MLR, 102. 1, 2007 241 Sex, Sailors and Colonies: Narratives ofAmbiguity in the Works ofPierre Loti. By HELENE DE BURGH. (European University Studies, French Language and Litera ture Series, 277) Bern: Peter Lang. 2005. 322 pp. ?37.90. ISBN 978-3-03 9I060I-I. Helene de Burgh's discussion builds on recent Lotian scholarship that challenges his categorization as a colonialist writer. A refusal of definitive classification-in favour of an emphasis on instability, slippage, and Barthesian 'drift'-informs de Burgh's criticalmethod. Drawing on postcolonial and queer theory,she argues that the ambiguities and uncertainties present inLoti's work in fact subvert hegemonic orientalist discourses; they further highlight a fundamental inadequacy of repre sentation which contrasts with colonialist assumptions of knowledge and authority. Examining biographical data alongside Loti's fictional and non-fictional writing, de Burgh's arguments centre on threemain strands: exotic desire, attitudes to colonial ism, and self-representation. Through a displacement of the locus of exotic desire which desexualizes the 'femme orientale', Loti, de Burgh proposes, creates a perva sivebut undefined desire which suffuses the exotic culture, landscape, architecture. . . This, combined with the subtext of homoeroticism present in such texts asMadame Chrysanthe'me and Aziyade, freesLoti's narratives from the heterosexual, masculine paradigm of domination that typifiesorientalist discourse. Loti's approach to colo nialism furtherblurs the self-other binarism thatunderlies theSaidian interpretative framework and counters colonialist assumptions of Eastern inferiorityand silence. Not only aremany ofLoti's texts shown to create a space for thecolonized's presence and voice; they also debunk thepresumed fixityof Western identity: texts such as Le Roman d'un spahi are interpreted as embodying an 'excursion into self-confrontation' (p. 283) which is a source of anxiety and instability forboth colonizer and colonized. Finally, in exploring the question of self-representation, de Burgh engages with the shifting identities at play inLoti's texts: JulienViaud/Loti (as author/protagonist/ narrator). Constantly interacting, theseoften opposing identities-naval officer,exotic fantasist, native sympathizer-imply fragmentation, contradiction, and a crumbling of the boundaries between fact and fiction. In each of these areas, de Burgh makes a significant contribution toLoti's critical 'rehabilitation'. Most effective are those arguments centring on inversion (of stereotypes, colonialist assumptions, power dyna mics) and on dialogue: narrative control shiftsaway from the monocular ormonologic. Yet de Burgh's analysis is also marked by repetition and unevenness, particularly in the chapters relating to exotic desire. It is asserted here that orientalist discourses are collapsed through a desexualization of the oriental woman, the embodiment of her culture. Yet orientalist tropes extend beyond the feminization of the East. Re presentations of Fatou as primitive and animal-like, for instance, reflect,and seem inglyuphold, another set of orientalist/colonialist stereotypes, inneglecting which de Burgh's argument isweakened. The thesis of a desexualized 'femme orientale' itself falterswhen confronted with the 'raw sexual magnetism' of theAfrican landscape in Le Roman d'un Spahi which, for de Burgh, ismediated by the 'physicality of [Fa tou's] body' (p. io I). A tendency togeneralize also characterizes these early chapters. Such distinct protagonists asAziyade, Mme Chrysantheme, and Fatou are conflated, reduced to the role of cultural guides and 'sisterlyguardians' (p. 50), but these iden tities do not sit easily with all three.Other artistic sources are similarly denied their own contradictions and complexities. Flaubert's subtly elusive Voyage en Egypte is said toexemplify 'archetypal orientalism' (p. 36), while paintings such asDelacroix's non-sexual, domestic interior,Femmes d'Alger dans leur appartement, and Ingres's voyeuristic fantasy,Le Bain turc,are placed side by side as implied illustrations of the supposed debauchery and lesbian eroticism of the harem. On a presentational level, references to non-existent appendices and illustrations appear, typographical errors 242 Reviews are frequent, and an indexwould have been auseful addition. In short, thisstudy offers valuable insights into amore powerfully subversive, because ambiguous, Loti than many critics have accepted, but these insights are open tomore nuanced clarification. CARDIFF UNIVERSITY MARGARET TOPPING Proust's English. By DANIEL KARLIN. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2005. xii + 229 pp. ?25. ISBN 978-0-I9-925688-4. The elegant subtlety ofProust's English begins with the illustration on thedust jacket. Daniel Karlin leaves his reader to...