This attractively illustrated, substantial hardcover offers the first collection of essays dedicated to John Derricke and his verse narrative of Ireland with twelve appended woodcuts, The Image of Ireland: with a Discoverie of Woodkarne (1581). Often cited, the hagiographical work in praise of Henry Sidney is better known for its images, frequently reproduced as some of the only surviving visual representations of early modern Ireland. Yet, notwithstanding a nice store of insightful criticism by prominent historians, literary critics, and art critics devoted to him, Derricke has not had the sort of concentrated, collective attention accorded his contemporaries. This collection, comprising an introduction and fifteen fairly trim essays, which arose from a multidisciplinary 2016 conference at Case Western Reserve University, helps remedy that lack, in so doing querying superficial reading of text and image. At its best, it shows various and novel facets of the work, ensuring that we attend to its complexity and nuance. The illustrations are unusually generous for an academic collection of this kind, in recognition of the importance of visual analysis of Derricke, and include not just the twelve woodcuts on glossy paper, but a plethora of smaller images demonstrating his influences, visual parodies, and transformations of what he inherited or represented.
The Image of Ireland begins with a judicious and useful introduction by editors Thomas Herron, Denna J. Iammarino, and Maryclaire Moroney, which does an admirable job of summarizing the complicated historical context and pointing out how the volume departs from settled interpretation or deepens extant readings. The rest of the volume is divided into five parts. In part one, “Ideologies,” there are two essays. Brian Lockey (chapter 2) focuses on how Derricke's and Edmund Spenser's representations of Ireland and England look in light of current debates about the status of the Tudor conquest as instantiating mature state-formation or the first stage of England's colonial project, distinctions which yield some insights despite their admitted anachronicity. Chapter 3 is a stimulating look by Maryclaire Moroney at the fraught martial politics of Sidney's tenure, detailing the inaccurate dichotomies Derricke imposes on the Irish scene and arguing convincingly that Derricke seeks to press hard against the “disloyal” Old English resistance to Sidney's attempt to extract material and political support for his military campaigns.
Part two, “Archaeologies,” contains three essays. In chapter 4, John Soderberg seeks to read the text's references to animals in relation to colonial discourse. Chapter 5 by Bríd McGrath effectively examines how Derricke amplified master propagandist Sidney's promotion of both himself and the ceremonial aspects of the viceroy's role through visual interplay between civic and state pageantry that elided his policy failures and troubled relationship with the restive Old English. James Lyttleton (chapter 6) offers a fascinating analysis of the archaeology of Dublin Castle, contextualized with a capsule history of urban settlement in Elizabethan Ireland, sixteenth-century Dublin, and Dublin Castle, “much beautified” by Sidney in a powerful use of the iconography of buildings in the wielding of viceregal power.
Part three, “Print and Publication” includes three substantial essays. A rich piece by Stuart Kinsella (chapter 7) considers the Dutch, English, and Irish biographical and art-historical context of Derricke's woodcuts, arguing that John Derricke was probably an artist from the Low Countries who arrived in England in 1550, and providing excellent illustrations that make a substantial contribution to our understanding of the common visual elements upon which the woodcuts draw. In chapter 8, Andie Silva situates Derricke's work within the context of both visual and print culture, examining the interrelations among the literary market, audience, and printer John Day, and considering in detail the recursive, studious, and dynamic reading demanded of committed Protestants making reading an act of religious militancy. Willy Maley and Alasdair Thanisch (chapter 9) address the hitherto little discussed Scottish sociocultural contexts of the work in its own era and especially in relation to its nineteenth-century dissemination by Sir Walter Scott and John Small, whose alternative archipelagic and often over-credulous, mythologizing view of history reframes the text and deploys it toward new ends.
Part four, “Influences,” comprises three essays. An insightful and persuasive essay (chapter 10) by Scott Lucas demonstrates how the influential and widely read Mirror for Magistrates served as both model and troubling counter-text for Derricke's representation of political authority, rebellion, and justice, as Derricke blamed congenital Irish depravity alone for all resistance shown to the Crown, justifying whatever “crewel” suppression is necessary in response. In chapter 11, Elisabeth Chaghafi astutely scrutinizes the three ventriloquized “rebel poems” at the end of the main text of the Image voiced by two Gaelic lords, prototypical Sidney antagonist Rory Óg O'More and “convert” loyalist Turlough Luineach O'Neill, underscoring the futility of rebellion from two vantages and confirming the need for wholesale reform while casting doubt upon its long-term success. In the longest essay in the collection, addressing the acute religious character of Derricke's woodcuts, Thomas Herron (chapter 12) argues for the strong influence of Albrecht Dürer and John Foxe in producing images both parodically anti-Catholic and apocalyptically Protestant. This reading offers some powerful and novel insights into Derricke's heretofore little-noticed iconography and symbolism, though some claims are more convincing than others.
Part five, “Interpretations,” concludes the collection with a further four essays. Matthew Woodcock (chapter 13) shrewdly examines the formal elements, organization, and structure of Derricke's prosody to recuperate some appreciation for his verbal creativity and to locate his work within larger Elizabethan practice. Denna J. Iammarino (chapter 14) considers Derricke's densely referential text, demonstrating the complex web of paratexts, both visual and verbal, the complexity of which she traces to Derricke's anxious, entrepreneurial role as both reporter and poet, and his desire to undermine readerly authority in order to dictate how his text will be read. William O'Neil (chapter 15) adroitly juxtaposes Derricke's and Edmund Spenser's images of the Lord Deputy each served, convincingly demonstrating how icons of monarchical authority signify within the political and literary contexts of the time toward similar ends. A solid essay by Thomas Cartelli (chapter 16) concludes the collection by considering Derricke's deliberate misrepresentation of aspects of Gaelic cultural practices to promote inaccurate and inflated claims about English civility and Irish barbarity.
The volume offers itself as a resource to the instructor. It is very nice to have a reproduction of the woodcuts (though a transcription of the verse would have been helpful since the print is quite small). The plethora of additional images throughout are also a rich and welcome resource. The variety of essays is to be commended, particularly the inclusion of scholars from multiple disciplines. One field not included, and indeed often left out of works on early modern Ireland, might have made this volume even more compelling. It would have been fascinating to include a discussion of contemporaneous Irish-language texts treating similar topics and events, in which we find parallel imagery deployed to opposite ends (the Catholic Irish as heroic “wolves” defending their hereditary territory, for example, or as overly polite, credulous, and civil in the face of English violence, treachery, and deceit)—texts which teach beautifully alongside Derricke. The book would have benefitted from a sterner editorial hand to catch typos and infelicities, ensure appropriate cross-referencing between essays, and rein in the occasionally obscure, far-fetched, or imprecise passages; but, overall, this ambitious undertaking is to be praised.
The collection will undoubtedly be useful for those researching or, especially, teaching Derricke, though readers will continue to return to the foundational essays on Derricke that have been supplemented but not rendered obsolete herein. More broadly, it will interest early modernists in addressing an important text of later sixteenth-century Ireland, in thinking deeply about art history, print, and visual representation, in analyzing religious iconography and rhetoric, and more. Research libraries and scholars alike will wish to acquire this useful and timely resource.
