Robin Warner (review)

Abstract

536 Reviews revenge. The author is entirely right to point to the maternal-feminine as the keystone to this poetics. Castro is shown to present a farmore polarized, disjointed, and dissonant version of the nation than is generally acknowledged. The section 'Poetic Ethnogenesis and the Feminine', which considers the writing of the nation, the madre patria, and poetic representations of the land in terms of the maternal-feminine, is one of the more successful. Geoffrion-Vinci argues that Castro does not employ the mother figure as a symbol of Galician national harmony, nor solely to represent Gali? cia as the victim of abuse, but rather casts it as 'the bastard child' that takes on the role of matriarch and rejects the paternal patria (p. 104). Seldom is the mother in Castro's poetry homely or cosy; rather she is a witch, a vixen, an aggressive and disruptive figure who subverts any nineteenth-century domestic notion of motherhood. This line of enquiry might have been expanded, particularly with reference to the way Castro constructs an ethnic identity not only through the figure of the mother but also through the figureof the sexed, desiring female subject. Whether this female symbolism has anything to do with Castro's own sexuality or ability to have children is not the issue. An over-literal interpretation of fever, weight loss, and the 'unhealthy discharge of bodily fluids' (p. 73) in the poetry merely detracts from the emphasis on language as symbolic practice. Neither should the 'yo' in Castro's poetry be read as primarily autobiographical or her use of prosopopoeia be underestimated. There are some mistranslations which skew certain readings: for example, 'nino' is more often 'nest' than 'child' in Castro's poetry; and 'literata' as used by Murguia in defence of his wife does not mean that Castro was 'unlettered' but that she was not a member of the literati, that is, an affected blue-stocking. Despite these reservations, in drawing attention to the many permutations of the maternal-feminine in Castro's poetry Geoffrion-Vinci has made a major contribution to Castro scholarship. It is hoped that the author will continue to develop her insights along the lines of 'writing the body' criticism, which Castro's poetry so clearly elicits. University of Nottingham Catherine Davies Powers of Utterance: A Discourse Approach to Works of Lorca, Machado, and ValleIncldn . By Robin Warner. (Bristol: University of Bristol Hispanic, Portuguese, and Latin American Monographs, 2) Bristol: HiPLAM. 2003. 197 pp. ?22. ISBN 0-86292-530-4. In an articulate, closely argued, and systematically developed study of a variety of areas within discourse studies, Robin Warner illustrates its useful application for literary works through a series of extended examinations of representative works by canonical early modern Spanish authors?Ramon Maria del Valle-Inclan, Antonio Machado, and Federico Garcia Lorca. As the title of his study suggests, the concept of discourse is broadly conceived and centres around the view that language use is contextually situated communication, or in even simpler terms, simply 'utterances'. What this means is that discourse analysis is never independent of the purposes or function which linguistic forms are designed to serve in human affairs.Drawing eclectically upon a related spectrum of tendencies within common-language philosophy, speech-act theory,and the linguistics of J.P. Grice, Warner fashions a working model by which to examine works of literature. Perhaps the most prominent feature of such analysis is that it is squarely focused on the purposive use of language in social and interpersonal settings while nevertheless remaining independent of a strong notion of intentionality which, notably, speechact theory demands and which therefore, according to Warner, limits its appeal in a literary context. Further, Warner argues that the attention given to the complex MLR, 100.2, 2005 537 interlocking of formal and functional aspects of discourse is central to the explo? ration of the relationship between text?that is, a work of literature, or as Warner suggests, adopting the term advanced by Nigel Fabb, 'verbal art'?and context. Also explicit in this approach is the assumption that there is a coherence or organizing structure that causes collections of words and sentences to coalesce around a unified discourse...