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Ivan Lett

When Emperor Charles V was elected Holy Roman Emperor in June 1519, his influential position became incredibly important for the strength of his family. Only three years before, he had inherited the vast lands of the Spanish Empire, which already spanned the far ends of the globe, and within Europe itself, he personally ruled over Spain, the Low Countries, Austria, and Naples. Charles’ aunt, Catherine of Aragon, had married into the Royal House of Tudor in England, one of the few rival monarchies to Charles’ Habsburg power. At first, she married the eldest prince, Arthur, but after his untimely death, King Henry VII arranged for Catherine to marry his new heir, the eventual Henry VIII, as his first wife.

We all know the legends of Henry VIII and his six wives, but I always found a sad spot in my heart for poor Catherine. Call me an Hispanophile, but she was in no easy position. After six pregnancies, only Princess Mary survived, and Henry would stop at nothing to have a male heir. By 1525, Catherine, already five years Henry’s senior, was over forty and seemed unlikely to become pregnant again. When Henry tried to pressure the Pope into granting an annulment, his envoy was prevented from gaining access because the Pope was Emperor Charles’ prisoner. Naturally, he was on his aunt’s side, but Henry was determined to prevail. Enter: the English Reformation.

So it’s no wonder that these events are the background for a chapter called “Dysfunctional Family” in John Edwards’ new biography, Mary I: England’s Catholic Queen. The conflict between Mary’s parents framed the most significant events of her life, and with a particular focus on Mary's religious faith, which was at the heart of everything she did, Edwards works to bring this controversial Queen into perspective. Most often remembered for her attempts to reverse the rise of Protestantism in England, Mary’s reign saw the persecution and execution of religious dissenters. After thoroughly and exhaustively researching the Spanish archives, attempting to sympathize with Mary’s Catholicism, Edwards applies his knowledge to casting Mary in terms of religious rather than exclusively personal decisions. It’s not that he exalts Mary—you don’t get the name Bloody Mary for nothing—and there is little that can be done to overturn nearly five centuries of bad opinion, but he gives a new way of how we can see the violent burnings and actions of her reign. He focuses more on Mary’s short marriage to Phillip II of Spain, Charles V’s son, the clergy, and the nature of her Catholic rule. After all, Mary, Phillip, and her administrators did truly believe that what they were doing was right in the name of God and their Christian faith.

The book is coming out in September, so enjoy your summertime Bloody Mary before you give pause to think about its namesake. Oh, who am I kidding?: Tomato, Tomato.

(On a final note, Henry VIII’s birthday was the same as Charles’ election: June 28. Just how intertwined could these two families be?)

Ivan Lett is Online Marketing Coordinator for Yale University Press.  

Earlier this week, Melissa Harris-Perry, author of the forthcoming Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America, was on her way into New Haven to meet with YUP about her book, tweeting as she made the journey; her visit even hit the blogosphere at Now Rise Books blog. In the book, Harris-Perry examines the cultural life expressed in literature, religion, music, images, and stereotypes that have formed black women’s political identity in America. Uniquely, she draws on political theory, surveys, and research that create a psychological portrait, as well, in order to fully illustrate the impact of how black women see themselves within the scheme of American politics. It’s not a book about voting or elected officials; it’s the past and contemporary story of what citizenship means for a vital part of America’s population, and how the rest of us perceive our sister citizens.  

You can read about Harris-Perry’s new book and see the rest of our Fall 2011 catalog, now available online. Oh, and if you don’t recognize the title, it comes from her column at The Nation, so you won’t be deprived of her acuminous insight  before the book comes out.

In a similar vein, Carla L. Peterson’s contributions to the New York Times’ “Disunion” series on the Civil War have continued, with her newest piece on nineteenth-century African Americans, asking: “What Were the Women Doing?” Earlier this year, we published Black Gotham, in which Peterson explores her own heritage as part of the greater, largely untold history of blacks in New York before, during, and after the Civil War Reconstruction.

Another hot topic on our Spring 2011 list is the ongoing debate about the current state of economic affairs and the sustainability of capitalism. One of the most notable Marxist critics, Terry Eagleton, tackles the perception that Marxism is dead in his newest book, Why Marx Was Right.

Christopher Benson, who writes for The Weekly Standard, Christianity Today, Books & Culture, among others, has posted an excerpt to his "Bensonian" blog, where already discussions have started about who Marx was and what Marxism is and how we can grapple with its importance in the 21st century.  Check out his blog, see where you stand, and dig into the intensified debate that is sure to come when the book is published in April.

Ivan Lett

Virginia Woolf declared in her essay “Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown” that “On or about December 1910 human character changed.” There is hardly a better way to describe the dilemma of art in the Modernist period. The mere mention of Mrs.Woolf, her husband Leonard, E.M. Forster, and their colleagues in the Bloomsbury Group, and other British Modernist contemporaries—Ezra Pound, D.H. Lawrence, Irishman James Joyce—leaves me with a dazed and far off look in my eyes, as I mentally drift into their now classic writing. Complete with head tilt.

Modernist studies are all the rage now, and thank goodness. There is no better gift. Here at the turn of another century (a new millennium isn’t really helpful for comparing our societies), we are faced with rapid changes in digital technologies, environmentalism, not to mention the coined term “globalization” and all that it now implies. It seems a mirror of the early twentieth-century growth in industrialization, inter-political reconstitutions, and breaks with traditional form. Today, perhaps more than ever, we are consumed by Pound’s prescription to “Make it new!”  

For Modernists, the change was often painful, and Modernism, their response, but I don’t see why the comfort or embrace of a changing world should preclude the distinction of modernism in our present setting. Or maybe I enjoy the Internet too much to sincerely feel its pains. We all live and participate in contemporary society; artists today, pained or otherwise, use the changing world as a canvas of ideas, as they have now for centuries. I will refer you to Tom McCarthy’s more eloquent defense of these ideas in his Guardian review of Gabriel Josipovici’s What Ever Happened to Modernism?

A few months ago I was lucky enough to briefly chat about the subject with Jonathan Brent, Director of the YIVO institute and former Editorial Director here at Yale Press. He noted the focal intensity on Anglo-American subjects of Modernism, and I confessed to a certain stubbornness to deviate from that path.

In a lot of ways, that is simply my excuse for not pursuing Modernism in other nations more actively, a way of covering my own ignorance. Truth is: it’s not so difficult to entice me. Last year, I read the beautifully written biography Why This World, by Benjamin Moser, about the Brazilian novelist Clarice Lispector. Lispector, by chronological literary classification, was not a Modernist herself, but Moser brings out the Modernist influence evident in her work. In what was perhaps a backwards trajectory of a