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Book reviewsJoanny Moulin a , Ulrike Bethlehem b , RobertProtherough c & Balz Engler da Université Michel de Montaigne‐Bordeaux IIIb Universität Bochumc University of Hulld University of BaselPublished online: 16 Jun 2008.

To cite this article: Joanny Moulin , Ulrike Bethlehem , Robert Protherough & BalzEngler (1998) Book reviews, European Journal of English Studies, 2:3, 376-386, DOI:10.1080/13825579808574424

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European Journal of English Studies 1382-5577/98/0203-376S12.001998,Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 376-386 ©Swets & Zeitlinger

BOOK REVIEWS

All is True; The Claims and Strategies of Realist Fiction. By Lilian R.Furst. Durham: Duke University Press, 1995. ix + 217 pp. £44.50 (hb);£15.95 (pb). ISBN 0 8223 1632 3 (hb); ISBN 0 8223 1646 3 (pb).

Theories of Mimesis. By Arne Melberg. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-versity Press, 1995. 192 pp. £11.95 (pb). ISBN 0 521 45856 0 (pb).

The time-honoured question of mimesis in literature is here addressedfrom two slightly different angles by authors who both try fundamentallyto re-assess the issue in the light of late twentieth-century ideas. Fürstadopts a more conventional comparative literature approach; Melbergoffers the more philosophical exploration. Fürst reconsiders Barthes's'effet de reel' as what she calls the 'porosity of word and text' (p. 39) bylooking at a necessarily limited corpus of mainly French and Englishrealist fiction from a constructivist and reader-oriented point of view,determined to eschew and overtake both marxist and structuralist criti-cism. Starting from the notion of framing advanced in Barthes's S/Z,her criticism of Prendergast's view of it as a 'limitation of the model'enables her to see framing rather as an internal frontier of the narrative(Genette) enabling readers to construe their responses. One applicationof this is the Bakhtinian chronotope, an intersection of time and placewhere the fictive action develops, which, she argues, in realist fiction asopposed to romance is typically the 'not long ago'. This enables a certainslippage between fiction and history, and onomastics partake of similargames of textual strategies. In a central strand of her argument that isperhaps more indebted to Bakhtin than she admits, Fürst then goes onto define 'landscapes of consciousness' as something more than themere Pathetic Fallacy of nineteenth-century paysage-ktat-d'äme. 'Placein realist fiction thus appears as ideology' (p. 13 6). The original, classicalschema of mimesis is now translated to 'osmotic transposition as theinterpreters assimilate the interpretants' readings into the landscapes oftheir consciousness' (p. 145). This dual function of place (referential andideological), and the multiplicity of standpoints it allows for, thus makeit an essential locus of the 'polyphonic' polyglossia and dialogic function-

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ing of realist fictional texts. Reconsidering the reading of realist fiction as'a performative act' is a positive departure from the position that wassupposedly theirs — and is still very much that of Auerbach — and whichis defined, via a détour through Locke, as an empirically-minded effortto seek a corrective to the inadequacy of words to things. Furst's mostappealing thesis is that the greatest art of the realists precisely lies in theirapparent striving towards artlessness — 'Poiesis is in realism masked asmimesis' (p. 190).

Locke could have been one of the missing links in Melberg's ratherless student-oriented work, if it had been a philosophical history of theidea of mimesis, which it is not, or rather not only, for the book is denseenough to have made two. Melberg hesitates between literature and phi-losophy in a study that seminally draws the conclusions for our under-standing of literary mimesis of the 'linguistic turn'of modern philosophy,here considered as a Derridean radicalization of Heidegger's Kehre. Per-haps it might not have been absolutely necessary to run the whole gaunt-let of Plato and Aristotle again, especially with such a brilliant lastchapter retrospectively enhancing the already remarkable interest of thewhole. It is also very tantalising to have excluded 'for instance Nietzsche,Freud and Deleuze' from a discussion appetisingly including Kierke-gaard, Heidegger, Derrida and De Man. But choices had to be made,and the programme is clearly given in the introduction with a dynamiccentering of the argument on the essential statement that 'mimesis is inits essence situated and defined through distance', and therefore the gen-eral concept or re-petition.

With a eulogistical reference to Ricur, a first chapter surveys the ideaof mimesis in classical philosophy, proleptically insisting on the diamímeseos way of Socratic irony and dialogue, and from the logos / lexeosto the praxis / mythos distinction as Aristotle 'temporalises' (p. 45) mim-esis. By an arousing Shandean cock-and-bull, the attention then abruptlyshifts to Cervantes' 'Imitación! as laying the basis for the very paradoxof realism, being presented as 'an anti-literary cure', and yet the cloakof a 'purely formal and literary device'. But there is more — Cervantismoand Quijotismo, defined as the anachronistic attempt to re-establish andmake new romance in modernity, are the prototype and foundation ofthe novela, the novel, le román as the impossibly modern genre in Euro-pean literature. Cock and bull decidedly turn to birds of a feather withthe following essay, on Rousseau, as the same dialectic of difference isfirst visible in the choice of the epistolary mode of Julie, ou la NouvelleHélo'ise, a fundamental aposiopesis through which 'love is made present

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in a void'. Rousseau's 'Reverie' can be seen as this paradoxical, revolu-tionary moment of presence / absence where 'the self gains itself by los-ing itself.

The field has thus been prepared for the main theorizing onslaught,with Kierkegaard's Repetition (1843) — the original title being Gjenta-gelse, which means 'the taking back' — where Constantin is seen to dis-cuss the notion of movement in connexion with repetition, as in Plato'sParmenides, with the key concept of Oieblikket, 'the glance of the eye',the 'instant'. Gjentagelse and Oieblikket correspond to Viederholung andAugenblick in Heidegger's 'destruction', the precursor to Derrida's'deconstruction' and De Man's idea of repetition as 'stutter' and pointe;an anti-metaphysical concept akin to différance, and which Melbergglobally tags ordo inversus (in which I hear an invitation to poetry, inconnivance with Fürst), meaning it as the result of Derrida's 'turningontological tradition on its head by giving priority to repetition andderiving presence as secondary' (p. 168), which Melberg compares toMarx's turning Hegel upside down. YzX., grateful as I am for this brighttheoretical digest and solid food for thought, I cannot help wanting toask for more applications in literature, like the chapters of this book onRousseau and Cervantes.

Joanny Moulin, Université Michel de Montaigne-Bordeaux III

Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation in the Middle Ages: Aca-demic Traditions and Vernacular Texts. By Rita Copeland. Cambrìdge:Cambridge University Press, 1991. Xiv + 295 pp. ISBN 0 521 38517 2(hb); ISBN 0 521 48365 4 (pb).

The Medieval Translator. Traduire au Moyen Age. Edited by RogerEllis and René Tixier. Vol. 5. Bruxelles: Brepols, 1996. Xvi + 488 pp.ISBN 2 503 50448 5.

From the subtitle of Rita Copeland's book, we might suspect this studyto follow the well-trodden path of many previous studies on medievaltranslation, combining an overview of academic traditions with exem-

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plary close readings of vernacular texts. "Vet her approach takes us muchfurther: while asserting the crucial role of translation in the emergenceof literary culture in the Middle Ages, she is the first to consider therise of translation as part of a broader history of critical discourses withan entirely new focus. Showing how ideas about translation were gener-ated within the theoretical systems of rhetoric, hermeneutics, textualproduction and interpretation from antiquity to the Middle Ages, shepresents education as shaping translation practice. Her concern is notwith pragmatics or theories of translation, but with critical practices.

In her (inevitably) introductory presentation of Roman theories aboutgrammar and rhetoric, Copeland already focuses on the value of her-meneutics, following its traces from enarratio to inventio, from Remigiusof Auxerre to Gower, from examples of primary translation in academiccommentaries, interlingual commentary and intralingual reception tosecondary translation employing rhetorical invention as hermeneuticalperformance. Her aim is not to show the impressions which classicalantiquity and its theories of reception, translation and text productionleft on their medieval counterparts; instead she approaches each ofthem afresh, asking the same questions of different authors, schools,and ages while she aims at a disciplinary context as a new basis for ahistory of translation. Compared with the following chapters on medi-eval translation (and commentary in particular), however, Copeland'schapter on Roman theories and practice falls sadly but perhaps under-standably behind: understandably since the focus of her work is un-mistakably medieval, not pan-historical or least of all Roman; sadlybecause — despite an intricate analysis of a host of well-chosen quotesfrom Quintilian, Cicero, and others — it touches little beyond the sur-face.

In order to establish a classical foundation for the fusion of grammarand rhetoric, she tends to overgeneralize. Although common educa-tional practice certainly followed Quintilian's Institutio oratoria, pro-ceeding from paraphrase ('narrare sermone purd) to analysis ('versus...solvere') and interpretation ('mutatis verbis interpretarf, 1.9.2), his em-phasis certainly remained with enarratio as shaping oratory style closeto contemporary models ('exempla bene dicendi, Inst. Oral, 10.2.28); atthat time, these of course, also Latin models which did not require trans-lation. Here, the 'fusion' of grammar and rhetoric is not so much a'fusion' as a relation of prerequisite and aim, and it is in this sense thatwe have to understand Pliny the hunger's 'imitatione optimorum similiainveniendi facultas paratur' (Epist. 7.9.2): 'translation is only exercising

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the faculty for production, not production itself. Seneca goes evenfurther: he abhors the idea of imitation ('imago res mortud) if it doesnot remain a very basic 'help': 'animus nosier omnia, quibus est adiutus,abscondat' (Epist. 84.8). It is only in dealing with the transition fromantiquity to medieval translation, and Christian texts in particular, thattranslation becomes important as an aim of its own. Ironically, it is thepatristic concern to recuperate 'a truthfijl meaning beyond the accidentsof human linguistic multiplicity' (p. 43) while rejecting traditional rhe-torical motives of contestation, displacement, and appropriation, thatgives exegesis the character of text production, combining Hermeneuticsand Rhetoric in an attempt to reconcile even seemingly contradictoryreadings. %t rhetoric here is rather a means of re-invention and not ofcomposition: the force of inventio is restricted to the form, not neces-sarily the contents of texts. It is most interesting to observe how, byway of translation and sometimes deliberate misappropriation, rhetoricalmodels themselves were affected, counter-rhetorical models beingreceived by inversion and reinversion from Horace to Jerome and thenon to Boethius, Eriugena, Chaucer and Gower.

Copeland's most striking observation is probably that although work-ing as addendum to the text, a help for translation and integration of dif-ferent cultural concepts, medieval commentary is not reduced to a solelydescriptive role, but was soon extended into analysis — critical observa-tion and discussion, appropriating rhetorical principles in the process.Starting with a Carolingian example of accessus ad auctores, she showshow — e.g., by way of simple dialogue — a seemingly introductory para-graph can shift or even 're-invent' the entire causa of the primary text.The commentator, not the author directs the reader: 'ut aliter atquemelius intelligamus' — 'we should understand this in a different and abetter way' (Remigii Autissiodorensis commentum in Martianum Capel-lam, 2:26). At this stage, the question verbum de verbo or ad sensubecomes obsolete. The translation may in fact be neither, presenting anentirely new causa (p. 75), only faintly reminiscent of the original. Analternative approach would render the text, but endow it with new moralsignificance through intentiones speciales (p. 77). Commentary becomesa strategic enterprise.

In the examples Copeland chooses, there is almost a climax in theforce of appropriation, from Notker of St. Gall ashamedly owning thathe 'dared something almost revolutionary' ('ausus sum faceré rent paeneinusitatani, quote p. 98, emphasis mine) in using vernacular ratherthan Latin and thus breaking with the latter's tradition of ideological

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superiority, to the point where the product of vernacular 'translation'takes explicit precedence over the author's intention, as in the Ovidemoralise. The final examples from Chaucer and Gower are preceded bya second survey of translation 'from antiquity to the Middle Ages' (p.151) reworking the introductory chapter with a focus on rhetoricalinvention as hermeneutical practice. It is in this densely argued andacutely observed reconstruction that Copeland's approach of translationin the light of rhetoric and hermeneutics finally comes to bear: 'If it isa truth of historical practice that hermeneutics often borrows the toolsof rhetoric, [...] the obverse is also true: grammatica, in antiquity thedebased term against which rhetoric defined its disciplinary superiority,can, in the Middle Ages, restore to rhetoric its proper identity as apraxis' (p. 178).

As an ongoing series of papers heard at the Cardiff Conferences onthe Theory and Practice of Translation in the Middle Ages, The MedievalTranslator or, under its French title, Traduire Age, both followsand supplements works like that of Rita Copeland in welcoming aninterdisciplinary approach to the subject; it goes even further, includingmodern translation of medieval texts side by side with studies on medi-eval translation into any European vernacular. In line with this principle,the present volume (Y 1996) has an enormous breadth of topics to offer.Among the medieval translators treated, we find early anonymousauthors, as in an Old English account of the Fall, from Genesis B, butalso Marie de France, Geoffrey Chaucer, William Caxton and manyothers; post-medieval translation includes less known 17th and 18thcentury translations of Boethius or modernisations of Chaucer. Somerepresent traditional or mainstream scholarship such as linguistic obser-vations on the use of connectives in medieval and modern French trans-lation of Latin (Michele Goyens), problems of translation (PierreDemarolle); others use Rita Copeland's approach for a study on theeffects of metaphor and cultural appropriation in a religious cult (Kath-leen Ashley and Pamela Sheingorn), or follow in her wake in an analysisof stylistic originality of Old English translation, maximum literalnessnotwithstanding (Colette Stévanovitch). Yet the bulk of contributionscome up with more unusual topics, and this is the actual merit of thisvolume: it provides a number of new, suggestive metaphors for the trans-lation process and throws new light on objectives, means, and effects:be it theft or betrayal of the original's cultural background, sacrifice,impediment to truth or a masqued vehicle of the same, the manifoldapproaches are apt to leave us with an entirely new idea of the vastness

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of this field of study and must at the same time inspire future scholarlydiscussion. Finally, the practice of inviting both English and French con-tributions and the addition of summaries, opens access to a wider rangeof contributors and readers, which will no doubt enliven scholarly inter-est in and discussion of interdisciplinary approaches in the field.

Ulrike Bethlehem, Universität Bochum

Literary Practices: Investigating Literacy in Social Contexts. By MikeBaynham. London & New York: Longman, 1995. xi+283 pp. ISBN0 582 087090.

Public concern about literacy is always in the news. Cries of fallingstandards and allegations that the fault lies in bad English teachinghave been common for even longer than English has existed as a sepa-rate school subject. Angry debates over phonics and 'real' books, Stand-ard English, spelling, or the teaching of grammar tend to be groundedin simplistic notions of literacy as some straightforward unchangingcompetence, a set of cognitive skills that can be measured to establish'A' levels or 'literacy rates'. The result of applying such tests in any coun-try is usually to create public alarm that a mass of the population isfunctionally illiterate, and that the nation will fall behind economicallybecause of the lack of a 'literate work force'. There should therefore be awelcome for a book like this that claims to investigate 'not just what peo-ple do with literacy, but also what they make of what they do, the valuesthey place on it and the ideologies that surround it' (p. 1). It arguesthat any definition of literacy is grounded in the beliefs of particular lan-guage users. It can be seen variously as a tool for work, a qualification,an indicator of social position, a means of exerting influence, a mecha-nism of political control or of liberation, a medium for interpreting theworld, or a way to individual transformation.

Baynham's book appears to be aimed particularly at students. It isclearly structured, the text is interspersed with activities, 'vignettes' andfacsimile case-studies, and chapters end with brief lists of suggestedreading. The approach is avowedly interdisciplinary. The first sentence

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makes clear that it 'draws on ideas from linguistics and anthropology,and educational and social theory'. Baynham is concerned with theway in which social and political contexts shape our ideas of literacy:the ways in which reading and writing are taught, the uses made of thoseabilities, the differences they create, and the values placed upon them.He seeks to combine this with a study of language, drawing particularlyon the discourse analysis of Fairclough and Kress, to argue for a formof critique that questions the purposes and modes of communicationsand asks whose interests are served (and whose obstructed) by them.

The first chapter offers a broad introduction to the 'models, myths andmetaphors' that underpin key concepts in the social nature of languageand literacy. There are brief definitions of key terms, though in a numberof cases these amount to candid admissions that a word is broadly andvaguely used (discourse, media), or that we lack adequate knowledge(acquisition process, text production). Those who are not familiar withthe terminology may find it daunting to be faced with these so early inthe book, rather than having them picked up at points where theybecome significant. Practical sections on concepts of literacy (and par-ticularly illiteracy, with its 'deficit' associations) lead to Baynham's pro-posed model of language in context. He presents it diagrammatically asthree nesting components. The outermost layer, enfolding the others, isthe world of language as social practice, its ideologies and institutions,within which is contained language as social process, within which lan-guage as text forms the core. Drawing on the work of the LinguisticMinorities Project he suggests the existence of a diversity of literacies.

Chapter two presents a number of examples of ways by which literacyevents can be studied in context, using familiar examples (Brice Heathon Roadville/Trackton, Scribner and Cole on the Vai) together with inci-dents from his own field-work, though the connections between theseare not very fully worked out. A chapter on 'educational contexts for lit-eracy development' heavily emphasises adult and workplace literacy.The next chapter deals with the similarities, differences and oppositionsbetween spoken and written forms, deconstructing such myths as theidea that writing is talk written down, or that talk is disorganised andungrammatical.

Linked chapters on reading and writing follow, again using anecdotes,facsimiles and dialogues to direct attention to different models of textand process. The final chapter attempts to draw together the argumentsof the preceding parts to emphasise the importance of context in anyunderstanding of literacy in use. Short sections consider the current pos-

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sibilities of different modes of research: academic, practitioner-led andsmall-scale in classrooms and by learning groups.

Judgements of this book will depend largely on the expectations thatreaders bring to it. Students who want an overview of the field will findmuch that is helpful and effectively presented. However, from this review-er's position, three significant areas seem to be ignored or under-represented. First, Baynham says little about school (rather than adult)pedagogy or views of 'emergent' literacy. For example, although he men-tions adult gender differences in conversation, he does not comment oncurrent suggestions that boys and girls at school may be 'differently lit-erate', and that this may underlie the evidence of boys' underachieve-ment. Second, limited critical or theoretical attention is given to Bayn-ham's innermost component, actual examples of language as text. Whatthere is virtually ignores literary writing. The section on reading 'real'texts is built around studies of a cake recipe and a DIY suggestion forrepairing a door, and the chapter on writing examines tasks like explain-ing how to change a tyre or take a telephone message. Third, there isno serious examination of the extent to which new technologies arecreating new literacies. Now that 'computer literate' has become a con-ventional term, it would have been helpful to hear more of the possibil-ities and problems raised by notebook computers, desk-top publishing,Hypertext, the Internet, and what is now frequently called 'reading' tele-vision and advertising.

Robert Protherough, University of Hull

Shakespeare in the New Europe. Edited by Michael Hattaway, BoikaSokolova, and Derek Roper. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994.384 pp. ISBN 1 85075 474 8.

This book marks the exhilaration and anxiely of a critical moment inEuropean history, the moment when the Iron Curtain opened, and theEuropeans' sense of their continent was transformed. It marks thismoment by showing how the reception of Shakespeare in various coun-tries was affected by it, and, even more impressively, how Shakespeare

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productions had served as an instrument registering ideological change,in some cases even subtly promoting it. In doing this, the book offers avast panorama of various European Shakespeares, and of various rela-tions between politics, literature and the performing arts. It is politicsin a traditional sense, certain issues, like sexuality, are absent, becausethey are obviously not among those considered urgent at this juncture.

The twenty-two essays, most of them papers delivered at a conferencenear Sofia in June 1993, are by scholars from Britain (about one third),Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Germany, Poland, Romania, Spain,Ukraine, and the United States. The best way of suggesting their rangeis listing them: Alexander Shurbanov and Boika Sokolova, "From theunlove of Romeo and Juliet to Hamlet without the Prince: a Shakespear-ean mirror held up to the fortunes of new Bulgaria"; Thomas Sorge,"Buridan's ass between two performances of A Midsummer Night'sDream, or Bottom's telos in the GDR and after", and "Tradition andmodernization: some thoughts on Shakespeare criticism in the newEurope"; Manfred Pfister, "Hamlets made in Germany, East and West";Robin Headlam Wells, '"The question of these wars': Hamlet in the newEurope"; Jonathan Bate, "Shakespearean nationhoods"; Nicholas Potter"'Like to a tenement or pelting farm': Richard II and the idea of thenation"; Martin Hilsky, "Shakespeare in Czech: an essay in culturalsemantics"; Marta Gibiñska, "Polish Hamlets: Shakespeare's Hamlet inPolish theatres after 1945"; Tom Healy, "Remembering with advantages:nation and ideology in Henry V" (my personal favourite for the subtletyof its argument); Terence Hawkes, "Shakespeare's spooks, or someoneto watch over me" (a liberating reading of Much Ado); Rafael Portilloand Manuel Gomez-Lara, "Shakespeare in the new Spain: or, what youwill"; Mark Sokolyansky, '"Giant-like rebellions' and recent Russianexperience: Shakespearean irony as an approach to modern history";Odette-Irenne Blumenfeld, "Shakespeare in post-revolutionary Romania:the great directors are back home"; Evgenia Pancheva, "Nothings, mer-chants, tempests: trimming Shakespeare for the 1992 Bulgarian stage";Janja Ciglar-Žanič, "Recruiting the Bard: onstage and offstage glimpsesof recent Shakespeare productions in Croatia"; Harriet Hawkins,"Shakespeare's radical romanticism: the popular tradition and the chal-lenge to tribalism"; James Siemon, "'Perplex'd beyond self-explication':Cymbeline and early modern/postmodern Europe"; Erica Sheen, "ThePannonians and the Dalmatians: Reading for a European history inCymbeline"; Richard Burt, "Baroque down: tile trauma of censorship inpsychoanalysis and queer film re-visions of Shakespeare and Marlowe";

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Michael Hattaway, "Shakespeare's histories: the politics of recent Britishproductions".

The proceedings of conferences may make dreary reading (and review-ing). Some contributions will only nod towards tile conference topic ina few introductory phrases; some will deal with abstruse detail. Often itis only the editors' introduction which, in breath-taking manoeuvres,creates coherence. These characteristics are not entirely absent fromShakespeare in the New Europe but, considering the wealth and qualityof the material offered, it simply does not matter.

The best way of indicating the scope of the collection may be to sketchhow one particular play fares in it. Hamlet, as the excellent index shows(it lists fifty productions in different countries) and as the introductionpoints out, "is almost the 'set text' of the modern debate on identity' afocus for the changing sociopolitical and cultural constructs on thesharp turns of the historical destinies of Europe" (p. 20). The reasonsfor this are to be found in the issues addressed by the play: the complex-ities of usurped power, and of rebellion against it, but also less obviouslythe intervention of a foreign power in creating political order. Hamlet iscentral to at least five essays, dealing with the situations in Bulgaria,Germany, Poland, and Russia.

The essays in this collection also raise the interesting issue of how theplays mean. Some of the essays (especially by Continental contributors)are based on the assumption that there is a generally shared "core"meaning which can be employed to put a political situation in perspec-tive; others (especially British contributors) rather use the insightsoffered by contemporary politics to draw attention to the general inter-pretation of the plays.

Highly recommended.

Balz Engler, University of Basel

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