II50 Reviews not yet sufficientlyknown. A good example isKevin Hilliard's noteworthy account of Sophie von laRoche, whose occasional attempts toadapt Richardson's manner toGer man material are particularly interesting; so, too, is the essay on her granddaughter, Bettine von Arnim, by Ursula Hudson-Wiedemann, whose unfortunate and surely unintentional conflation ofPygmalion and his 'idealwoman' provokes a passing smile. Otherwise there is little to smile at, still less to laugh about, in this collection, which becomes evermore serious as the focus shifts toMarie von Ebner-Eschenbach, ably presented by Charlotte Woodford, and Lou Andreas-Salome, the subject of one of thebest-presented pieces in thisvolume, cool, controlled, and lucidly thought out by David Midgley with a clear sense of context and direction. By comparison, Andrew Webber's account of Else Lasker-Schiiler may seem somewhat wordy and opaque, its insights sometimes obscured by all too close exposure to her poems: on closer scrutiny,however, his portrayal succeeds in conveying theoriginality of its subject. The final fourcontributions focus onmore recentwriters. Andrea Capovilla's por trayalof Irmgard Keun makes a persuasive case fora complex author writing during difficult times about theobstacles thenencountered bywomen. The collection, which opened with a somewhat obscure essay byBettina Bildhauer onMechtild vonMagde burg, the thirteenth-centuryBenedictine pioneer ofmystical writing inGerman, is rounded offby accounts of three of the best-known women writers of the post-war period. Stephanie Bird deals with Ingeborg Bachmann, Anita Bunyan with Christa Wolf, while Elfriede Jelinek is considered by Ben Morgan. These will be read with interestand advantage by anyone eager toknowmore about post-war German writing and thewomen who made such an important contribution to it. In her introduction theeditor reminds us that 'theabsence ofwomen from the canon has not gone unno ticed by scholars'. Not by scholars inBritain, at any rate, to judge by the contents of thiswelcome volume. UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL PETER SKRINE PracticingProgress: The Promise and Limitations ofEnlightenment. FestschriftforJohn A. McCarthy. Ed. by RICHARD E. SCHADE and DIETER SEVIN. (Internationale Forschungen zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft, Io6) Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi. 2007. 234 pp. E48; $65. ISBN 978-go 420-2I46-4. Twelve distinguished Germanists, mostly North American, have honoured theEn lightenment scholar JohnMcCarthy with a richly deserved Festschrift. All articles save one are inEnglish, thoughGerman quotations are not translated. Their quality ismostly high, though often one feels an author might have pressed arguments fur ther or exposed them tomore challenges. That, however, would have required the resolutelymaieutic editing which is inappropriate for a Festschrift, where an editor isoften glad to receive contributions at all. The Enlightenment and its reception shade into discussions of 'enlightenment' in general. A central Enlightenment concept, 'Bestimmung', is treated informativelyby Wolfgang Albrecht, who rangeswidely from the theologian Johann Joachim Spalding via Lessing and Mendelssohn to Joachim Heinrich Campe's definition ofwomen's destiny in Vdterlicher Rathfuir meine Tochter and the philanthropic version of 'Be stimmung' formulated in I8 I6 by theex-Jacobin Georg Wedekind. Herbert Rowland summarizes American reviews of thenineteenth-century translations ofLaokoon and Nathan by Ellen Frothingham, and Liliane Weissberg describes how Hannah Arendt extracted fromNathan solutions to specifically twentieth-century problems. Laurie Johnson offersa somewhat under-researched but stimulating account of thephilosophe MLR, I03.4, 2oo8 I I 5 I Don Alfonso inCosz fan tutte. Other essays are on more general eighteenth-century topics: Richard T. Gray on physiocracy, Thomas P. Saine on Lutheran settlers in America, and Simon Richter with awealth of ideas about Goethe's Faust. A broader concept of 'enlightenment' is shown by Robert C. Holub to change into itsopposite inNietzsche as he moves from biology as a means of enlightened planning to an enthusiasm foreugenics that anticipates Nazi excesses. Frank Trommler maintains that the I960s studentmovement derived an enlightened critical attitude fromBrecht and theFrankfurt School; he does not consider that theauthoritarian New Left, with itsbinary opposition of salvific 'rationality' and irredeemable 'irrationality', likewise illustrates enlightenment's transformation into itsopposite. Two essays stand out. Noting that the Enlightenment failed to end witch trials, Susanne Kord examines the trialand execution ofAnna Goldi atGlarus in I782 and suggests a connection between the 'evil eye' ascribed towitches and the 'science' of physiognomy. This fascinating and deeply researched study almost bursts...