comptes rendus 229 Marvell’s poem to portraying the potential inherent within Catholic women’s literary communities. Together, Lay’s four chapters, as well as her introduction and epilogue, refute the obsolescence of Catholic women to early modern literary culture. Connections between texts and authors occasionally appear somewhat inconclusive, but this is, as Lay indicates herself during a discussion of Mary Champney(s), perhaps a result of the “omissions that have erased Catholic women from English literary history” (9). In fact, some of Lay’s most interesting arguments involve just such cases, including the possibility that the nun Mary Champney, whose life is detailed within the anonymous The Life and Good End of Sister Marie, is actually the Mary Champneys raped by George Puttenham and then abandoned by him in Antwerp. Beyond the Cloister compellingly reveals the productivity of reading the lives and writings of Catholic Englishwomen and the need to take “alternative paths through literary history” (160). karalyn dokurno University of Manitoba Nejeschleba, Tomáš, and Paul Richard Blum, eds. Francesco Patrizi: Philosopher of the Renaissance. Proceedings from Te Centre for Renaissance Texts Conference (24–26 April 2014). Olomouc (CZ): Centre for Renaissance Texts / Univerzita Palackého v Olomouici, 2014. Pp. 384. ISBN 978-80-244-4428-4 (paperback) n.p. Tis collection of articles on Francesco Patrizi da Cherso (1529–97) opens with a solid contribution by Maria Muccillo that contextualizes the man’s character and culture by analyzing his studies, philosophy, way of thinking, and works. Muccillo points out how, in his university years in Padua, Patrizi moved from Aristotelianism and the study of medicine to philosophy. Using the didactic method he had learned from the humanist doctor Giovanni Battista dal Monte (1498–1551), Patrizi organized knowledge in a logical-deductive manner that led to his Città felice (1551) and his later works, Dialoghi dell’historia (1560) and Della Retorica dialoghi dieci (1562), where he reaches back to Lorenzo Valla (ca. 1407–57) in order to “bring order and light to the writings of the ancient historians” (22; my translation). Patrizi uses the same method a few