Gender and Heroism in Early Modern English Literature. Mary Beth Rose
On the other hand, Fitzpatrick's unforgivingly absolute take on Spenser's ideologies — like all extreme positions — yields to the skeptical shopper some enticing wares. The link she develops between the gold and silver limbs of the Lady Munera, pitilessly dispatched by the automaton Talus in .FQ 5.2, and the Catholic custom of preserving saints' relics in limb-shaped cases made from precious metals is original and provocative. Similarly, although her reading of what she considers Shakespeare's and Spenser's shared participation in a contemporary propaganda battle over the reputation of Anne Boleyn (mother of "that Protestant whore" Elizabeth) fails to persuade, Spenserians would do well to return to the materials and pitch of her analysis (particularly the idea of Chrysogone as a possible shadow for Boleyn) — though perhaps with more restraint. Both of these books insist on the fundamental importance of the Elizabethan Anglo-Irish encounter to the early development of English imperialism and, more importantly, to the revitalization of English as a competent literary, even imperial tongue. Both Palmer and Fitzpatrick see in The Faerie Queene, too, the astonishingly dynamic (and seductively beautiful) mix of violence, humanist rhetoric, nationalism, and slippery, almost-hypocritical doubleness characteristic of the Elizabethan conquest of Ireland. As Churchyard's account of Sir Humphrey Gilbert suggests, something catastrophic and horrible took place in Ireland in the sixteenth century, something that the (English) historical and literary record too often allows us to forget, or to soften. These studies forcefully remind us of the heavy price paid by the Irish, and by their language and culture, for some of the treasures of sixteenthand seventeenth-century English literature; we can only lament, with the Irish proverb, maireann lorg an phinn, ach ni mhaireann an beal a chan: the trace of the pen lives on, but not the mouth that sang. ANDREW ZURCHER Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge