Book Reviews 259 These events were part of what has come to be seen by historians as the political crisis of the mid-seventeenth century which involved not only the territories of east central Europe that are Hrushevsky's focus but also other states and polities in Europe, including those in the west, the various states of Germany and Scandinavia, along with Muscovy and the Ottoman Empire. This larger picture has often been studied without the perspective of the developments Hrushevsky treats, and one of the merits of this translation is that it, as Fedoruk notes in his Introduction, "brings Ukraine into the historiographie discourse on that crisis with a rich contribution of facts, sources, and historiographie analysis" (xxxvi). It should be noted, however, that Hrushevsky's text is not easygoing. It is thickly detailed, and in this volume a stylistic tendency that had begun to be evident in earlier volumes of his history becomes even more pronounced. His writing becomes increasingly dominated by copious lengthy quotations from the documents, often with little analysis or exposition. For example, nearly seven pages of a ten-page section in chapter 11 ("The 'Muscovite Betrayal' and the New League [summer 1656-spring 1657]") are source quotations in fine print loosely linked together with minimal commentary. Apart from the actual text of Hrushevsky's history, the strengths of this volume include the excellent introductions by Fedoruk and Sysyn. The former skillfully develops the main historiographical themes of the period treated by Hrushevsky, showing, in particular, what his text and interpretation added to the body of scholarship on these issues. The latter places Hrushevsky's rather polemical last chapter on the Khmelnytsky era in context. Hrushevsky's views of the hetmán and his period were less positive than those of his contemporary Ukrainian colleagues, and in this chapter he was sharply critical of Viacheslav Lypynsky in particular and the statist school of Ukrainian historians in general. Sysyn is particularly good at identifying some of the neuralgic points that underlay the tone of Hrushevsky's final chapter and especially successful in contrasting his populist views with the historiographical tradition that concentrated, as Sysyn notes, "on the nobles and the Cossack officers . . . as the primary positive element in Ukrainian history . . . [and] on the role of the hetmán, state building, and the integrating influence of Ukrainian territory on its inhabitants" (lxiv). Sysyn's conclusion is that apart from the "emotional excesses" in this chapter, Hrushevsky was still able to demonstrate a vigorous defense of "his long-held historical interpretations and [express] his keen understanding of early modern Ukraine" (lxxviii). These two introductions are supplemented by a useful glossary, three maps, and tables of hetmans and rulers. The high standards of this extraordinary publishing venture are successfully maintained in this volume. Tentorlum honorum: Essays Presented to Frank E. Sysyn on His Sixtieth Birthday. Ed. Olga A. Andriewsky, Zenon E. Kohut, Serhii Plokhy, and Larry Wolff. Toronto: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 2010. 502 pp. $39.95. ISBN 978-1-894865-20-3. REVIEWED BY: Michael T. Tworek Harvard University Tentorium honorum provides a fitting tribute to Frank E. Sysyn, one of the major scholarly pillars of Ukrainian and more broadly eastern European studies. Trained as an early modernist, Sysyn is best known for his pathbreaking monograph on Adam Kysil (1600-53), a prominent seventeenth-century statesman and diplomat who served both as an intermediary between Orthodox and Uniate (i.e., Greek rite churches in union with 260 Sixteenth Century Journal XUV/l (2013) Rome) factions within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and as a diplomat for the Commonwealth to the Cossacks during the Khmelnytsky Uprising (1648-57). Kysil was a man who could move easily in the many worlds of the highly diverse Commonwealth, though this fiuidity proved difficult during the Uprising, which forced him to negotiate his loyalties to the Ruthenian nobility. Orthodox religion, and the Commonwealth. It was this process of negotiation on Kysil's part, as Sysyn argued, that epitomized the strong presence of Ruthenian sentiment that made Rus' an ethnic, religious, and cultural community worthy of allegiance within Ukrainian society, both early modern and modern. Indeed, Sysyn "single-handedly resurrected the question of Ruthenian identity {ruskyi narod) and raised a number of larger problems and themes" that have been taken up by subsequent generations of scholars, many of whom have contributed to this volume (24). Much like Kysil, Sysyn and his work as a historian, mentor, and organizer have transcended national, temporal, and disciplinary boundaries, thus making him worthy ofthe "tent of honors" that his friends and colleagues have bestowed upon him. The breadth of topics spanning the early modern and modern periods found among the essays in Tentorium honorum is truly a testament to the wider influence that an early modernist can have on historical research of a region, festschriften are often notoriously difficult to unify thematically, given the diverse intellectual interests of their contributors. However, the editors, Olga A. Andriewsky, Zenon E. Kohut, Serhii Plokhy, and Larry Wolff, have succeeded in bringing together a diverse group of scholars to speak broadly, yet cogently, on their intellectual debt to Sysyn. Whether from Ireland and Italy to Poland, Muscovy, and naturally Ukraine, the theme of the formation of communities in Eastern Europe holds the volume together. There are several essays that stand out in particular in their usefulness and immediate relevance to early modernists. Paul Bushkovitch's essay highlights how the term "fatherland" was a relatively "neutral" term politically (designating the patrimony of a prince) until its transformation into a "major focus of loyalty" by Ukrainian monks in the seventeenth century (103). For historians of Venice, Teresa Chynczewska-Hennel's "Venetian Plans with Regard to Poland and Ukraine" serves as a thoughtful reminder of the important yet little-recognized role ofthe Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Cossacks in the Serenissima's foreign policy toward the Ottoman Empire and how disruptive the Khmelnytsky Uprising was for Mediterranean geopolitics. Turning to the British Isles, Yaroslav Fedoruk brings to light a highly intriguing, little-known story of an unsuccessful attempt to colonize Ukraine with Irish settlers on the part ofthe Polish royal court and Oliver Cromwell as a mutually beneficial solution to alleviate each party's domestic difficulties. The essays of David Frick, Zenon Kohut, and Nancy Shields Kollmann respectively show how fluid and fuzzy terms such as "Ruthenian," "Muscovite," "Russian," "Ukrainian," or even "Slav" could be in early modern sources and how diverse factors such as military occupations, scholarly choice, or foreign travel description could have profound consequences on the meaning of those terms internally and externally. Finally, Andrzej and Danuta Poppe and Moshe Rosman illustrate in their respective essays the important and ever-changing roles that medieval and early modern women played in Rus', whether at the French court or in the Jewish shtetl. All together, these contributions show elegantly how the people ofthe early modern world led richer and more complex lives than historians can necessarily capture in any neat or fixed categories. To close, Tentorium honorum illustrates how a festschrift can marry intellectual inspiration and thematic coherence with scholarly achievement. It serves as a shining tribute to a historian whose work on the early modern Ukraine has inspired generations of scholars Book Reviews 261 to transcend spatial and temporal boundaries. Moreover, this volume provides an excellent example for early modernists of how to make the early modern past relevant for modern historians and readers alike. The Life in the Sonnets. David FuUer. Shakespeare Now! London: Continuum International Pubhshing Group, 2011. xiii + 188 pp. $24.95. ISBN 978-1-84706-454-7. REVIEWED BY; Rudolph P. Almasy West Virginia University This slim and easy-to-read volume (the general editors would call it a "minigraph") is part of the Shakespeare Now! series, which publishes essays on Shakespeare's work that emphasize the aesthetic experience of reading or viewing, an experience that embraces the pleasure of interacting with, of getting lost in, a literary work. What the series focuses on and what David Fuller offers to his readers is an encounter with the sonnets, or an encounter with Fuller's experience with the sonnets. Actually he calls it an experiment, by which he means, I think, not only his own experimenting with the sonnets but also an invitation to the reader to use Fuller's text to experiment with Shakespeare's sonnets. One understands this experiment or experience in two fundamental ways as reflected in the book's two main divisions: the feelings prompted by experiencing the themes of the sonnets as well as the sound and the language of these poems. The title of the second chapter perhaps says it all: "Dwelling in the Words: Reading the Sonnets Aloud"; for reading aloud is interpretation "that keeps in the forefront of attention an 'erotics' of the poetry's beautifully meaningful surfaces" (14). The book concludes with a brief coda that pulls things together quite nicely. Before one dwells in the words, however. Fuller wants the reader to dwell "in the Feelings," the first and longer of the book's two sections. And those feelings are "the kind of feelings that are fundamental to the young man sequence" (14). In this regard. Fuller's study is perfect for the Shakespeare Now! Series, which stresses the personal (and emotional) encounter with art rather than any alleged scholarly encounter or professional objectivity. The assumption (which is debatable, of course) is that one finds "the life" in the work only through such personal encounter. And the pleasure and feelings and intellectual joy of such encounter is why Shakespeare still matters. Thus, Fuller's title. The Life in the Sonnets. But Fuller does underscore that his approach "negotiates" the single experience between, on one side, the reader and, on the other, the work and its otherness, an approach balancing self-reflection and objectivity. The reader is first led to approach the "life" of the sonnets through Fuller's prologue, a prologue that reveals Fuller's own encounter. And such an encounter means to be emotionally and intellectually engaged, to be intoxicated, absorbed; that is, to be in "a relationship with a poem that will deepen affection for it" (3). Fuller is arguing that criticism and scholarship (and maybe even theory) can all be connected if in whatever is brought to encounter or study a work of art finally enables participation. But that does not mean interrogation, analysis, and argument (12). Accordingly, Fuller is skeptical of critical methodologies and fashionable theoretical assumptions that, at least for him, inhibit real experience. So Fuller's exploration of feelings and words will lead, he hopes, to a "properly engaged reading" of Shakespeare's sonnets. But this is also an informed reading that embraces "aesthetic pleasure and engaged sensibility" (20). The informed reading explores the intensity of love-desire, obsession, beauty, the erotic, the self, the relationship, transcendence, and that elusive wholeness lovers long for. Of course, the love revealed in the sonnets is mostly Copyright of Sixteenth Century Journal is the property of Sixteenth Century Journal and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.