MLR, 103.3,2oo8 863 twentieth. ForWright Proust's novel is characterized by 'plurivocalit&' (p. i6): his study is an exercise in listening for and identifying the various medical/scientific voices that sound throughout it. Wright emphasizes Proust's assimilation ofmedical and scientific texts and terminology, referringas one might expect to thework of the author's father,aswell as, among others, toCharcot and theprolific Benedict Morel. Much of the book's firstpart ('Medecins etmaladies') consists of a painstaking ex ploration and assessment ofmedical science in France around I900. Readers might well get bogged down here and lose sight ofwhere Proust's novel fitsin.Subsequent sections, however, dealing with sexology, and the intersections of literaryphilosophy, positivism, and religiousmysticism, grant a little more space tocritical readings of the Recherche, and theplace of suffering in it.There is a valuable glossary of nineteenth centurymedical terms, fivedifferent indexes, and a bibliography in twelve sections; this is a study, in short,which will satisfy the patient specialist keen to investigate the imbrications of finde siecle scientific, intellectual, and cultural attitudes to illness, but one which, at times laboured in itsexposition and over fourhundred pages long, would have benefited from strictereditorial pruning. Wright explores the problematic category of 'maladies nerveuses'; asthma and neurasthenia; socio-cultural and medical concerns with the spread of 'degenere scence'; he addresses sadism, masochism, and theperception thatmental aberration stemmed fromcertain sexual practices. When the author relates his research in these areas toProust's novel (regarding thepossible role of heredity in the aetiology of the Guermantes's various 'flaws' for instance, or the role of illness ingiving thenarrator an objective distance from theworld he examines), his insights often appear amidst such swathes of supporting material that theydo not impact greatly on the reader.The breadth of reference in thebook issuch thatwhen, halfway through it, we are referred in quick succession toworks entitled Bicyclette et organes genitaux and Des pertes seminales involontaires et de leur influencesur la production de la folie (pp. 208-og), we scarcely bat an eyelid. In sum, from the great height of thematerial accumulated in his study,one feels somewhat giddy, like the giants of theRecherche's closing image, and, regrettably,somewhat distant from the textual surfaces of Proust's novel. ROYALHOLLOWAY,UNIVERSITY OF LONDON ADAMWATT Segalen: 'Steles'. By YVONNE Y. HSIEH. (Glasgow Introductory Guides to French Literature, 53) Glasgow: University ofGlasgow French and German Publica tions. 2007. ii6 pp. ?6. ISBN978-o-8526I-8II-o. For twentyyears, under thedynamic general editorship ofGeoffWoollen (concealed in thisvolume behind a transcription of his name intoChinese characters), Univer sityofGlasgow French and German Publications has been providing an inestimable service to the French studies community through the publication of its Introduc toryGuides to French Literature. Yvonne Hsieh's welcome commentary on Victor Segalen's Steles is the fifty-thirdin the series, joining a now astonishingly eclectic cata logue ofguides toawide range ofFrench, andmore recently francophone, texts.Steles was one of only threebooks published by Segalen during his lifetime,and remains per haps themost widely read (and certainly the one most regularly subjected to critical attention). However, despite thevolume's elevation to theagregation syllabus in I999, a persistent perception of its inherentdifficulty(aswell as the regrettable decline of the study ofpoetrymore generally) seems toact as an impediment to the inclusion ofSteles on themajority of university syllabuses outside France. Hsieh's guide begins with a discussion of thisperceived difficulty, providing a firmresponse to the dilemma that Segalenian critics tend todub thequestion sinologique. Segalen's epigraphs are not ex 864 Reviews plained away as paratexts, reducing thepoems-as they would inHenry Bouillier's pi oneering accounts of them-to post-Symbolist curiosities; instead, theChinese texts are presented as 'an integralpart of a bilingual text' (p. 2, emphasis original). Hsieh's focus ison thepoems of the 19I2 and I914 editions of Stles, avoiding engagement perhaps wisely, given the brevity of the critical genre inwhich she iswriting-with unpublished poems and the copious drafts ofwhich genetic critics are only slowly making sense. The guide consists of fivechapters, the first ofwhich succinctly presents Segalen's diverse lifeand work, thepolymathic aspects ofwhich are seen as an early 'artof "multitasking" '(p. 6). A second chapter explores thegenesis ofSteles, outlining thepoems' grounding inSegalen's knowledge...