Vagrancy, Homelessness, and English Renaissance Literature. By Linda Woodbridge. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001. Pp. xii + 338. $45.

In Vagrancy, Homelessness, and English Renaissance Literature, Linda Woodbridge makes explicit the absolute divide between "the real material conditions under which vagrants lived and the ways they were represented in literature and the visual arts" (p. 12). She underscores the disconnect between discourses on vagrancy and the plight of the "placeless" poor in Renaissance England. Rogue literature, jest books, comedies, and trickster tales generated and sustained a perception of the vagrant poor as wily, shiftless, sexually promiscuous and inherently anarchic-as fomenters of widespread social rebellion. With compelling proof to the contrary, Woodbridge takes these early modern writings to task, illustrating what is at stake in their various depictions.

Megan Matchinske
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill