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Titles appearing in Reference — Research Book News — May 2009
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Emblematica; an interdisciplinary journal for emblem studies; v.16.

Ed. by Daniel Russell et al.
AMS Press, ©2008    483 p.    $164.50    PN56
978-0-404-64766-7

This 16th volume of the journal of emblem scholarship, like its immediate predecessor, presents papers from "Emblems in the Twenty-First Century," the seventh triennial conference of the International Society for Emblem Studies, held at the U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in July 2005. It contains 20 papers that collectively mirror the conference's goal of representing traditional, philological research in this Renaissance art form as well as new methodologies and perspectives in emblem studies. A further goal of the conference was expanding the scope of scholarship concerning the emblematic method in both historical and contemporary genres that are emblematic in their approach without constituting, strictly speaking, true emblems. In addition to the papers, five works of review and criticism are also included. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Lifewriting annual biographical and autobiographical studies; v.2.

Ed. by Thomas R. Smith.
AMS Press, ©2008    316 p.    $115.00    CT21
978-0-404-63422-3

Six general essays grace this year's second volume, exploring such topics as the questionable value of using Jane Austen's letters as a means of knowing Austen, California in Joan Didion's Where I Was From, and the Gertrude Stein-Alice B. Toklas symbiosis. The regular section devoted to cross-genre studies looks at a father's letters from Aleppo 1930-33, the crone as a figure of desire for revenge and healing in the writing of a life, writing art biography in Impressionist Quartet, and other matters. Eight recently published books are also reviewed. The second volume was delayed somewhat by the sudden increase in submissions that followed publication of the first. The contributors are scholars of literature from around the anglophone world. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Spenser studies; a Renaissance poetry annual; v.25.

Ed. by William A. Oram et al.
AMS Press, ©2008    322 p.    $110.00    PR2364
978-0-404-19223-5

This is the 23rd volume of a series published annually as a forum for Edmund Spenser scholarship and criticism and related Renaissance subjects. It contains three essays on the English Shepheardes Calendar, as well as nine papers on such subjects as sexual binarism in Spenser's Garden of Adonis; memory, aesthetics, and ethical thinking in the House of Busirane; Louis du Guernier's illustrations for the John Hughes edition of The Works of Mr. Edmund Spenser (1715), an early modern male reader of The Faerie Queene; and annotations and an unpublished poem on Spenser found in two copies of the 1596 Faerie Queene. Also included are five shorter writings, titled "Gleanings," on such topics as when Spenser read Tasso, Spenser and Greek romance, unlikely characters in Spenser's Britain Moniments, Spenser's "Clothes of Arras and of Toure," and Spenser's Amoretti and Elizabeth Boyle. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)