A History of Life-Writing That Reveals State Secrets to Those Who Read It Attentively
Alan Stewart. The Oxford History of Life-Writing, Volume 2: Early Modern. 412pp, 6X9”, hardback. ISBN: 978-0-19-968407-6. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019.
*****
Here is a book that manages to deliver the ambitious goal it promises, and does so with the polish and precision that most of Oxford’s histories are known for. This particular volume in the series on the “Early Modern” period matches my current research, so I am glad it came out this year and was available for review. I will return to this book after these reviews are finished because it covers at least one of the individuals my “Shakespeare” research touches on, Sir Thomas More and his depiction in the play with this name that was attributed to Munday, and was censored out of production. It “explores life-writing in England between 1500 and 1700, and argues that this was a period which saw remarkable innovations in biography, autobiography, and diary-keeping that laid the foundations for our modern life-writing.” The line between “life-writing” and fiction was blurred across this period and through the eighteenth century; only towards the end of the eighteenth century did scholars begin establishing distinctions between what could be claimed in history against defined standards of “truth”, even if these truths were established myths. One of the main push-backs against fictitious biographies prior to this point was the ability of insulted aristocrats to file libel lawsuits if a presented history clashed with their self-perception. Given these developments, it is very revealing to study early examples of “life-writing” in England, as they can be infused with drama and exaggeration that modern life-writing does not dare to attempt.
“The challenges wrought by the upheavals and the sixteenth-century English Reformation and seventeenth-century Civil Wars moulded British and early American life-writing in unique and lasting ways. While classical and medieval models continued to exercise considerable influence, new forms began to challenge them. The English Reformation banished the saints’ lives that dominated the writings of medieval Catholicism, only to replace them with new lives of Protestant martyrs.” This is a great example of politics and religion utilizing publicity offered by printed texts to turn history into his-story or the story that their leaders want to convince the world is the truth about the world’s or their country’s creation. Since propaganda and double-speak is currently bringing about international conflict via its outcome in the Trump presidency, understanding how the great propagandists of England and America convinced the masses is particularly relevant to the present moment.
“Novel forms of self-accounting came into existence: from the daily moral self-accounting dictated by strands of Calvinism, to the daily financial self-accounting modelled on the new double-entry book-keeping.” The note regarding this book providing salvation via Calvinism reminds me of my Hassidic schooling, but it is a curious turn. “This volume shows how the most ostensibly private journals were circulated to build godly communities; how women found new modes of recording and understanding their disrupted lives; how men started to compartmentalize their lives for public and private consumption.” These are all very general concepts, but they are handled concretely in the text: the author is just trying to build a mystery to encourage readers to dive into the text. “The volume doesn’t intend to present a strict chronological progression from the medieval to the modern, nor to suggest the triumphant rise of the fact-based historical biography.” This is a great relief given my earlier notes on the “rise” theory. “Instead, it portrays early modern England as a site of multiple, sometimes conflicting possibilities for life-writing, all of which have something to teach us about how the period understood both the concept of a ‘life’ and what it mean to ‘write’ a life.” Again, too abstract for me, but if I was pretty tired after writing a long book and was asked to say something vague and abstract about all the facts I describe, I might state something similar.
The section names have humorous colors: “That Huge Dongehill of Your Stinking Martyrs” The Catholic Backlash”: this also explains how religion is treated in opposition rather than from the perspective of one side judged to be superior (68). There is also a strange phallic drawing of a “pillar” from the diary of Michael Wigglesworth (260), which might have been included because of its sexual implications rather than as an architectural example.
The contents of most of these writings are abstract even if Alan Stewart strives to find the details that bring the culture of these times into realistic detail for modern readers. After quoting from Brief Discourse by Katherine, Stewart concludes: “The effect is to abstract Katherine from such local English surroundings as dancing greens, markets, and public assemblies, and place her in a timeless biblical setting of tents and tabernacles” (154). These types of narrative bridges supply the texture of these times even if they are hazy in these early texts.
These distant topics are brought into conversations we all are currently pondering, including “fake news”: “It was broadcast in broadsheets and pamphlets that Dangerfield had been charged for impersonating James Scott, duke of Monmouth, the eldest illegitimate son of the late king, Charles II… constantly rumored to be gathering Protestant forces to invade England and oust his Catholic uncle, James II…” (284). According to my recent research, English monarchs like Elizabeth I, James I and probably James II hired writers to ghostwrite stories that exaggerated the threat from rebellion in order to allow them to execute the imagined foes based on these speculations if enough of the public believed in them. Executing rivals or imagined contestants for the throne could inspire a real rebellion, but winning the public over and convincing them a spy or a pretender was being fought against by English spies has historically led to a long term on the throne for the monarchs practicing these techniques.
On all counts, this is a useful, thoroughly researched, relevant, and interesting to read book for scholars and history enthusiasts alike.