780 Reviews Rhetorical Affectis plagued by a number of problems, mostly but not exclusively of a structural nature. One is that Cockcroft will often introduce exemplary passages for close reading in early chapters, then direct his attention elsewhere, not returning to the passage upon which he and readers have just lavished such focused attention until the fifthand final chapter, where all the various threads of argument come together. Unfortunately, the reader has by then long forgottenwhat was said about the passage in previous chapters. This problem is exacerbated by the density of Cockcroft's critical vocabulary. Take this example from the introduction, which explains Jan Firbas's 'functional sentence perspective' as a key to the 'dynamics of pathos': Firbas distinguishes two [. . .] scales which may work singly or in combination. What he calls the Existential Scale entails, in rising order of dynamism, a setting,a verb denoting appearance or existence,and a phenomenon expressed by the subject. .. Firbas expresses this formulaically as Set=App/Ex = Ph. (pp. 25-26, emphasis original) This is certainly dense prose, but nothing more than the attentive reader can handle. On pages 123-24, however, when we return to the Firbas formula to explicate a pas? sage from Bunyan's Pilgrim Progress, the theoretical explanation that would support Cockcroft's analysis can be retrieved only by flipping back to the previous discussion of Firbas's theory. Finally, Cockcroft's criteria for his selections of text for analysis are never articulated and therefore can seem quixotic. There are many things that Cockcroft does well. His summary of recent linguistic models will open new windows forrhetoricians; his survey of pathos's role in the clas? sical tradition is succinct and helpful. Finally, some of the readings offerstartlingly new perspectives on canonical writers and critics. Perhaps most memorable is Cock? croft's challenge to Stephen Greenblatt's vision of Christopher Marlowe's Tam? burlaine as an 'unremitting machine' (p. 90, emphasis original). After an elegant and sustained analysis of the play's rhetoric, Cockcroft concludes that Marlowe, as an early modern for whom pathos remains connected to logos, is more 'interested in choice than in compulsion' (p. 157). Readers will find much useful information and some rewarding close readings in Rhetorical Affectin Early Modern Writing, but to get the most from Cockcroft's book they must be prepared to expend considerable effort. University of Georgia Christy Desmet Authorial Conquests: Essays on Genre in the Writings of Margaret Cavendish. Ed. by Line Cottegnies and Nancy Weitz. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; London: Associated University Presses. 2003. 238 pp. ?38. ISBN 0-8386-3983-6. Until recently, Margaret Lucas Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, was regarded as a bizarre eccentric, churning out unactable plays and other self-contradictory, unstructured , and uneducated literary and scientific works in blissful ignorance of literary conventions and the laws of science. Mary Evelyn thought her as 'rambling as her books', Charles Lamb loved her eccentricity but also saw her as 'fantastical, and original-brain'd', and for Virginia Woolf she was a 'giant cucumber' that 'spread it? self over all the roses'. More recently, however, Cavendish has become a key figure in the recuperation of seventeenth-century women writers, with critics reading her within, as well as against, prevailing cultural trends, and seeing her contradictions as the result of a tension between her desire for fame and for public utterance and seventeenth-century gender ideologies. Authorial Conquests goes furtherthan any work so far in finding Cavendish's work MLRy 100.3, 2005 781 allegedly purposeful and controlled. She is involved in an 'encyclopedie, comprehen? sive literary project' whose purpose is to pursue 'a conscious and deliberate explo? ration ofthe various forms and genres available to her at the time' (p. 9), and to engage in 'experiments in genre' (p. 196) to develop original hybrid forms which are more appropriate for her purposes, which include challenging traditional constructions of both gender and genre. Sara Mendelson's intriguing piece sees Cavendish's plays demolishing the line between fiction and life-writing, arguing that they combine thinly disguised autobiography with 'dreamlike inversions of Cavendish's own life experi? ences', which Mendelson calls 'anti-autobiography' (p. 201). Gisele Venet argues...