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Center or Margin: Revisions of the English Renaissance in Honor of Leeds BarrolL E d.
REVIEWED BY: Dan Breen, Ithaca College
In Center or Margin, Lena Cowen Orlin brings together a very strong collection of essays in tribute to Leeds Barroll, the eminent scholar of early modern literature, historiography, and culture, and the founder of the Shakespeare Association of America. This volume also aims to challenge and revise current understandings of early modern culture, and for this project Orlin marshals an impressive group of contributors, including many leading voices in'the field of Renaissance English literature. The essays gathered here reflect wide- ranging engagement with textual and visual media and an interest in locating early modern literature within the larger social, intellectual, and material cultural landscapes of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. Barroll's work provides not only an inspirational point of departure for the collection, but also a structural principle: Orlin arranges the twelve chapters in four parts, each of which takes its title from one of Barroll's research or pedagogical projects. This inventive decision presents the collection as a tribute modeled after Barroll's curriculum vitae.
Several of the chapters undertake to rethink the Renaissance from perspectives traditionally considered to be marginal to the field of early modern literary studies. Orlin's essay begins by focusing on the long gallery, an architectural innovation in the Tudor great house, in order to suggest that it is the first indoor space uniquely suited to intimate interactions demanding sexual, congenial, and political privacy. Catherine Belsey's ambitious piece uses Augustine and Montaigne to argue that Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis-sometimes an unwelcome guest in discussions of the Renaissance-can be used in aid of historicization if it might be reconceived as a study of meaning rather than of a totalizing version of human consciousness. Barbara Maria Stafford, the lone art historian among the contributors, assesses an exhibition at the Getty Museum on visual images and on the cabinet of curiosities to illustrate the contributions that artistic objects can make to histories of the early modern subject. Even Susanne Woods' essay on Milton, hardly a marginal figure, shows how valuable the perspective from the periphery can be by suggesting that Abdiel's decision to remain faithful to God in Paradise Lost is key to the question of whether Adam and Eve's fall is afelix culpa.
Fittingly however, Shakespeare-the figure at the center of the field-is most prominently represented. Peter Stallybrass reads Othello and Macbeth to illustrate England's anxiety about the cultural hegemony of the Ottoman Empire, an anxiety that led English vriters to reimagine the west as the center of material wealth. In a fascinating chapter on cultural etymology, Patricia Parker begins with an account of Antony and Cleopatra and traces the meanings of the word "barber/barbering" from its appearance in classical texts to early modern England. Parker finds that in both time periods, the term describes a process generating femininity in masculine bodies, but in the Renaissance "barber" acquires the additional resonance of "infideL' Phyllis Rackin argues that the understanding of Shakespeare as a misogynistic writer may in fact be a projection of our own culture's misogynistic biases. Harry Berger, Jr., reads marriage in Othello and in Dutch portraits as a site of "performance anxiety" generated by a growing uncertainty regarding the location of domestic authority. In her chapter on the history plays, Jean E. Howard suggests that the first tetralogy, dominated as it is by male roles, provides Shakespeare with the opportunity to interrogate early modern understandings of masculinity by staging different kinds of explicitly masculine characters. Bruce R. Smith's essay challenges Derrida's understanding of logocentrism and claims that Hamlet's subjectivity is not simply the product of his own selfawarehess but of the presence of his speech, heard against the lively aural background of the London theater. Philippa Berry and Raphael Falco each contribute chapters on The Merchant of Venice and the second tetralogy, respectively.
The book does not offer a bibliography of Barroll's work, which is unfortunate; however, his influence is profound nonetheless. Center or Margin is a fine tribute-both in its conception and its execution-to a scholar who has done much to shape the field. The title of the volume identifies an ambiguity that the book both embodies and enacts. Essay collections are often considered to exist on the periphery of scholarly influence, the core of which is dominated by monographs and journals. Yet this collection, which contains so much work by so many scholars who are central to the field of Renaissance English literature, will command attention. There may not be enough in the book to provide a comprehensive revision of the Renaissance, but this of course is not its mission. This collection is an elegant reminder of the value of adopting multiple critical perspectives and an excellent place to begin revising not just what we think about the Renaissance, but how we think about it.
Several of the chapters undertake to rethink the Renaissance from perspectives traditionally considered to be marginal to the field of early modern literary studies. Orlin's essay begins by focusing on the long gallery, an architectural innovation in the Tudor great house, in order to suggest that it is the first indoor space uniquely suited to intimate interactions demanding sexual, congenial, and political privacy. Catherine Belsey's ambitious piece uses Augustine and Montaigne to argue that Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis-sometimes an unwelcome guest in discussions of the Renaissance-can be used in aid of historicization if it might be reconceived as a study of meaning rather than of a totalizing version of human consciousness. Barbara Maria Stafford, the lone art historian among the contributors, assesses an exhibition at the Getty Museum on visual images and on the cabinet of curiosities to illustrate the contributions that artistic objects can make to histories of the early modern subject. Even Susanne Woods' essay on Milton, hardly a marginal figure, shows how valuable the perspective from the periphery can be by suggesting that Abdiel's decision to remain faithful to God in Paradise Lost is key to the question of whether Adam and Eve's fall is afelix culpa.
Fittingly however, Shakespeare-the figure at the center of the field-is most prominently represented. Peter Stallybrass reads Othello and Macbeth to illustrate England's anxiety about the cultural hegemony of the Ottoman Empire, an anxiety that led English vriters to reimagine the west as the center of material wealth. In a fascinating chapter on cultural etymology, Patricia Parker begins with an account of Antony and Cleopatra and traces the meanings of the word "barber/barbering" from its appearance in classical texts to early modern England. Parker finds that in both time periods, the term describes a process generating femininity in masculine bodies, but in the Renaissance "barber" acquires the additional resonance of "infideL' Phyllis Rackin argues that the understanding of Shakespeare as a misogynistic writer may in fact be a projection of our own culture's misogynistic biases. Harry Berger, Jr., reads marriage in Othello and in Dutch portraits as a site of "performance anxiety" generated by a growing uncertainty regarding the location of domestic authority. In her chapter on the history plays, Jean E. Howard suggests that the first tetralogy, dominated as it is by male roles, provides Shakespeare with the opportunity to interrogate early modern understandings of masculinity by staging different kinds of explicitly masculine characters. Bruce R. Smith's essay challenges Derrida's understanding of logocentrism and claims that Hamlet's subjectivity is not simply the product of his own selfawarehess but of the presence of his speech, heard against the lively aural background of the London theater. Philippa Berry and Raphael Falco each contribute chapters on The Merchant of Venice and the second tetralogy, respectively.
The book does not offer a bibliography of Barroll's work, which is unfortunate; however, his influence is profound nonetheless. Center or Margin is a fine tribute-both in its conception and its execution-to a scholar who has done much to shape the field. The title of the volume identifies an ambiguity that the book both embodies and enacts. Essay collections are often considered to exist on the periphery of scholarly influence, the core of which is dominated by monographs and journals. Yet this collection, which contains so much work by so many scholars who are central to the field of Renaissance English literature, will command attention. There may not be enough in the book to provide a comprehensive revision of the Renaissance, but this of course is not its mission. This collection is an elegant reminder of the value of adopting multiple critical perspectives and an excellent place to begin revising not just what we think about the Renaissance, but how we think about it.
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Last Reviewed on 11/24/2008 by Nabin Mulepati | SU Press (570)372-4175/fax (570)372-4021 | Email: baileys@susqu.edu | Susquehanna University, Selinsgrove, PA 17870