灵感来自佛罗伦萨传统的确认仪式和游行仪式，这些仪式公开避免个人的相似性，而优先考虑群体身份的社会角色。卡罗尔·m·理查森(Carol M. Richardson)的《死灵者:红衣主教及其肖像，1400-1520》(Dead Ringers: Cardinals and Their Effigies, 1400-1520)与整个主题焦点产生了令人信服的共鸣，她分析了早期现代的相似理论，呼吁人们关注红衣主教肖像，将其作为超越历史和轶事细节之间的界面。正如理查森所展示的那样，即使在加入个人特征的情况下，红衣主教肖像的设计仍然回避了准确的描绘，以借鉴他墓纪念碑上红衣主教肖像的真实性。理查森关于15世纪和16世纪早期红衣主教陵墓肖像相似性的观点，推动了人们对其特殊性的研究。
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Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1353/cjm.2023.a912699
Christina Moe Simmons
Reviewed by: White People in Shakespeare: Essays on Race, Culture, and the Elite ed. by Arthur L. Little Jr Christina Moe Simmons Arthur L. Little Jr., ed., White People in Shakespeare: Essays on Race, Culture, and the Elite (London: The Arden Shakespeare, 2023), 322 pp., 4 ills. Arthur L. Little Jr.’s edited volume, White People in Shakespeare, contains a collection of essays from acclaimed early modern critical race scholars that will undoubtedly radically shift how early modernists engage with Shakespeare and his legacies. From the introduction, Little carefully yet clearly establishes what conversation in early modern studies the volume rests in, addressing the noticeable voids in the historical framework used to critically engage with Shakespeare that prevent early modern scholarship from asking the question of race. The introduction provides a necessary rundown of the key differences between “whiteness” and “white people,” the significant transformation of whiteness as a valuable property through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and why Little has entitled this collection of essays White People in Shakespeare, rather than “Whiteness” in Shakespeare. Little argues that “Shakespeare remains key to any study of the further emergence of a ‘white people’ in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century,” establishing this collection as a critical analysis of the property of whiteness—and those who own it—through the early modern period (7). The volume is split into two separate parts. Part 1, “Shakespeare’s White People,” consists of essays focusing mainly on the characters from Shakespeare’s plays that have received critical attention. The analyses provided by the contributors to the volume all have one significant aspect in common: they all thoughtfully address the missing question of race in the litany of critical works available around these characters. Ian Smith’s “Antonio’s White Penis: Category Trading in The Merchant of Venice,” for instance, reengages “the question of Antonio’s sexuality in relation to race” (77) to argue that “whiteness is an expression of a sexuality—whiteness is a sexuality—and any departure from its idealization marks a venture into its literal opposite: blackness and corresponding notions of deviance that are assiduously avoided and denigrated as un-Venetian” (79). In “Disrupting White Genealogies in Cymbeline,” Joyce Macdonald draws a connection between “the questions of succession, descent and lineage that drive Cymbeline” with “its racial anxiety over the fortunes of British whiteness” (136). The accumulated essays not only contend with the critical gap left in early modern studies regarding race but also point out the problematic proclivity for critical white studies to apprehend “race as a post-Enlightenment phenomenon” by [End Page 253] delineating both the historical context and textual evidence that unequivocally demonstrate race operating in Shakespeare’s plays (1). Each essay in part 1 provides
书评:《莎士比亚中的白人:种族、文化和精英随笔》，作者:小阿瑟·l·利特尔，克里斯蒂娜·莫·西蒙斯·阿瑟·l·利特尔，编辑:《莎士比亚中的白人:种族、文化和精英随笔》(伦敦:雅顿莎士比亚出版社，2023年)，322页，4页。小阿瑟·l·利特尔(Arthur L. Little Jr.)编辑的《莎士比亚中的白人》(White People in Shakespeare)收录了一些著名的早期现代批判种族学者的文章，毫无疑问，这些文章将从根本上改变早期现代主义者对莎士比亚及其遗产的看法。从引言开始，利特尔仔细而清晰地确立了这本书所依据的早期现代研究的对话，解决了用于批判性地研究莎士比亚的历史框架中明显的空白，这些空白阻碍了早期现代学者提出种族问题。引言提供了“白”和“白人”之间的关键区别的必要概述，白在16世纪和17世纪作为一种宝贵财产的重大转变，以及为什么利特尔将这本文集命名为莎士比亚的白人，而不是莎士比亚的“白”。利特尔认为，“莎士比亚仍然是研究16世纪末和17世纪初‘白人’进一步出现的关键。”他将本作品集建立为对白人的属性——以及那些拥有白人的人——的批判性分析，一直持续到现代早期(7)。第一部分“莎士比亚的白人”(Shakespeare’s White People)由散文组成，主要集中在受到评论界关注的莎士比亚戏剧中的人物。这本书的作者提供的分析都有一个重要的共同点:他们都深思熟虑地解决了围绕这些角色的一系列重要作品中缺失的种族问题。例如，伊恩·史密斯(Ian Smith)的《安东尼奥的白色阴茎:威尼斯商人的分类交易》(Antonio 's White Penis: Category Trading in The Merchant of Venice)重新探讨了“安东尼奥的性取向与种族的关系”(77)，认为“白是一种性取向的表达——白是一种性取向——任何偏离其理想化的行为都标志着一种冒险，进入了它的字面对立面:黑人和相应的越界概念，这些概念被极力避免，被诋毁为非威尼斯人”(79)。乔伊斯·麦克唐纳(Joyce Macdonald)在《辛白林的白人家谱紊乱》(disruption White genealies In Cymbeline)一书中，将“驱动辛白林的继承、血统和血统问题”与“对英国白人命运的种族焦虑”(136页)联系起来。积累的文章不仅与早期现代研究中关于种族的关键空白作斗争，而且还指出了批判性白人研究将“种族作为一种后启蒙现象”理解为有问题的倾向，通过描绘历史背景和文本证据来明确证明莎士比亚戏剧中种族的作用(1)。第1部分的每一篇文章在参与戏剧本身之前都提供了相关的历史证据。大胆地对抗——并反驳——任何将“种族”作为一种现代或后现代理解的早期现代学术，这种理解不适用于早期现代时期。丹尼斯·奥斯丁·布里顿的《白色圣徒的鲜血:情感虔诚、种族暴力和一报还一报》以“1611年伯纳德·德·克莱沃《沉思》英译本的铭文”开篇，证明了基督的纯洁和他的白之间存在着一种早期现代的联系(65)。没有留下任何空间来合理地论证批判性种族理论或批判性白人研究不适合阅读早期现代文学，这使得这些文章进入了真正丰富的学术领域，这些学术领域与莎士比亚对白人至上主义的挪用进行了斗争，并重新定义了早期现代文学为批判性种族理论家和批判性白人研究学者提供的东西。第二部分“白人的莎士比亚”巧妙地转向“那些将莎士比亚种族化的人或实体”，以阐明为什么对莎士比亚作品中白人和白人的质疑不仅对莎士比亚研究，而且对一般的早期现代研究都是必不可少的(12)。第一部分展示了“白人”——那些“具有白人属性”的人——是如何通过莎士比亚的戏剧和莎士比亚时代的英格兰被创造出来的，第二部分展示了莎士比亚对英国身体的建构和重建是如何被推断、挪用和运用到现代世界的。无论是在南非还是在剧院，民权运动……
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Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1353/cjm.2023.a912673
Elena Casanova
Abstract: Irony has always been a central focus of Ariosto scholarship: in particular, the interrelation between the endless flux of words and adventures that fill the Furioso , and the binary oppositions at the base of the poem has been considered a key ironic feature. Ariosto’s demiurgical distance is however not a sign of indifference: I argue that, while Ariosto’s irony transmits an estrangement from the traditional chivalric values, the author’s trust in the affirmative power of language and in its didactic function lies at the root of the Furioso ’s moral irony. Irony is, in fact, a vehicle for Ariosto’s ethical stance, but also a warning against the hypocrisy of courtly norms. First, I analyze the moral function of the Furioso ’s ironic narrator and Ariosto’s intimate relation to his audience, which thrives on complexity, difference, and multiplicity. I then look at the role that contradictions and (mis)quotations play within the poem’s ironic structure. Finally, I investigate how the Satire might represent the outer threshold of Ariosto’s irony. In fact, if in the Furioso Ariosto’s escapism could take shape thanks to the fantastic element, the Satire ’s ironic movement is revealed under a new, “barer” guise that walks a thin line between irony and moral satire.
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Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1353/cjm.2023.a912698
Christina Kolias
Reviewed by: Race and Affect in Early Modern English Literature ed. by Carol Mejia LaPerle Christina Kolias Carol Mejia LaPerle, ed., Race and Affect in Early Modern English Literature (Tempe: ACMRS Press, 2022), vii + 221 pp., 4 ills. Carol Mejia LaPerle’s Race and Affect in Early Modern English Literature is a welcome and noteworthy contribution to the Premodern Critical Race Studies (PCRS) field, as it is the first collection to discuss race’s direct relationship to affect theory in early modernity. In recent years, there has been an increase in interest and resistance to the rich history of PCRS scholarship, which seeks to question the supposed universality of early modern canonical literature. La-Perle’s collection embodies a similar task, where the past contributes to present understandings of racial formation and race-making. What sets this collection apart is each scholar’s personal connection and racial investment in exposing white supremacy and its affective relations in early modern texts and culture. Each contributor, through their means of rhetorical resistance and reckoning, proves that affect is a powerful lens to investigate race. Considering “affect is persistent proof of a body’s never less than ongoing immersion in and among the world’s obstinacies and rhythms, its refusals as much as its invitations” (Gregory J. Seigworth and Melissa Gregg, “An Inventory of Shimmers,” in The Affect Theory Reader, ed. Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth [Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010], 1), every chapter in this collection highlights not just the stark anti-Blackness of the period and its preservation of racist ideologies and categorizations but race’s many passionate affects that inform (un)belonging. Tracking the nuances of affect displays its variability as a verb and noun, where affect is expressive through thoughts (internal) and actions (external). Even LaPerle’s introductory reference to critical works by W. E. B. Du Bois, Fred Moten, and Calvin L. Warren draws attention to the collection’s focus on one retrospective question—how does race feel? The importance of feelings and passions in affect studies highlights the imbrication of externalized disgust and difference internalized by racialized subjects. Even though the collection analyzes early modernity’s attempts at dominance and disempowerment, the authors in this collection, as LaPerle notes, capture the spirit [End Page 250] of bell hooks’s “oppositional gaze.” Each contributor’s use of hooks’s gesture as methodology not only lays a foundation for the change they desire in the field but also, most importantly, illustrates the interplay between criticism and activism. The collection contains three equally balanced sections, each applying intersectional and/or cross-disciplinary lenses committed to uncovering racializing regimes and the importance of feeling race as evidenced in early modern literature and culture. The editor skillfully assembles a first-class group of con
克里斯蒂娜·科利亚斯·卡罗尔·梅贾·拉珀勒编辑，《早期现代英国文学中的种族与情感》(坦佩:ACMRS出版社，2022)，vii + 221页，4病。Carol Mejia LaPerle的《早期现代英语文学中的种族与情感》是对前现代批判种族研究(PCRS)领域的一项受欢迎且值得注意的贡献，因为它是第一本讨论早期现代性中种族与情感理论直接关系的文集。近年来，对PCRS学术的丰富历史的兴趣和抵制有所增加，该学术试图质疑早期现代经典文学的假定普遍性。拉-珀尔的藏品体现了类似的任务，过去有助于现在对种族形成和种族形成的理解。这本书的与众不同之处在于，每位学者在揭示白人至上主义及其在早期现代文本和文化中的情感关系方面的个人联系和种族投入。每一位作者，通过他们的修辞抵抗和思考，都证明了情感是研究种族的一个强有力的镜头。考虑到“情感是身体持续不断地沉浸在世界的固执和节奏之中的持续证据，它的拒绝和它的邀请一样多”(Gregory J. Seigworth和Melissa Gregg，“闪烁的盘点”，在情感理论读者中，Melissa Gregg和Gregory J. Seigworth[达勒姆，北卡罗来纳州:杜克大学出版社(Duke University Press, 2010)， 1)，这本书的每一章都不仅强调了那个时期鲜明的反黑人主义及其对种族主义意识形态和分类的保留，还强调了种族的许多激情影响，这些影响告知(不)归属。追踪情感的细微差别显示了其作为动词和名词的可变性，其中情感通过思想(内部)和行为(外部)表达。甚至拉珀勒在介绍杜波依斯、弗雷德·莫滕和卡尔文·l·沃伦的重要作品时，也把人们的注意力吸引到了这个系列对一个回顾性问题的关注上——种族的感觉如何?情感和激情在情感研究中的重要性凸显了被种族化的被试的外化厌恶和内化差异的相互交织。尽管这本合集分析了早期现代性对统治和剥夺权力的尝试，但正如拉珀勒所指出的那样，这本合集的作者抓住了贝尔·胡克斯“对立的目光”的精神。每个贡献者使用hooks的姿态作为方法论，不仅为他们在该领域所希望的变化奠定了基础，而且最重要的是，说明了批评与行动主义之间的相互作用。该系列包含三个平衡的部分，每个部分都采用交叉和/或跨学科的视角，致力于揭示种族化政权和早期现代文学和文化中所证明的种族感受的重要性。编辑巧妙地召集了一批一流的撰稿人，其中包括马戈·亨德里克斯(Margo Hendricks)，他的前言将该系列描述为“下一代pcr”(vii)项目。作为该领域受人尊敬的专家，这些作者提供了直观的解读，引起了人们对情感扭曲新词汇的关注，其中种族是感觉，感觉是种族，因为外部刺激影响内在，反之亦然。第一部分批判性地分析了早期现代文本的语言如何构建种族化的群体，使其被妖魔化、被渴望、被厌恶和/或被恐惧。Ambereen Dadabhoy以一个有力而又个人的开篇章节开始，讨论了菲利普·马辛格(Philip Massinger)的《叛变者》(The Renegado)，以及它如何在Dadabhoy所谓的“上演的地中海”中暴露出一种伊斯兰恐惧症的传统，以及它与玛丽·路易斯·普拉特(Mary Louise Pratt)的“接触区”概念的关系。她的章节强调了排斥性的创伤，并影响了早期现代叙事，当读者和学者，像达达布霍伊自己一样，体现了非英国人、非白人和非欧洲人的身份——此外，这些身份在页面和舞台上被归类为帝国主义和仇外野心的目标。Mira ' Assaf Kafantaris在将情感视为一种类似的控制手段方面发挥了关键作用。她进一步阐述了在经典中外来污染和感染的主题，以及它们对白人未来构成的风险。与达达布霍伊对种族与美的探索类似，卡法塔里斯对埃德蒙·斯宾塞对杜莎的外国和令人厌恶的皇后身份的语言战的分析——与尤娜对白人新教美德的感怀形象相比……
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Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1353/cjm.2023.a912687
Robyn McAuliffe
Reviewed by: The Chastity Plot by Lisabeth During Robyn McAuliffe Lisabeth During, The Chastity Plot (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021), 391 pp. The title of this book draws attention to a device or, as During reveals, a preoccupation of the media we consume. The “chastity plot” forms central narratives in contemporary books, films, and television shows (for example, Jane the Virgin and the American Pie franchise). The sociologist Laura Carpenter has written extensively on the stigmatization of virginity and virginity-loss within the United States in particular. Lisabeth During’s The Chastity Plot, however, is a much-needed and important new addition to the conversation surrounding chastity, covering a multitude of literary and cross-cultural traditions to identify and explicate the cultural preoccupation with chastity and virginity that has endured since antiquity. Drawing on examples from many literary genres, During uses each chapter to chart the glorification and downfall of the chastity ideal. She begins first with a brief introduction to the concept of chastity, its prevalence within contemporary evangelical and conservative Christian teachings, and its links with morality, before moving in chapter 1 to an elucidation of the differences between “the eunuch’s plot” favored by Church writings, specifically within saints’ lives, and “[c]hastity plots,” which “stage a struggle against the social insistence on marriage and reproduction” (30). From her analysis of the female saint Thecla, [End Page 223] known for her chastity and allegiance to the teachings of St. Paul, and the eighteenth-century advocate of chastity, Pamela, from Richardson’s Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded, During moves on to an analysis in chapter 2 of the tragic hero Hippolytus, whose devout allegiance to the chaste state in Euripides’s classical Greek tragedy Hippolytus ends in turmoil. This is a particularly effective chapter for its exploration of male chastity, its links with misogyny within the play, and the dangers of an unchecked and uncontrolled male chastity. Chapter 3 focuses on the “antimarriage plot” and the issue of reconciling chastity with marriage (87). During’s analysis focuses predominantly on female characters who resent prescriptive marriage and seek a life of asexual independence; specifically, she looks to those in Aeschylus’s The Suppliants, the myth of the misandrist Chinese princess Turandot in various literary forms, including Gozzi’s Turandot, before turning to the twentieth-century antimarriage narrative of The Philadelphia Story. Chapters 4 and 5 take a more religious turn, focusing on the “radical sexual renunciation” of Christianity and the difficulty of aligning chastity with conjugality (132). Both chapters focus on the ascetic’s desire to return to a prelapsarian condition of sexual innocence, a sentiment that flavors many ecclesiastical diatribes advocating the spiritual benefits of virginity. Chapters 6 and 7 explore both the early mo
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Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1353/cjm.2023.a912695
Brandon Taylor
Reviewed by: Milton’s Poetical Thought by Maggie Kilgour Brandon Taylor Maggie Kilgour, Milton’s Poetical Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 129 pp. Maggie Kilgour’s Milton’s Poetical Thought is part of a larger series of texts that belong to Oxford’s The Literary Agenda, which, according to series editor Philip Davis, seeks to address “the importance of literature and of reading in the wider world” from the position that the literary is increasingly “dismissed or is unrecognized as a way of thinking or an arena for thought” (xi). The series aims to foster a “renewal, to start reinvigorated work into the meaning and value of literary reading for the sake of the future” (xi). Kilgour’s slim and insightful text takes up this pedagogical mission through the capacious and contentious vessel of John Milton and his poetic work, which she chronologically traces from his early poetry to his later masterpieces, Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes. The book is aimed at students and first introduces Milton as a student himself, young and ambitious and conflicted with his desire to satisfy his family’s, and especially his father’s, aspirations for his gifted son while also pursuing his interest in poetry. Kilgour’s foregrounding of Milton-the-student has the effect of humanizing Milton for students and also, importantly, signals the ways in which The Literary Agenda’s pedagogical program are best served by highlighting the human within the humanities. Having taught Shakespeare, Milton, Herbert, and other early modern authors and poets to undergraduate students in introductory courses, I can understand why students feel like professors are hefting an ancient leather-bound tome upon the lectern, blowing centuries-old dust off of its cover, and intoning about the wisdom of long-dead white men whose world and worldview are so alien from our own that their opinions could never have foretold of memes, TikTok dances, or the vicissitudes of ChatGPT-generated response papers. Kilgour’s work is therefore a welcome early modern intervention in the discourse on the importance of the literary and helps point toward a way of encouraging student familiarity with the literary by understanding the people—poets, artists, and authors—who create the works of literature and art that we have come to so enjoy reading and discussing. Kilgour argues that what makes poetry unique is that it is not simply a rigid system intended to deliver data; it is instead capacious and ultimately “excessive, beyond the author’s full control,” and that this latitude is liberating for readers, since Milton “allows us to have free will” (8) as active participants in his work. We are not bound by strict borders but are instead encouraged to explore and find joy in those complexities that the author, himself, may not have intended. The early portrait that Kilgour paints of Milton in the introduction is that of a lively human being inviting us to a poetic hearth, one where rea
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