{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.02478929102627665, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0, 'mean_word_length': 5.509677419354839, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
A Companion to Marguerite de Navarre ed. by Gary Ferguson and Mary B. McKinley (review)

The section entitled “Women and their Agency” concludes the collection on a strong note. Elena Brizio’s “The Role of Women in their Kin’s Economic and Political Life” investigates issues of female agency within private and public spheres, particularly concerning how these issues are reflected in Sienese notarial documents. Like many recent scholars, Brizio questions earlier assumptions that women had little agency outside the private sphere and ably interrogates any tendency to view statutes or notarial documents as purely objective evidence, showing how local customs can contradict laws and how the frequent reaffirmation of laws indicates that they are not consistently followed. The collection ends with Francesco Divenuto’s intriguing article on “The Role of Queen Maria Amalia of Saxony in the Planning of the Royal Palace of Caserta.” Divenuto argues persuasively that Queen Maria added to, and even transformed, significant aspects of her husband’s aggressive building campaign, not just by her importation of German ideas of architecture (interior and exterior), and by her interest in a style more elaborate than that of her more classicallyoriented husband, but also by her active presence and letter writing. An attentive reader can cull from the collection a significant overview of interrelations between historical, literary, and nationalistic perspectives on the late medieval and early modern period in Europe. While the essays do not, for the most part, break new ground, the essayists present significant archival work, important attention to often-overlooked women writers, noteworthy emphasis on female agency and performativity (and their limitations), and sophisticated readings of documents that are taken seriously, even as the essayists interrogate face-value evidence. This collection, in fact, contains no weak essays, even if a few, apparently conference papers, could use further development.