MLR, 105.3, 2010 827 to get parliaments "out of theirpalaces" by supporting innovative solutions capable of breaking themagic circle of a self-sufficientpolitical representation' (p. 196). Symbolically, as parliamentary work is thusmade 'transparent' to the population, social identification with the political sphere is to be strengthened. Like Rizzoni's essay, most of the volume's contributions deal with cultural ex pressions of or responses to specific collective identity concepts (national, regional, ethnic, or gendered) within the context of European film, literature, art, and poli tics. In a compelling essay, Sophie Watt analyses racist constructions ofminority identities in three exhibitions held in France between 1931 and 1941. Equally concerned with identitypolitics is Lorraine Ryan's article, inwhich she traces the emergence of an empowered republican memory' (p. 120) in contemporary Spain across various political and cultural discourses. As for literary expressions of Euro pean identities, Lucia Rinaldi looks at Sardinia's role as protagonist of the large majority of [...] crime stories' (p. 163) by Sardinian writer Marcello Fois, whereas David Rock describes the rather non-spatial concept of German cultural identity in thewritings ofRomanian-German writer Richard Wagner, whose own German ness becomes deeply contested afterhis move from Romania toGermany. Finally, a set of five essays deals with filmic constructions of collective identities: gender and national identity in British, French, and German (post-)war films from 1944 to 1948 (WendyWebster), the positive remaking of Italy in Italian Resistance films (Marian Hurley), the cultural relevance of filmic citation in French New Wave films (Franck Le Gac), the sense of collective identitygrounding in space as represented by the Po Valley inGianni Celati's experimental documentary Strada provinciale delle anime (Laura Rorato), and the persistence of theDracula myth, popularized by Bram Stoker's novel and numerous vampire films, as a heteroimage of Eastern Europe (Iulius Hondrila). Hondrila's insightful essay not only pays specific tribute to the Studia Imagologica series, of which this volume is part, by consistently applying imagological terminology to its subject-matter. It also harks back to the overall title of the volume in that itdeconstructs the perspective of theWestern European self?the essence'?on its Eastern European other?the 'margin', which has an added actuality in the ongoing expansion of the European Union towards the east. In sum, this fine collection of extremely diverse essays indeed testifies to thevirulent question ofEuropean identity in the face of extremely diverse collective identitieswithin Europe's growing boundaries. University of Augsburg Christoph Henke The Aesthetics of Nostalgia: Historical Representation inOld English Verse. By Renee R. Trilling. (Toronto Anglo-Saxon Series, 3) Toronto: University ofToronto Press. 2009. xiv+297 pp. ?45. ISBN 978-0-8020-9971-6. The early English delighted in harking back to origins, so that the subject is a natural one for amonograph. Now itappears in bulk, and verymuch so: forRenee Trilling is a watery kind ofwriter, her comments flowing unrestrainedly to fill the 828 Reviews space offered them.Nevertheless, her study (based on aNotre Dame thesis) can be boiled down into something solid. It has five chapters between introduction and conclusion. We thus startwith Art and History inOld English heroic verse, these abstrac tions allowing much generalization. There follow the 'Origins of the Present in Anglo-Saxon Biblical Verse' and poetry of theViking age. Chapters 4 and 5 turn to those paste gems, the poems and near-poems of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. So we end up with time past and present inDeor, Widsith, The Ruin, Caedmon's Hymn, Genesis and other JuniusManuscript poems, Beowulf, The Battle ofMal don, The Battle ofBrunanburh, The Death ofEdgar, and so on.With what result? The dust-jacket blurb by Clare Lees (of London University) claims that the book is subtle, accessible, intelligent, exemplary, ambitious, distinguished, impeccable, up to date, well-informed, and a pleasure to read. The Aesthetics ofNostalgia is certainly up to date and ambitious. It is also accurate, and just avoids pretentious ness, despite quoting Theodor Adorno, Mikhail Bakhtin, Walter Benjamin, Homi Bhabha, Sigmund Freud, Maurice Halbwachs, andWilliam Labov, none ofwhom (despite other merits) had much interest inOld English. One's main complaint is the amount one has towade through to get anywhere. Trilling is no Pemmican Stylist. The study is...