Das selbst geschriebene Leben. Eine Studie zur deutschen Autobiographie im 16. Jahrhundertby Hans Rudolf VeltenReview by: Susan R. BoettcherThe Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 33, No. 1 (Spring, 2002), pp. 310-311Published by: The Sixteenth Century JournalStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4144323 .

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310 Sixteenth Century]ournal XXXIII/1 (2002)

"between the two extremes of devotional song and didactic argumentation" (97). With this formulation Spies characterizes what is particularly fascinating about Netherlandic lit-

erature, when read from the perspective of intellectual history as Spies does so well: the

importance of the intersection of Christian and secular intellectual traditions, sometimes

inimical, sometimes in uneasy coexistence, frequently with mutual benefit, never insignif- icant. Spies amply demonstrates this point in her analysis of the argumentative aspects of the rhetoric employed by Vondel in Inwydinge van het Stadthuis t'Amsterdam, a poem cele-

brating the opening (literally: consecration) of Amsterdam's new city hall, still to be ad- mired as the Royal Palace on Dam Square today. Spies argues that because Netherlandic

poets like Vondel took very seriously the function of literature as educating the public through rhetorical means, it is important to analyze their work on those terms, in particu- lar paying greater attention to the argumentative aspects of the ars oratoria than has been done previously.Vondel's poem proves the point: while he celebrates the beauty and use- fulness of the building in traditional terms, the focus of his argument is instructing the rest of the Netherlands in the importance of acknowledging that the welfare of the entire

country depends on Amsterdam and its municipal government.To be sure,Vondel was a

Mennonite, but the "internal struggle" between the sacred and the profane in Dutch liter-

ature, as Spies calls it the essay on "Pagan Gods in Early Modern Dutch and European Po-

etry" (69), is one of this literature's enduring universal characteristics. It is unfortunate that a deft editorial hand by a native speaker did not succeed in re-

moving some small but distracting slips in English, including, of course, misspelling "Rethoricians," in the book's title. Since the essays were all published elsewhere, including

English-language venues, the editors may have been too ready to accept previous editorial

work as adequate. Nowhere is meaning lost, fortunately, but readers will pause, distracted

from the main idea, as they contemplate small but important differences between expres- sions and terms such as "met with a need" and "met a need," "on the contrary" and "in

contrast" (81), an "elder book" and an "older book" (82), "New Latin" and "Neo-Latin"

(cover).These relatively small matters should not, however, deter scholars from appreciating

Spies' clearly superb command of this field. Hermina Joldersma ........................... University of Calgary

Das selbst geschriebene Leben. Eine Studie zur deutschen Autobiographie im

16. Jahrhundert. Hans RudolfVelten. Frankfurter Beitrdige zur Germanistik, 29.

Heidelberg: Universititsverlag C.Winter, 1995. 360 pp. n.p. ISBN 3825302865. This very readable and well-organized study of the sixteenth-century German autobi-

ography originated as a dissertation at the University of Frankfurt a.M. In remarkably jar-

gon-free language, the author analyzes eight more or less familiar biographies (Konrad Pellikan, Hieronymus Wolf, Thomas Platter, Daniel Greiser, Sebastian Leonhardt, Bar-

tholomdius Sastrow, Lucas Geizkofler, and Felix Platter) from the latter half of the century,

searching for commonalities and trends and arguing for an understanding of this often dis-

regarded or underestimated group of texts as an independent literary genre. The genre in-

cludes texts focusing on the life of an individual in which the perceived need for

recognition and transmission of the fact of the individual's existence and his attribution of

meaning to the events of his life predominate. This genre is further characterized by inde-

pendence from medieval or ancient topoi (such as Augustine's Confessions) but influenced by the genres of humanist vitae and family chronicles. All the authors were Protestant city dwellers and humanistically educated, who envisioned their audience as the contemporary

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Book Reviews 311

urban public sphere. Three predominating themes characterize these works: a discussion of education as a feature of personal identity, Protestant belief as an interpretive tool, and the use of history as a means of legitimating and putting into perspective the individual's ac- tions. Lutheran texts focus on the justifying aspects of predestination, while Calvinists see themselves as examples of election, but both groups (in contrast to their presumable theo-

logical presuppositions) see their own good works and personal merits as prerequisites for the certainty of their salvation.

Despite his concession that these texts lack self-description and self-analysis,Velten ar-

gues that they do show the presence of the developing individual in that they include an af- fective consciousness of subjectivity and an element of perspectively differentiating the

subject from his environment, as well as a divergence from the linearity of the chronicles in favor of the reconstruction of the life narrative from an outside (distanced) perspective. Similarities to modern autobiography include the articulation of life crises, the demonstra- ble development of personality structures, and the comprehension of the individual's con- text within specific social roles.

Velten's book is instructive and accessible. Nonetheless, for the historian preoccupied by causality rather than generic description, questions remain. For instance, can it really be the case that no Catholic authors contributed to this genre? Velten judges that Protestant the-

ology of all types would be hostile to the act of writing autobiographies, but if this is really the case, the emergence of pietistic biographical writing a century later needs more explana- tion. Clearly, the urban background of the texts must be decisive, butVelten limits his discus- sion of this issue to an analysis of how the authors imagined the traits of an urban audience, instead of assessing whether the texts show specifically urban elements. Consequently, one wonders whether the autobiographers are all urban for structural reasons (access to printers, greater educational and literacy rates in cities). Additionally,Velten does not address the work of Charles Taylor in Sources of the Self (1989; German, 1994), which presents a serious chal-

lenge to the claims made here. A historian of the sixteenth century wants to be sympathetic to Velten's claims that modern identity structures emerged before the seventeenth century (one need think only of Luther), but Taylor's work was so influential in this debate that its omission here is troubling. Still, the strength ofVelten's work can be seen in his style and or-

ganization, and particularly in his presentation of the individual texts.While the book will

probably be of greater interest to literary scholars, it will also provide a valuable entr&e to his- torians and other scholars interested in the evidence provided by personal testimonies. Susan R. Boettcher ................... ... .University of Texas at Austin

Challenges to Authority. Ed. Peter Elmer. The Renaissance in Europe. New Haven : Yale University Press in association with The Open University, 2000. xv + 418 pp. $20.00. ISBN 0300082207.

Challenges to Authority is the final installment of a three-volume series designed for an

interdisciplinary third-level course on the Renaissance at Britain's Open University, a dis- tance learning institution for working adults and other nontraditional students.The series aims to introduce readers to the "idea of the Renaissance...as it developed during the fif- teenth and sixteenth centuries and as it has since been interpreted." Earlier volumes exam- ined the development of humanism and the rise of princely courts. This final volume focuses on reciprocal influences between the Renaissance, the Reformation, and natural

philosophy.While this book is designed for a specific course, its publisher claims it is also

appropriate for general readers and undergraduate courses.

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