Recent studies in the English Renaissance.(Critical Essay)

It is remarkable how many of the books I received are about history: a number are written by historians, and published in a history series. I had expected a couple might be, but most, I thought, would be in "Renaissance nondramatic literature," even as the field has in many instances morphed into cultural history. So I was surprised when I kept receiving shipments of "history" books. Perhaps the traditional boundaries between literature and history (at least on the part of "literary scholars") really are breaking down, not only as we recognize the need to historicize, but also as we enlarge the category of "literature" (in itself a kind of return, with a difference, to the situation in the Renaissance when disciplinary spheres were as yet not sharply differentiated, where one could be a "literary author" and much else). It seems, however, more than that, and prompts me to ask several questions for which it is too early to provide answers.

Have we moved to a situation where the most pressing things concern history? Where, that is, viewing literature as art seems irrelevant--pace Stanley Fish, who's been arguing that we need to look to literature for creative imagination and art, not politics. Perhaps the now-dominant interest among Renaissance scholars in understanding history is an academic counterpart to the current popular interest in memoir, biography, and documentaries, even reality TV.

It is certainly the case that much of the most interesting work these days is in history, or blurs the distinctions between literature and history. Not that there isn't a concern with reading literary texts. As Mihoko Suzuki says in her fine new book (noting Roland Barthes's and Fredric Jameson's advice to wed attention to form with historicism), "my method can be described as formalism in the service of historical analysis" (p. 24). The comment is telling, because it suggests that the goal, the end that gives the whole project value, is "historical analysis," with the sense that historical analysis indeed does touch us and concern us in the present.

Being historically inclined myself, I am very happy reading all these historical and historicist studies. And yet, for all the pleasure and enlightenment, something gives me pause. Is this the only kind of scholarship being done? Or that is being published? I wonder whether scholars reading for presses are unreceptive to studies that don't address issues of historical and cultural interest, or whether presses, driven by market concerns, are themselves shaping scholarship? Certainly the number of presses publishing now in Renaissance nondramatic studies has been shrinking. Cambridge University Press dominates the field, and its commitment to early modern literature as well as history is wonderful. Yale has made a major commitment in the Andrew Marvell prose edition. Fine books are now being published in so-called commercial presses (witness the lists that Palgrave, Ashgate, and D. S. Brewer, for example, have been building). It is disturbing, however, to see that so many major American university presses that we have looked to in the past are publishing very little (in some cases nothing) in the field. I recently heard that a distinguished university press, long reputed for excellence in early modern literature, has decided it will no longer publish in that area. Given such developments, tenure committees must change the way they evaluate publications, paying more attention to the quality of the book than the supposed prestige of a press. But the narrowing of outlets combined with the move to history makes me question whether, in part, literature books have been becoming history books so as to make them current and marketable to and by presses. In other words, to what extent is this a "natural" development, as we expand the canon, situate literary texts, and enlarge the notion of literature, and to what extent is it enforced by market conditions? Maybe the world seems too serious now, our problems too pressing to engage in the pleasures and joys of imaginative writing. Maybe, as Marvell said of Oliver Cromwell in the opening of his Horatian Ode, it is time to put away the arts and muses, a seductive luxury we treasure but that is momentarily useless in a world riven by conflict and war.

So many of the books this year are excellent (given the difficulty of getting published, that's not surprising) that I hate to complain; they truly advance our understanding of the field. Yet, I can't help but feel that we need a recommitment to literature among academic publishers. It's not just a matter that almost no press wants to publish a single-author book. There seem to be precious few publishing books that have much "literary" focus, or that even discuss canonical writers (with the exception of Edmund Spenser, John Donne, and John Milton, whose aesthetic/literary texts seem harder to press into service).

I don't want to sound grim. Renaissance studies have been--and are--vital and influential in their historicist bent, in their concern with the ways texts are complexly related to their historico-cultural matrix. But it would be a loss if we were to stop writing--and presses were to stop publishing--on the literature that got us into Renaissance study in the first place and that continues to attract students and enlarge our sense of the world. It would be a shame if "literature" were relegated only to the undergraduate classroom, or a literate (but not academic) public, such as the one that has flocked to see the play Wit.

Having made these observations, I want to celebrate the crop of books this year, many of which cross the disciplines, enriching our idea of the Renaissance, and are exceptionally well written, indeed eloquent. I'm going to categorize the books in this review, understanding that the categories are inevitably imperfect and restrictive. But it's a way of organizing the more-than-100 books I received.