The Ranums' Panat Times

Charting Change in France around 1540

...Orest's other reviews

It always gives me pleasure to do what I can to call attention to an interesting, learned, and well-written book, even when I lack the competence to review it!

Here is an ingenious idea: Charting Change in France around 1540, edited by Marian Rothstein (Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press, 2006). There are so many interesting things here, from close readings of Rabelais, Jacques Cartier, et al., to precise studies of the influence of printing on literary culture and music.

I shall simply list the chapters that follow the "Introduction," by Marian Rothstein;

"Serializing the French Amadis in the 1540s," by Virginia Krause;

"Clément Janequin, Pierre Attaingnant, and the Changing Image of French Music,ca. 1540," by Richard Freedman;

"The Cartier Voyages to Canada (1534-42) and the Beginnings of French Colonialism in North America," by Laurier Turgeon;

"New Forms of Religious Engagement, ca. 1540," by Francis Higman;

"Printing, Translation, and the Paradigm Shift of 1540," by Marian Rothstein;

"Changes in Renaissance Epistemology: The Dialogism of Rabelais's Prologues," by Bernd Renner.

Alas, I fear this book will not find the readers it merits. Graduate-school seminars lack the range to move from Amadis, to Attaingnant, to Cartier, to Crespin, to Calvin, et al.

A word to graduate school professors: Always remember to assign books on themes in which you have only general competence ­ an inspiration for your students!!

P.S. Someone ought to do the hard labor of finding specialists to write a similar book for France, circa 1660!