James S. Amelang, The Flight of Icarus: Artisan Autobiography in Early Modern Europe. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998. ixx + 497 pp. $60.00 cloth.

Extract

Let's begin with the mythological allusion in the title The Flight of Icarus. Its inspiration comes from a translation into Castilian of a seventeenth-century Catalan personal chronicle by a tanner from Barcelona named Miquel Parets. The relevant passage reads as follows: “may this worthy ambition serve as a sun to illuminate my endeavors, rather than to cause me to plummet like Icarus . . . even though destiny assigned me to a lowlier sphere, it did not rob me of the wish to aspire to higher things.” (1, 164) According to Amelang, the Icarus myth was one of many classical models that informed the writing and self-images of early modern Europeans of humble as well as more exalted origins. His interpretation suggests that the anonymous translator (as well as the original author himself) understood artisan writing to be a bold, even transgressive, act that challenged social and cultural boundaries. The Icarus myth, then, in this and related usages, serves as an ambiguous class allegory: either as a morality tale about the just punishment for pride, or as an exhortation to attempt ascent, and delivery from the labyrinth, even in the face of overwhelming odds.