The Review of English Studies articles from November 1998

The Review of English Studies archives from November 1998

'A talkatiue wench (whose words a world hath delighted in)': mistress shore and Elizabethan complaint.(three versions of the story of Edward IV's mistress Jane Shore)
November 1, 1998... In scene xi of the anonymous True Tragedy of Richard III (printed in 1594), the disgraced Mistress Shore appears as a beggar suing to her previous clients for relief. The most interesting exchange occurs with the courtier Lodowicke, who...

Spenser, Seneca, and the Sibyl: Book V of The Faeirie Queene.
November 1, 1998... In the Proem to Book V of the Faerie Queene, Spenser relates the degeneration of mankind since antiquity to the changes that have taken place in the heavens over the same period. For who so list into the heauens looke, And search the...

The sources of musical settings of Thomas Carew's poetry.
November 1, 1998... There has been much written in recent times on the crucial importance of manuscript evidence for editing, reading, and discussing seventeenth-century poetry. This has served as a corrective to the tendency of previous scholars to focus on...

Mea culpa: Voltaire's retraction of his comments critical of Congreve.
November 1, 1998... The invocation of Voltaire's report of his meeting with William Congreve is something of a ritual for those disappointed by what they understand of Congreve's later career. Pique at the alleged failure of The Way of the World and his...

Characterization in 'Mansfield Park': Tom Bertram and Colman's The Heir at Law.
November 1, 1998... Critics have long recognized the significance of Lovers' Vows to the main plot of Mansfield Park, but, surprisingly, have overlooked the implications of the other plays considered for private performance. In particular, Austen seems to be...

Reviewing Medieval literature.
November 1, 1998... The retirement in one year of John Burrow, Douglas Gray, and Malcolm Parkes presents the reviewer with the particularly attractive task of addressing three well-focused collections of essays which, by virtue of their own reviewing and...

Of the Making of Books: Medieval Manuscripts, Their Scribes and Readers: Essays Presented to M.B. Parkes.(Review)
November 1, 1998... P. R. ROBINSON and RIVKAH ZIM (edd.). Pp. xiv+324. Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1997. [pounds]65. The retirement in one year of John Burrow, Douglas Gray, and Malcolm Parkes presents the reviewer with the particularly attractive task of...

Essays on Ricardian Literature in Honour of J.A. Burrow.(Review)
November 1, 1998... A. J. MINNIS, CHARLOTTE C. MORSE, and THORLAC TURVILLE-PETRE (edd.). Pp. xvi+358. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. [pounds]45. The retirement in one year of John Burrow, Douglas Gray, and Malcolm Parkes presents the reviewer with the...

The Long Fifteenth Century; Essays for Douglas Gray.(Review)
November 1, 1998... HELEN COOPER and SALLY MAPSTONE (edd.). Pp. xii+362. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. [pounds]45. The retirement in one year of John Burrow, Douglas Gray, and Malcolm Parkes presents the reviewer with the particularly attractive task of...

Theatrical use and editorial abuse: more painful adventures for Pericles.
November 1, 1998... In his edition of Pericles for the New Penguin Shakespeare (1976), Philip Edwards provides a trenchant summary of the prevailing view of the Quarto text of 1609, the only form in which the play has come down to us: When we talk about...

Order and Connexion: Studies in Bibliography and Book History.(Review)
November 1, 1998... R. C. ALSTON (ed.). Order and Connexion: Studies in Bibliography and Book History. Pp. xxii+202 (Selected Papers from the Munby Seminar). Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer, 1997. [pounds]35. The Munby Fellowships at Cambridge University Library...

Representation and Design: Tracing a Hermeneutics of Old English Poetry.(Review)
November 1, 1998... PAULINE E. HEAD. Representation and Design: Tracing a Hermeneutics of Old English Poetry. Pp. 166. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997. $19.95. On the first page of this book Pauline Head laments the failure 'until very...

Facsimile of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Digby 86.(Review)
November 1, 1998... Facsimile of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Digby 86. With an Introduction by JUDITH TSCAANN and M. B. PARKES. Pp. lxii+424 (EETS). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. [pounds]60. For a century students of the fascinating trilingual...

The Myrour of Recluses: a Middle English Translation of the Speculum Inclusorum.(Review)
November 1, 1998... The Myrour of Recluses: A Middle English Translation of the Speculum Inclusorum. Edited by MARTA POWELL HARLEY. Pp. xxxiv+90. Madison, Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1995; London: Associated University Presses, 1995....

The Heaven Singing: Music in Early English Religious Drama I.(Review)
November 1, 1998... RICHARD RASTALL. The Heaven Singing: Music in Early English Religious Drama I. Pp. xxii+422. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1996. [pounds]55. The generic identity of late medieval English religious drama is, as Richard Rastall reminds us in...

Prophetic Song: The Psalms as Moral Discourse in Late Medieval England.(Review)
November 1, 1998... MICHAEL P. KUCZYNSKI. Prophetic Song: The Psalms as Moral Discourse in Late Medieval England. Pp. xxx+292. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995. [pounds]34.95. Michael P. Kuczynski borrows a Petrarchan image to describe...

Medieval Marriage: Literary Approaches, 1100-1300.(Review)
November 1, 1998... NEIL CARTLIDGE. Medieval Marriage: Literary Approaches 1100-1300. Pp. xii+250. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1997. [pounds]39.50. A new generation has emerged, bringing to medieval studies a sense of perspective which it needed. This was...

Deformed Discourse: The Function of the Monster in Mediaeval Thought and Literature.(Review)
November 1, 1998... DAVID WILLIAMS. Deformed Discourse: The Function of the Monster in Mediaeval Thought and Literature. Pp. xiv+392. Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1997. [pounds]32.50. We meet the 'monster' everywhere in medieval culture in the strange...

Chaucer in Context: Society, Allegory and Gender.(Review)
November 1, 1998... S. H. RIGBY. Chaucer in Context: Society, Allegory and Gender. Pp. xii+206 (Manchester Medieval Studies). Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1996. Cloth, [pounds]35; paper, [pounds]12.99. 1933 was chosen by Derek...

Chaucerian Policy: Absolutist Lineages and Associational Forms in England and Italy.(Review)
November 1, 1998... DAVID WALLAS. Chaucerian Polity: Absolutist Lineages and Associational Forms in England and Italy. Pp. xx+556+11 plates (Figurae: Reading Medieval Culture). Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1997. [pounds]40. One of the most...

Chaucerian Tragedy.(Review)
November 1, 1998... HENRY ANSGAR KELLY. Chaucerian Tragedy. Pp. xii+298 (Chaucer Studies 24). Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1997. Cloth, [pounds]45. Professor Kelly's study continues his earlier work on the history of the genre of tragedy, but this time with...

'Divers Toyes Mengled': Essays on Medieval and Renaissance Culture in Honour of Andre Lascombes.(Review)
November 1, 1998... MICHEL BITOT (ed.) .'Divers Toyes Mengled': Essays on Medieval and Renaissance Culture in Honour of Andre Lascombes. Pp. 426. Tours: Universite Francois Rabelais, 1996. FF200. In his foreword to this volume Michel Bitot pays tribute to...

The Deidis of Armorie: A Heraldic Treatise and Bestiary, 2 vols.(Review)
November 1, 1998... The Deidis of Armorie: A Heraldic Treatise and Bestiary. Edited by L. A. J. R. HOUWEN. 2 vols. Pp. cxxii+286. Edinburgh: Scottish Text Society, 1994. [pounds]60. It is one of the characteristic eccentricities of Scottish book history...

The Custom of the Castle: From Malory to Macbeth.(Review)
November 1, 1998... CHARLES ROSS. The Custom of the Castle: From Malory to Macbeth. Pp. xviii+206. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1997. $35. 'The custom of the castle', a recurrent topos in medieval and Renaissance...

Framing Elizabethan Fictions: Contemporary Approaches to Early Modern Narrative Prose.(Review)
November 1, 1998... CONSTANCE C. RELIHAN (ed.). Framing Elizabethan Fictions: Contemporary Approaches to Early Modern Narrative Prose. Pp. x+274. Kent, Oh. and London: Kent State University Press, 1997. $35. There is an infectious zeal detectable in much...

Afterlives of the Saints: Hagiography, Typology, and Renaissance Literature.(Review)
November 1, 1998... JULIA REINHARD LUPTON. Afterlives of the Saints: Hagiography, Typology and Renaissance Literature. Pp. xxxii+270. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1996. [pounds]30. This book addresses the structural effects of hagiography on...

Spenser's Life and the Subject of Biography.(Review)
November 1, 1998... JUDITH H. ANDERSON, DONALD CHENEY, and DAVID A. RICHARDSON (edd.). Spenser's Life and the Subject of Biography. Pp. xiv+216. Amherst, Mass.: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996. [pounds]37.50. This valuable collection of essays helps...

Shakespeare Studies, vol 24.(Review)
November 1, 1998... LEEDS BARROLL (ed.). Shakespeare Studies. Volume XXIV. Pp. 356. Madison, Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; London: Associated University Presses, 1996. [pounds]45. The most striking feature of this new issue of Shakespeare...

Shakespeare's Sonnets.(Review)
November 1, 1998... Shakespeare's Sonnets. Edited by KATHERINE DUNCAN-JONES. Pp. xviii+486 (The Arden Shakespeare). Walton-on-Thames: Thomas Nelson, 1997. [pounds]7.99. Having first explored the Sonnets in the gentlemanly and subtle edition by William...

William Shakespeare: King Lear.(Review)
November 1, 1998... WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. King Lear. Edited by R. A. FOAKES. Pp. xviii+438 (The Arden Shakespeare). Walton-on-Thames: Thomas Nelson, 1997. [pounds]6.99. The daunting nature of engaging with King Lear, famously articulated in Keats' sonnet 'On...

Divine Songs and Meditations.(Review)
November 1, 1998... AN COLLINS. Divine Songs and Meditations. Edited by SIDNEY GOTTLIEB. Pp. xx+ 132 (Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 161). Tempe, Ariz.: Arizona State University, 1996. $20. Among the women writers of the seventeenth century who...

Generating Texts: The Progeny of Seventeenth-Century Prose.(Review)
November 1, 1998... SHARON CADMAN SEELIG. Generating Texts: The Progeny of Seventeenth-Century Prose. Pp. xii+202. Charlottesville, Va. and London: University Press of Virginia, 1996. $35. The affinity between texts written centuries apart has often...

The Conversational Circle: Re-reading the English Novel, 1740-1775.(Review)
November 1, 1998... BETTY A. SCHELLENBERG. Pp. xii+166. Lexington, Ky.: University Press of Kentucky, 1996. $34.95. There is at present a considerable revival of interest in female-authored novels of the mid- to late eighteenth century, and several are now...

The Boundaries of Fiction: History and the Eighteenth-Century British Novel.(Review)
November 1, 1998... EVERETT ZIMMERMAN. Pp. vi+250. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 1996. [pounds]31.50. The Boundaries of Fiction starts from an observation of the 'commitment' of eighteenth-century novels to the historical as 'a relevant...

The Age of Johnson: A Scholarly Annual, vols. 7-8.(Review)
November 1, 1998... PAUL J. KORSHIN (ed.). Vol. VII, pp. xvi+532; vol. VIII, pp. xiv+472. New York: AMS Press, 1996 and 1997. $69.50 each. De litigiis non est disputandum. The special focus of these two volumes is the ongoing debate between those scholars...

Samuel Johnson and the Life of Reading.(Review)
November 1, 1998... ROBERT DEMARIA JR. Pp. xviii+270. Baltimore, Md. and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. [pounds]33. 'It is strange that there should be so little reading in the world, and so much writing': this snippet of Johnson's...

The Five-Book Prelude.(Review)
November 1, 1998... WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. Edited by DUNCAN WU. Pp. x+214. Oxford: Blackwell, 1997. Cloth, [pounds]40; paper, [pounds]11.99. Dr Wu's major aim is a text of The Prelude as it probably existed in early 1804. He proceeds on the lines of Jonathan...

John Keats and the Culture of Dissent.(Review)
November 1, 1998... NICHOLAS ROE. Pp. xx+316. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. [pounds]40. In his alertly investigated John Keats and the Culture of Dissent, Nicholas Roe picks up the gauntlet thrown down by the 'Cockney School' essays published over the...

A Series of Lay Sermons on Good Principles and Good Breeding.(Review)
November 1, 1998... JAMES HOGG. Edited by GILLIAN HUGHES, with a note on the text by DOUGLAS S. MACK. Pp. xxxiv+142 (The Collected Works of James Hogg 5). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997. [pounds]32. James Hogg's Lay Sermons make salutary...

The Letters of Christina Rossetti, vol. 1, 1843-1873.(Review)
November 1, 1998... Volume 1: 1843-1873. Edited by ANTONY H. HARRISON. Pp. lxii+458 (Victorian Literature and Culture Series). Charlottesville, Va. and London: University Press of Virginia, 1997. $49.50. This is the first of four projected volumes of...

Meredith and the Novel.(Review)
November 1, 1998... NEIL ROBERTS. Pp. viii+286. Houndmills, Basingstoke and London: Macmillan Press, 1997. [pounds]42.50. The reputation of George Meredith remains uncertain. His most discussed work remains his poem sequence Modern Love (1862), the subject...

A.C. Swinburne: A Poet's Life.(Review)
November 1, 1998... RIKKY ROOKSBY. Pp. xii+322 (The Nineteenth Century). Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1997. [pounds]29.95. Rikky Rooksby opens this biography with a nice surprise: a fictional account 'in the spirit of one of Swinburne's own hoaxes' of...

Wilde's Intentions: The Artist in His Criticism.(Review)
November 1, 1998... LAWRENCE DANSON. Pp. x+198. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. [pounds]30. In his introduction to the Collins Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, Wilde's son Vyvyan Holland gave as his opinion that 'the most interesting and entertaining book of...

Ethics, Evil, and Fiction.(Review)
November 1, 1998... COLIN MCGINN. Pp. x+186. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. [pounds] 19.99. Ethics Evil and Fiction is about moral judgements, the relation of ethics to aesthetics, beautiful souls and monstrous bodies, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Oscar...

High and Low Moderns: Literature and Culture, 1889-1939.(Review)
November 1, 1998... MARIA DIBATTISTA and LUCY MCDIARMID (edd.). Pp. x+260. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. [pounds]37.50. Choose a month in modern English literary history, for our purposes between 1889 and 1939. Choose then, at random, half a dozen...

One of Us: The Mastery of Joseph Conrad.(Review)
November 1, 1998... GEOFFREY GALT HARPHAM. Pp. xiv+212. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1997. Cloth, [pounds]27.95; paper, [pounds]11.95. One of Us is an elegant, difficult, and - its author's own word - 'strange' book. Professor Harpham has...

Women's Fiction and the Great War.(Review)
November 1, 1998... SUZANNE RAITT and TRUDI TATE (edd.). Pp. vi+294. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. Cloth, [pounds]40; paper, [pounds]14.99. 'It is no longer true to claim that women's responses to the war have been ignored' (p. 2) say the editors of this...

Mrs. Dalloway.(Review)
November 1, 1998... VIRGINIA WOOLF. Edited by MORRIS BEJA. Pp. xxxvi+200 (The Shakespeare Head Press Edition of Virginia Woolf). Oxford: Blackwell, 1996. [pounds]50. With Night and Day, To the Lighthouse, The Waves, and Roger Fry already in print, these two...

The Voyage Out.(Review)
November 1, 1998... VIRGINIA WOOLF. Edited by c. RUTH MILLER and LAWRENCE MILLER. Pp. x1+408 (The Shakespeare Head Press Edition of Virginia Woolf). Oxford: Blackwell, 1995. [pounds]50. With Night and Day, To the Lighthouse, The Waves, and Roger Fry already...

The Politics of Home: Postcolonial Relocations and Twentieth-Century Fiction.(Review)
November 1, 1998... ROSEMARY MARANGOLY GEORGE. Pp. x+266. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997. [pounds]32.50. Home and country are two concepts often imagined together. Rosemary George's primary concern is with the un-housing of English...