Marginal Figures in the Global Middle Ages and the Renaissance by Meg Lota Brown (review)

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Reviewed by:

• Marginal Figures in the Global Middle Ages and the Renaissance by Meg Lota Brown
• Nicholas D. Brodie

Brown, Meg Lota, ed., Marginal Figures in the Global Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Arizona Studies in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, 47), Turnhout, Brepols, 2021; hardback; pp. xv, 225; R.R.P. €75.00; ISBN 9782503597034.

This book is not about classically marginal historical figures like the poor, the infirm, the elderly, children, or cultural others and outsiders. It will be of most interest to scholars interested in its constituent subjects, particularly those with a literary focus. The volume opens with a chapter by Arnaud Zimmern that explores conceptual gaps in the context and reception of John Donne, focusing on the original context of Donne’s much-cited lines about islands and men. Zimmern explores the contrast evident in modern readings that inflect a ‘secular cosmopolitanism’ (p. 5) and suggests that the liturgical and ecclesiastical specificity of Donne’s meaning has been forgotten in favour of an abstract, morally universalist reading of the lines. The same phenomenon, he argues, is evident in Donne’s other much-quoted line about tolling bells, thereby marking a shift from an auditorily linked ecclesial community to abstract modern readings that envision a shared, global humanity.

The book’s attention then shifts to British encounters with Japan through East India Company personnel, with Paul Hartle offering an interesting chapter drawn from snippets of source material to present a compelling case that the early modern British could engage in a more interrogative, open-minded, and curious encounter than is often assumed by scholars mesmerised by the obvious fact that Europeans tended to bring their own cultural baggage and educative viewpoint to such encounters. Kyle DiRoberto then returns the volume’s attention from Japan back to those islands on the other side of Eurasia. He focuses on representations of the ploughman in the literary tussles between popular and Puritan writers in England. Of interest is the way that a dynamic of mutual response produced a discernible literary phenomenon whereby each group included ‘the exaggerated presence in each other’s writing of the opponents’ style’ (p. 64). Celtic mythology is surveyed in the following chapter, wherein Angela Loewenhagen Schrader offers descriptive accounts in turn of the banshee, pooka, leprechaun, evil eye, and the death coach.

From marginal island cultures, the volume then turns to address sex and gender. Elizabeth Labiner offers a chapter exploring how ‘playwrights explored the exciting transgression of crossdressing’ (p. 110), wherein the donning of male attire by female characters being played by male actors uncovers, so to speak, the performativity of gender. Albrecht Classen’s next chapter is a study of German traces of the myth of the Old Man of the Mountain, which explores deeper cultural exchanges between Christian Europe and the Islamic Near East. He argues that such traces speak of a greater familiarity with mythic traditions than might normally be allowed. In an earlier article, here republished as the volume’s seventh chapter, Meg Lota Brown and Kari Boyd McBride survey the contributions of a suite of women to Renaissance art and argue that, contrary to moralistic attitudes, [End Page 220] ‘women were active participants in all fields and artistic media, making a unique contribution to the history of the Renaissance’ (p. 163).

The volume then shifts from Renaissance to resistance with a chapter on the Peruvian historian Inca Garcilaso, who, James W. Fuerst suggests, ‘is the first American thinker to see armed insurrection in the service of independence as an alternative to colonial rule’ (p. 186). Lindsay Weiler-Leon’s chapter then focuses on the way that European travellers saw Ottoman and Safavid Persian women through their own cultural lenses. Sharonah Esther Fredrick brings the volume to a close with a wide-ranging chapter on the Mayan Xtabay legend, analysing interconnected questions of historical survival, indigenous adaptation, nationalism, and various cultural frames.

Nicholas D. Brodie Jane Franklin Hall, Hobart, Tasmania Copyright © 2023 Nicholas D. Brodie ...