At the Borders of the Human: Beasts, Bodies and Natural Philosophy in the Early Modern Period.

At the Borders of the Human: Beasts, Bodies and Natural Philosophy in the Early Modern Period. Ed. by Erica Fudge, Ruth Gilbert, and Susan Wiseman. Basingstoke: Macmillan; New York: St Martin's Press. 1999. xii +369 pp. 42.50 [pounds sterling].

Perceiving Animals: Humans and Beasts in Early Modern English Culture. By Erica Fudge. Basingstoke: Macmillan; New York: St Martin's Press. 1999. x + 232 pp. 42.50 [pounds sterling].

Arguably, a mark of a good conference is the `buzz' effect, by which every paper (including, naturally, one's own) seems linked in dynamic ways to every other, an amazing number of illuminating connections are made between sessions and papers, and no defence is needed for the conference theme, its status being so self-evidently beyond doubt. All of which goes to prove exactly how important a topic it is and how right one was to go along. With luck, such satisfying euphoria lasts one out of the conference venue and at least half an hour into the journey home. Perhaps a collection of essays that requires similar connective skills of its readers should be effective likewise, but while it is possible to make links between the various contributions to At the Borders of the Human, I am less confident of a resultant buzz.

According to the preface, this collection investigates definitions of `the human' in the early modern period, focusing on three particular areas where the borders between human and non-human are most challenged: human/animal; organism/ machine; physical/non-physical. This is a wide and, it transpires, diffuse remit, resulting in a lack of conviction for the collection and a lurking suspicion that the attempt to bring several trendy but disparate topics under the same umbrella has proved too much. A diffuse whole does not preclude good individual elements, however: there are certainly some good things here and some intriguing associations for the reader to make. Brian Cummings reveals the floundering at the borders of what is mental and what is physical, exposed by discussions of shame, which trouble the distinctions between man and beast or Spaniard and Indian. Margaret Healy offers an interesting discussion of human/inhuman behaviour which reveals the porous nature of the body, liable to invasion by devils or (if one is very lucky) angels, but ends at the point where fuller discussion of efforts to control these boundaries would be appropriate. The resultant sense of curtailment is also felt when reading Alan Stewart's and Julie Sanders's contributions. Stewart's discussion of intellectual pursuit (`the humanities') as proof of proper human status, as opposed to the nobility's preferred pursuit of hunting, contains an interesting enough description of the one-upmanship between Erasmus and Bude over poverty, but fails to develop its relation to the collection's theme. Sanders's piece on the role of the midwife suffers doubly. Not only it is abbreviated, but it also seems oddly out of place. Clearly there is something worthwhile to be said about the sleight of hand of Jonson's The Magnetic Lady, by which the substitutions of female control of the birth chamber and literal substitution of children can be read as a commentary on the role of midwives and suspicion of male denigration of that role, but Sanders has neither the space not the context to develop it here and I was left wishing for the different arena that this particular piece seems to deserve.

Bacon's emphasis on visual proof tenuously links Sanders's piece to the rest of the collection and is again exploited by Erica Fudge on vivisection, and Ruth Gilbert, who declares a focus on the anatomy/erotics boundary, but in fact more simply brings together a selection of hermaphrodite texts as viewing becomes voyeurism. Peter, the Wild Boy, is also subject to a gaze that hovers between voyeurism and scientific scrutiny as Michael Newton intelligently presents Defoe's intriguing and generally overlooked Mere NATURE Delineated and the question of where the human begins is raised. Susan Wiseman and Mary Peace further explore this topic in their discussions of apes and women respectively, both of which left me unsure. I am not convinced that for Tyson the `fragile borders' and `temporally alterable gradations' between human and ape are `at stake' exactly. There is clearly a fascination here, but confidence in mankind's position at the summit of the process emanates from Tyson and denies the phrase `at stake'. In this the early modern outlooks seem free of the paranoia of the late twentieth century. When it comes to women, of course, there is an unease, which Peace traces in terms of sentimental discourse, but while her concluding assertion that women can be regarded as bestial is credible, it is not secure and is untouched in the body of her essay.

Other pieces stand out for the evident engagement of the authors in their topic. Stephen Speed, though hampered by his style, as well as that of Harvey's notes (more context for these would have been welcome here) offers much of interest, while Jonathan Sawday's discussion of man and machine is a testament to our lasting love of gadgets, which highlights the shared vocabulary of mechanics and anatomy. This latter emerges as a major theme in the collection. In the end it is anatomy and its associate discourses of cartography and design that are the leitmotifs of this book, as mapping (discussed by Jess Edwards) is revealed as a composite process of invention, discovery, narration, and, of course, exclusion.

Borders are most easily drawn and exclusions created between things whose kinship is acknowledged: one human race and another; men and women. Paradoxically, where the parties being divided are asserted as distinct, those borders come under stress because the precise point at which the line should be drawn is suddenly elusive. The difficulties encountered in pinpointing the defining moment between human and animal form the prime example.

These are explored at greater length in Fudge's monograph Perceiving Animals. Where At the Borders of the Human occasionally suffered from compression, this book suffers from being rather stretched. Writing from an educated liberal humanist stance, Fudge fails to examine the universality of those views: it is not just in early modern England that animal baiting is enjoyed and while I, too, find such enjoyment baffling, her use of `we' is over-confident. The currency of such `pleasure' needs to be recognized. However, as Fudge rightly points out, definitions of the animal tend to slip into discussions of the human. Such slips provide the main arenas of debate in this book: baiting; religion; the law; science, with some topics, such as the question of the soul, surfacing in more than one of these areas. Amongst these are some effective sections, notably the discussion of Sidney and judgement, which takes us on to Prynne, but here, just as an interesting complexity arises, Fudge characteristically sidesteps into a far simpler response than her material deserves, concluding that humanism is a process and that there is no human without animal.

This habit of taking refuge in over-clarification is the central weakness of the book. Admirably grounded in reading the texts, well served by extensive quotations and literary demonstration, there is a marked unwillingness to enter complex conceptual areas and the whole is thus not stretching enough. Simple formulations are repeated, rarely challenged. The conscience-knowledge-speech nexus is not fully examined in the section on the wildman, nor is the crucial aspect of choice highlighted enough in the discussion of Perkins on atheists. I would also have welcomed more on the paradoxical value and abuse that configure vivisection. I miss that challenge, but the clarity of review of text is welcome and makes this a readable introduction both to the general subject and to some early modern texts.

GILLIAN RUDD
UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOOL