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EVENTEENTH- ENTURY EWS SPRING - SUMMER 2011 Vol. 69 Nos. 1&2 Including THE NEO-LATIN NEWS Vol. 59, Nos. 1&2 SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY NEWS VOLUME 68, Nos. 1&2 SPRING-SUMMER, 2010 SCN, an official organ of the Milton Society of America and of the Milton Section of the Modern Language Association, is published as a double issue two times each year with the support of the English Departments of Texas A&M University. SUBMISSIONS: As a scholarly review journal, SCN publishes only commis- sioned reviews. As a service to the scholarly community, SCN also publishes news items. A current style sheet, previous volumes’ Tables of Contents, and other information all may be obtained via our home page on the World Wide Web. Books for review and queries should be sent to: Prof. Donald R. Dickson English Department 4227 Texas A&M University College Station, Texas 77843-4227 E-Mail: [email protected] WWW: http://www-english.tamu.edu/pubs/scn/ ISSN 0037-3028 SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY NEWS EDITOR DONALD R. DICKSON Texas A&M University ASSOCIATE EDITORS James Egan, University of Akron Michele Marrapodi, University of Palermo Patricia Garcia, University of Texas E. Joe Johnson, Clayton State University Matthew E. Davis, Texas A&M University EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Elise A. Beck, Texas A&M University CONTENTS VOLUME 69, NOS. 1&2 ................................ SPRING-SUMMER, 2011 Helen Wilcox, ed. The English Poems of George Herbert. Review by JEFFREY P. BECK............................................................................................... 1 John Gouws, ed. Nicholas Oldisworth’s Manuscript (Bodleian MS. Don.c.24). Review by A.H. DE QUEHEN ........................................................................... 4 Joad Raymond. Milton’s Angels:The Early Modern Imagination. Review by ADAM SWANN ................................................................................ 7 Reid Barbour and Claire Preston, eds. Sir Thomas Browne: The World Proposed. Review by JOSEPH L. BLACK ...........................................................................10 Achsah Guibbory. Christian Identity: Jews and Israel in Seventeenth-Century England. Review by WILLIAM E. ENGEL ........................................................................ 13 Noam Reisner. Milton and the Ineffable. Review by PETER E. MEDINE.............16 Paul Davis. Translation and the Poet’s Life. The Ethics of Translating in English Cul- ture, 1645-1726. Review by ALAN RUDRUM .................................................. 20 Julie D. Campbell and Anne R. Larsen, eds. Early Modern Women and Trans- national Communities of Letters. Review by COLLEEN E. KENNEDY .............24 Ian McAdam. Magic and Masculinity in Early Modern English Drama. Review by GRACE TIFFANY ...........................................................................................27 Jonathan Gil Harris. Untimely Matter in the Time of Shakespeare. Review by BOYD M. BERRY ................................................................................................30 Judith Haber. Desire and Dramatic Form in Early Modern England. Review by ELISA OH ..........................................................................................................34 Peter Hinds. ‘The Horrid Popish Plot’: Roger L’Estrange and the Circulation of Political Dis- course in Late Seventeenth-Century London. Review by ADAM SWANN............ 38 Michael North. Artistic and Cultural Exchanges Between Europe and Asia 1400- 1900. Review by NAGENDRA RAO .................................................................41 Joanne Rochester. Staging Spectatorship in the Plays of Philip Massinger. Review by NANCY MOHRLOCK BUNKER ....................................................................... 44 Peter E. Medine, John T. Shawcross, and David V. Urban, eds. Visionary Milton: Essays on Prophecy and Violence. Review by ANTHONY WELCH ................................ 47 Maria Rosa Antognazza. Leibniz. An Intellectual Biography. Review by JONATHAN WRIGHT ..........................................................................................50 Craig Ashley Hanson. The English Virtuoso: Art, Medicine, and Antiquarianism in the Age of Empiricism. Review by JAMES FITZMAURICE ............................52 Jamie C. Kassler. The Honourable Roger North, 1651-1734: On Life, Morality, Law and Tradition. Review by ELLEN J. JENKINS .......................................... 55 Malcolm Wanklyn. The Warrior Generals: Winning the British Civil Wars 1642- 1652. Review by CHRIS R. LANGLEY ..............................................................58 Imtiaz Habib. Black Lives in the English Archives, 1500-1677. Review by BABACAR M’BAYE ..............................................................................................61 Kevin Sharpe. Images Wars: Promoting Kings and Commonwealth in England, 1603- 1660. Review by TILLMAN W. NECHTMAN .....................................................65 Thomas N. Corns, Ann Hughes, and David Loewenstein, eds. The Complete Works of Gerrard Winstanley. Review by TOM HAYES ..................................68 Mogens Laerke, ed. The Use of Censorship in the Enlightenment. Review by ROBERT H. BLACKMAN .....................................................................................70 Elvira Vilches. New World Gold: Cultural Anxiety and Monetary Disorder in Early Modern Spain. Review by ELIZABETH R. WRIGHT..........................................74 Alban K. Forcione. Majesty and Humanity: Kings and Their Doubles in the Political Drama of the Spanish Golden Age. Review by LAURA BASS ...........................78 Xavier Bray. The Sacred Made Real. Spanish Painting and Sculpture 1600-1700. Review by JOSEPH R. JONES ...........................................................................82 John A. Marino. Becoming Neapolitan. Citizen Culture in Baroque Naples. Review by R. BURR LITCHFIELD ....................................................................................85 Catherine Gimelli Martin. Milton Among the Puritans: The Case for Historical Revisionism. Review by JOHN MULRYAN ..................................................... ..87 NEO-LATIN NEWS ................................................................................................ 91 REVIEWS 1 Helen Wilcox, ed. The English Poems of George Herbert. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. xlv + 740 + 5 illus. Review by JEFFREY P. BECK, EAST TENNESSEE STATE UNIVERSITY. Historians of the book sometimes refer to the codex book form itself as a distinctive technology and compare the book to a machine. Never is a reader more aware of the “book as machine” as when confronting a meticulously edited text with a rich scholarly apparatus. The English Poems of George Herbert is such a machine, a complicated and fascinating one with many moving parts and an immense weight of scholarly tradition. The editor’s work in assembling the machine of Herbert’s poetry with a variorum of commentary is no simple one, and she undertakes it with great industry. Her goal, described in her introduction as an appreciation of the paradoxes of Herbert’s English verse, however, she characterizes with modesty in Herbert’s own phrase from “Prayer (I)” as “something understood” (xxxvi). So what “something” is Wilcox attempting to understand in The English Poems? And, just as importantly, what is she not seeking to understand? Obviously, the volume contains none of Herbert’s Latin verse, nor does it contain his prose in either English or Latin. The focus of the volume is on the English lyrics of The Temple, upon which she rightly says “Herbert’s fame rests” (xxii). The main contents of the volume are divided by the sections of The Temple: The Church-Porch (37-86), The Church (87-663), and the Church-Militant (664-687). Aside from these verses, only fifteen other English poems from Izaak Walton’s life of the poet and other manuscript sources are included in the volume. “These [fifteen] works show H. [Herbert] writing in more familial, social and public contexts,” says Wilcox correctly (xl), although only thirty-four pages of the book are devoted to such poems. Since the volume is principally devoted to line-by-line com- mentary from twentieth-century critics on the poems of The Temple, Wilcox’s edition amasses a formidable variorum commentary on topics such as Herbert’s use of the Bible in his verse, his stylistic innova- tions and paradoxical use of English verse forms, his remaking of secular forms for spiritual uses, the resonant speakers and voices of The Temple, the liturgy and sacraments of Herbert’s church, and the 2 SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY NEWS theological controversies of the poems, among many others. Naturally, when an editor makes choices to include, she also makes choices to exclude, and these choices do both enable and limit the reader’s ability to understand the paradoxes of George Herbert’s poetry. About this, more later, after an examination of the text of the English poems. Since Wilcox’s English Poems is an edition, scholars will ask about the editorial assumptions behind the volume. As do most scholarly editors, Wilcox prefers the historical text closest to the author’s inten- tions, and she settles firmly on 1633 edition ofThe Temple. She soundly argues that the historical text with its original spellings is preferable for appreciating Herbert’s puns, word-play, and verbal texture to a modernized text. The chief difficulty in producing such a volume is deciding between the claims of the first printed edition ofThe Temple in 1633, the Bodleian manuscript

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