Reviews461 theplayas apaeon to the Resistance,andthus a mythwasborn.As forBrasiUach, he too penned a revisionist tragedy, an anti-Semitic version ofRacine'sBérénice. After the war, he was tried and shot as a coUaborator. In Italy and France, the search for modern tragedy ended badly. MaryAnn FreseWitt's weU-documented studytraces this search in scrupulous detaU. Given a topic this volatile, her tone remains measured and at times is almost disconcertinginits equanimity.Didshenever shudder,Iwonder,samphngthiswitches' brew? Michael Hinden University of Wisconsin-Madison Roger Travis. Allegory and the Tragic Chorus in Sophocles: Oedipus at Colonus. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers , 1999. Pp. xii + 243. $27.95. In Allegory and the Tragic Chorus, Roger Travis combines literary theory and Lacanian as well as object-relations psychoanalytic methodologies to study the chorus in Oedipus at Colonus. Travis's main argument is that there is an allegory , an extended metaphorthat pervades the play,"the allegorical performance of the self's fantasy-contents" (10). This allegory connects the play to both Oedipus and the Athenian audience and further reveals, through the chorus, "the self's relation to the maternal body" (3), in this case the body of Jocasta. Travis describes his methodology and outlines the main focus ofhis argument in the book's introduction. Using Quintilian's definition of"aUegory,""allegorize ," and "allegorical" (which is quite necessary in comprehending his point), Travis sets out to prove that Oedipus at Colonus as a tragedy can only be understood through what he calls its "choral aUegory." By this he means the ways in which the chorus throughout the play can relate to both Oedipus and the audience, whUe at the same time ithelps them relate to each other, aU through the use of aUegory, which is defined here as an extended, indefinite metaphor. The introduction is thorough and interesting in terms of understanding aUegory within textual boundaries. For a good portion of the book, Travis discusses the treatment ofaUegoryby Sigmund Freud, Joel Fineman,Angus Fletcher, and otherswith whose views he is in disagreement. His preference is for Melanie Klein's psychoanalytic model on account ofthe significance she assigns to fantasy . Travis also relates his approach to Nietzsche, for he claims that his central argument "can be derived from Nietzsche's dialectic" ofthe Apollonian and the Dionysian (25). 462Comparative Drama Chapter 2, "From End to Beginning," discusses in great detail the choral allegory ofOedipus at Colonus. Travis begins with an explanation ofthe powerful position of the chorus at the end of any tragedy, and more specifically of Oedipus at Colonus. He claims that, in having the last word, the chorus brings closure for the audience through aUegorical action. This action brings the audience to a realization of reality and aUegory at the same time; the stage, the actors , and the chorus are aUegorized, while they are also "real" things and "real" people. Throughout this chapter, Travis works his wayback to the beginning of the play, and uses different examples from the text to show the ways in which the chorus is aUegorical. He discusses the relation ofthe chorus to the protagonist in terms ofnurturing andphusis (begetting): "The young men wfll one day be old; the men, old and young, once passed through the body ofa mother and wiU to thatbody, figuratively, return; old and young meet in the choral allegory, which embraces in the simultaneity oftheatre and drama the sequential, chronological difference of its two sides and there fashions tragic meaning" (56). Here Travis speaks to the fact that whUe the actors ofthe chorus maybe young, they are old onstage—an observation which can be true ofOedipus, too. Therefore this bridge between aUegory and reality is drawn closer and related to the main themes ofthe play—the issues ofage and youth, but more importantly of origin and birthplace. In closing, Travis remarks that his main goal thus far has been to consider the relationship between chorus and protagonist, which he defines as the bottom level of the "Colonean" allegory. In order to discuss the higher levels of the Colonean allegory—that is, tragedy's relation to thepolis (city, public)—Travis turns to Aeschylus's Suppliants in an attempt to understand the meaning ofsupplication as...