...highly erudite, straightforwardly written and a pleasure to read... I recommend it heartily to all scholars interested in Renaissance France.' -- French Review 82.6 French Review 82.6 An interesting and thought-provoking study which is well worth reading, albeit with a grain of salt. -- Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly This useful monograph presents five case studies of Early Modern biographies (including one autobiography)... MacDonald's work frames these two well-known texts in such a way as to encourage continued investigation of Renaissance biography as a fully-fledged prose genre. -- Forum for Modern Language Studies Forum for Modern Language Studies The first perspective [in this book] situates biography as a genre belonging to antique epideictic rhetoric... The second is the narrative of what might be called the facts of biographical life... The third is what could be called a concetto, that is, the biographer's own life perspective, conscious or unconscious, in the biography he is writing. This is what really interests Katherine MacDonald, because of her own radical-individualist perspective on relations between the biographer and his subject. -- Renaissance Quarterly Renaissance Quarterly Elegantly written, clearly argued, and erudite, this is a rewarding and thought-provoking book and a valuable contribution to the study of early modern French humanism. -- Modern Language Review Modern Language Review Interesting and original interpretations of biographies in which reading between the lines was every bit as important as the lines themselves. -- French Studies French Studies
