Architectural Involutions: Writing, Staging, and Building Space, c. 1435–1650. Mimi Yiu. Rethinking the Early Modern. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2015. x + 320 pp. $89.95.
Melville’s curious and, he convincingly argues, generally misunderstood polemical ode “Anti-Tami-Cami-Categoria.” This extremely sensitive reading of both the poem itself and of its impact after publication in 1620 draws upon Cummings’s expertise in English as well as Scottish literary culture (the most-studied response to Melville’s poem is a Latin verse sequence by George Herbert) and gives a compelling account both of the force of the original poem as well as of the particular relevance of its heartfelt Calvinism in the 1620s. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the roots of the volume in theDPS project, poetic culture is better represented here than prose (only chapters 7 and 10 deal with prose texts, and chapter 10 is the shortest in the book). The types of verse discussed are, however, quite varied and broadly representative of Neo-Latin literary culture, with a concentration upon public verse, often panegyric in nature, though with important discussions too of didactic poetry (in David McOmish’s rich second chapter), personal poetry (especially William Poole’s discussion of Goldman’s “Lachrymae”), and lyric. The editors have done well to extend the reach of the collection beyond the boundaries imposed by the research project that stands behind it. This is a stimulating and enjoyable book. Of course it cannot cover everything: in particular, there is relatively little discussion of the relationship between Latin and vernacular literary culture. Although the volume demonstrates clearly the many links between the Scottish and wider European literary and educational milieu, especially that of France, there is no explicit assessment of how Scottish Neo-Latin culture in the early seventeenth century resembled or differed from the Latin literature of England, Ireland, France, or the Netherlands. Is there something distinctively Scottish here? There are hints of an answer, especially in strong discussions of Calvinist Neo-Latin style by Robert Cummings and Alexander Broadie (chapters 6 and 10)—but of course not all Scottish Latin poets were Calvinists. Questions of this sort offer inviting opportunities for future research, and the editors are to be commended for assembling a collection that points in so many promising directions.