Louis XII.

Frederic J. Baumgartner. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996.3 maps + x + 319 pp. $17.95. ISBN: n.a.

Originally published in hardcover in 1994 to high acclaim, this paperback version of the first English-language biography of an oft-forgotten early French Renaissance king should increase its availability and usefulness for students of Renaissance history and literature. Baumgartner's text, which synthesizes both period and critical writings on his topic, is immensely readable and eminently accessible to non-specialist and specialist alike.

Told in a straightforward narrative style and plotted chronologically, Baumgartner's story covers the span of Louis's life while incorporating such topics as the integration of Brittany into the realm, dynastic politics, the royal institutions and policies of Louis XII, as well as the Italian question that so preoccupied Louis XII and future French Renaissance kings. The final chapter of the book, "Legacy," neatly summarizes scholarly views on major topics of Louis's reign: conciliarism, the state of the monarchy (consultative, limited), use of publicity and propaganda, the Italian claims. It also discusses the view of Louis as emblem for a specific type of kingship in later periods of French history.

I do agree with an earlier reviewer of the hardcover volume that the work would benefit from more detailed maps and genealogical charts, given the dynastic concerns of the period and the profitability and likely use of this text by nonspecialists as well as undergraduate students new to the field.

While Baumgartner's approach is that of traditional narrative history, he does include and incorporate into his chronicle of Louis's life materials related to Anne of Brittany and other female figures (useful for women's studies), references to royal publicity and propaganda (cultural studies), comments on economic history and the attitudes of the public (social history) that might prove the starting point for further studies in other branches or approaches to historical studies. Baumgartner's copious references and bibliography of both primary and secondary sources would also prove useful to such endeavours.

In addition, faculty may choose to use this text as a starting point for a discussion of historiography, by referring to the primary and secondary sources noted and reviewing Baumgartner's methods of synthesis. In this event, other work in social and intellectual history of the Renaissance (albeit of a somewhat later time frame) might provide interesting material for comparison/contrast, for example, Natalie Zemon Davis's use of archival and other sources in her work on Martin Guerre or on pardon tales (Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and Their Tellers in Sixteenth-Century France. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987). These works fit into a renewed critical and scholarly interest in historical writings in the general period of the French Renaissance, as evidenced by the reediting of such French Renaissance works as Etienne Pasquier's Les Recherches de la France (Paris: Honore Champion, 1996), Pierre de L'Estoile's Registre-Journal du regne de Henri III (Geneva: Droz, 1992 (vol. 1), 1996 (vol. 2) or even the slighlty later Histoire universelle of Theodore Agrippa D'Aubigne (Geneva: Droz, ca. 1980-1995, vols. 1-9).

In sum, this is a highly readable and useful text for student and scholar alike and, while continuing in the vein of such chronicles as Paul M. Kendall's Louis XI: The Universal Spider (New York: W.W. Norton, 1971), it provides suggestions and much bibliography for further development of other topics and branches of historical studies during this time span.

ELAINE M. ANCEKEWICZ Roger Williams University