MLR, 99.2, 2004 485 Fantasy, Identity and Misrecognition in Medieval French Narrative. By James R. Simpson. Oxford and New York: Peter Lang. 2000. vii + 290 pp. ?51.80. ISBN 3-906766-16-0. A casual search through the MLA bibliography gives ample evidence of diverse applications of Lacanian theory to literature from all historical periods and to con? temporary media. For medievalists recent years have seen the publication of two complementary books: Sarah Kay's Courtly Contradictions (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001), which focuses on representations of courtly love, and the pre? sent volume by James Simpson, which draws on both Lacan and Zizek, to investigate the construction of individual, communal, and historical identity in three chansons de geste, the Ovide moralise, and Trubert. The author justifies his cross-generic ap? proach, pointing out how all five texts address threats to established identities and the denial of enjoyment. A helpful glossary of terms commonly used in Lacanian theory is included along with synopses of four of the five medieval primary sources. The firsttwo chapters examine the Paris Roland and two sequels: Gaydon and Ansei's de Carthage. In the Roland and Gaydon the crisis facing the Frankish kingdom, fol? lowing the defeat at Roncevaux, provokes an examination of communal identity in theological, ideological, and political terms. Charles, Aude, and Gaydon are, Simpson argues, all stuck in the 'delusive fixityof the Imaginary' (p. 18) in their attitudes to the dead and the future of their community, while Ganelon and his clan exhibit a vital energy absent from the loyal Franks. The reconquest of Spain, which provides the historical background forAnsei's de Carthage, extends the debate on the responsibilities of kingship. Simpson casts the three central male characters?Ansei's, Charles, and Ysore?as the points of the relationship triangle between the subject, the father, and the Pere-jouissance (p. 90), with still more father figures for Ansei's appearing in the functions of the Nom-du-Pere and the Imaginary Father (pp. 93-94). Issues of enjoyment and the safeguarding of Christian identity contributed to the problematic reception of Ovid in the Middle Ages. Simpson's reading of the Ovide moralise em? phasizes how the loss ofvocalization in many of the metamorphoses endangers human identity and how the text attempts to preserve the rational part ofthe voice from corporeal threats. The body and the bodily are also analysed in the moralizer's attitude to Ovidian sexuality, in which Simpson detects a plus-de-jouir (p. 158). The body is of course a key element to any appraisal of Trubert, whose multiple disguises deny any fixed identity. Simpson's portrayal of Trubert as a contaminant of society who causes breaks in reason and whose disguises reflectthe growth of the money economy could equally well be applied to that other protean trickster Till Eulenspiegel. As in his previous book Animal Body, Literary Corpus: The Old French 'Roman de Renart' (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996), Simpson cites an impressive and entertaining collection of sources, that is not confined to the Middle Ages and modern psychoanalysis, but takes in such diverse authorities as classical texts and the creature(s) from the Alien series of films. The book would have benefited from more careful proof-reading as there are several errors, ranging from trivial typographical slips and omissions (e.g. 'those of found', p. 58, 'arn',p. 116), to more serious lacunae which obscure the sense, such as that in the sentence 'Although the battle [. . .] a range of biblical examples' on p. 6. Nevertheless, this is a challenging and stimulating book for those interested in medieval texts, modern theory, and the interaction between the two. University of Wales Swansea Alison Williams ...