Nature Of Myth Research Articles

Care Ethics and Markets: A View from Feminist Economics

It is common to think of care ethics and justice ethics as being opposed to each other, and also to think of life as being opposed to social life. As a result, it may be hard to see how care ethics, seen as interpersonal, could be applicable to business, when the latter is perceived as asocial. This essay uncovers the origins of these beliefs in unhelpful dualistic cognitive habits and in gender-biases in the development of the discipline of economics. In particular, feminist analysis reveals the mythical nature of both economic man and the belief in mechanical profit maximization. The essay calls for unveiling and recognizing the ethical and connected dimensions that already characterize business life, and including these in thinking about how to create a more humane economy.

Mito e linguagem: breve reflexão sobre o discurso

This article is a reflection on the nature of myth, specifically the quality of Greek myth and its significant structure and the context of its formation. Also, comparing the action of myth as language portrays the discourse as a specific reality. Today the word, a linguistic expression is mythological, as Barthes analyzes in his reflections. More than a mere verbal elucidation of the past, the myth makes itself present in the current human reality.

Postcolonial Fictions in the 'Roman de Perceforest': Cultural Identities and Hybridities

Postcolonial Fictions, the first monograph-length work on this anonymous vast prose composition, is an important contribution not only to medieval French studies, but also to scholarship on pre-modern romances and historiography, and to methodological reflection on the application of postcolonial theories to such texts. Perceforest, a not yet fully edited romance from about 1340, chronicles a pre-Arthurian narrative of the Greek kingdom of Great Britain, an imaginary era governed by a dynasty descended from Alexander the Great, beginning with the coronation, by Alexander, of Perceforest and Gadifer as kings of England and Scotland. Central to Huot's study is ‘the careful management of difference’ (p. 207) involved in constructions of cultural identity traced across the rise, decline and regeneration of Britain mapped by Perceforest. Through the lens of postcolonial theory, she analyses the diverse ‘management’ strategies applied in the narrative to varieties of ethnic, genealogical, generational, political and sexual difference, such as hybridization, assimilation, fusion, separation, isolation and purification. Her examination of the complex interplay between these impulses in different circumstances enables a sophisticated interrogation of medieval ideas of culture, nature, sexuality and history. Through comparative study of the ‘civilizing missions’ of Gadifer and Perceforest, Part I examines the rewriting of British identity resulting from intricate negotiations between culture and nature, colonial imposition and indigenous resistance, which highlight the contingency and instability of ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ as structuring concepts. Part II focuses on the regulation of love, gender and sexuality, and their disruption by the spectres of incest, miscegenation and homoeroticism. Through Perceforest's management of sexuality, ‘the intimate relationship between the military or imperial and the sexual as forms of conquest and conjoining’ (p. 215) operates crucially to preserve Greco-British hegemony. Part III traces how interweaving, competing categories of blood and ethnicity — Trojan and Greek, complicated by the indigenous lignaige Darnant — contribute to Perceforest's construction of history ‘as a matrix for both individual and cultural identity’ (p. 22). Its vision of British history through ‘cycles of suppression, cooption, and, reassertion’ (p. 175) reveals ‘the artifices and ruses by which the narrative of history, and the cultures it describes and upholds, are produced’ (p. 182). Huot's intellectually rich study is lucidly expressed and plentifully illustrated (with the benefit of English translations), initiating the unfamiliar reader into the fascinating world of Perceforest and the often brilliant analyses of this world in Postcolonial Fictions. Frequent contextualizations of particular motifs, such as animal metamorphosis or male companionship, in relation to more well-known literary texts (Marie de France, Chrétien de Troyes) and historical sources (Geoffrey of Monmouth) embed this single-work monograph in a broader domain of critical debate, whilst also demonstrating the specific contribution of Perceforest to ongoing discussions of, for example, myths of nature or the dangers of heterosexual love in chivalric society. A useful glossary of proper names is supplied; even more helpful would be a genealogy of characters, though this was perhaps judged too unwieldy to present clearly. Huot's excellent study merits a broad readership in both medieval and early modern studies of cultural difference, conquest and empire, and in wider reflection on the history of identity politics.

Foragers, Farmers and Fishers: Responses to Environmental Perturbation

This paper proposes an anthropological approach to understanding responses to environmental perturbation, one that is aligned with the humanistic and environmentalist agendas of political ecology while seeking to develop a more generic understanding of processes that shape human action in, as well as on, the worlds that people experience. We outline a comparative model that recognizes and prioritizes the role of prevailing expressions of ethos and sociality in conditioning responses to perturbation and takes variation in those expressions as focal to analysis. The model concerns the complexity of social systems, identifying two dimensions of complexity that we label ‘the involvement of parts’ and ‘the individuation of form’. Drawing on our own ethnographic studies of two, linguistically-defined, societies in Papua New Guinea and two, activity-defined, communities of commercial fishers in Australia we show, first, how differences in sociality and ethos may influence short-term responses to environmental perturbation and, secondly, how environmental perturbation may, in the longer term, influence the emergence of new forms of sociality and ethos. Where new forms do emerge, we argue, the trajectory of change will be strongly influenced by people’s prior understandings of their relations with environment and with each other, with their understandings of the extent to which they themselves were causal agents and, hence, their understandings of the extent to which they may act to ameliorate the likelihood or the effects of similar perturbations in the future.Keywords: environmental perturbation, social change, myths of nature, blame

Shim῾on ha-Şadiq in his Historical Contexts

The identity and chronology of Shim῾on ha-Şadiq have been a subject of ongoing controversy for centuries. Three possible candidates have been suggested as Shim῾on ha-Şadiq: Shim῾on I and Shim῾on II—Şadoqite high-priests at both ends of the third century BC, as well as Shim῾on the Hasmonean. A re-examination of the evidence shows that the rabbinic Shim῾on ha-Şadiq cannot be identified exclusively with any of these candidates. Rather, he is a mythical persona based, to varying degrees, on all three. Rabbinic Shim῾on ha-Şadiq thus represents the swansong of the Şadoqite dynasty in Jerusalem, and the rare respite from major violent conflict, enjoyed by the inhabitants of Eretz-Israel for the most part of the third century. It is the mythical nature of Shim῾on that enabled later rabbinic authors to connect his name with other, much later, historical events.

A Mythical Realist Orientation for Religious Education: Theological and Pedagogical Implications of the Mythical Nature of Religious Story

This article proposes a concept of “mythical realism” as a way of understanding important characteristics of religion and orienting religious education. The focus is on beliefs as one central aspect of religion. The author draws on recent cognitive studies in religion to illumine the “counterintuitive” and “mythic” character of religious belief, while also arguing that religious thinking should be and commonly is held together with “intuitive,” “scientific” understandings of experiential reality. A case is made for the enhancement of “mythical realist” religious understanding as a fundamental goal of religious education. Pedagogical suggestions are given for nurturing such mythical realist faith.

Climate Change: Perceptions and Discourses of Risk

This paper discusses some of the issues that affect risk awareness with respect to climate change and what their impact has been on people's attitudes. It highlights the large gap between the scientific community and the general public in terms of their understanding, awareness and perception of risks associated with climate change. Awareness is driven both by environmental values or political and economic agendas; particularly important are worldviews and ‘myths of nature’, which have a great impact on risk perception. Attitudes are further complicated because the problem of climate change comprises a form of ‘post‐normal science’: it needs to be viewed holistically, with consideration of the feedbacks between the climate system, the human system and ecosystems; there is large uncertainty and a plurality of legitimate perspectives; and the issue is complex and difficult or impossible to fit into a traditional linear problem‐solving model. It is therefore not a rational decision for most individuals to take actions to reduce risk from climate change in the absence of collective action, yet collective action is extraordinarily difficult to achieve. The benefits of risk reduction also fall primarily upon future generations, while uncertainties mean that differences in perspective, and problems of poor communication, misinformation and unstated assumptions tend to cloud the social discourse.

The Myth of Rhetoric: Korax and the Art of Pollution

This article reconsiders the debate over the origins of rhetoric by the historical reconstructionists and neosophists beginning in the 1990s. It contends that both are misled by relying only upon texts overtly identified as “rhetorical theory” and suggests that other ancient sources offer significant insights into the “origins” and contemporary theorizing of rhetoric. It examines the legend of Corax and Tisias, arguing that the narrative of rhetoric's originator is folkloric expression intimately related to other narratives of the korax—“raven”—in natural histories and myths of Apollo. It concludes by theorizing rhetoric as a “koractic” art of pollution.

Medea (review)

Reviewed by: Medea David B. Hollander Emma Griffiths. Medea. London and New York: Routledge, 2006. Pp. xvi + 147. For those whose knowledge of Medea derives primarily from Euripides’ play, Emma Griffiths’s new introduction to this mythical Greek heroine/ villainess will provide a number of surprises. Here they will meet several different Medeas. The one who killed her children is, to be sure, featured prominently but other, less murderous versions of Medea also appear. In addition to Medea the witch there is Medea the “young, vulnerable girl overwhelmed by love” (p. 89). One Medea attempted to kill Theseus but another was a healer and Achilles’ wife in the afterlife. This book, part of Routledge’s series “Gods and Heroes of the Ancient World,” looks at a variety of Medeas as well as a number of different approaches to understanding her myth. It is geared toward (and is, indeed, ideally suited to) the upper level undergraduate course in mythology or classical drama. Medea has nine chapters divided into three parts: “Why Medea,” “Key Themes,” and “After Greece and Rome.” Chapter 1, “Introducing Medea,” describes the aims of the book: to provide background information on Medea and “explore the myth and the source of its power” (p. 4). Griffiths briefly describes the major episodes in Medea’s story from meeting Jason at Kolchis and assisting him in his quest for the Golden Fleece to her unfortunate experiences at Corinth and subsequent flight to Athens. She emphasizes, however, that there is “no canonical version of the story” (p. 6). Chapter 2, “Mythology and Sources,” is primarily devoted to the many sources for the Medea myth, most notably fifth-century Greek tragedy but also a variety of earlier [End Page 93] Greek and later Greek and Latin texts including works by Pindar, Diodorus Siculus, Kallimachos, Ovid, and Seneca. Visual depictions of the myth also receive some attention. Griffiths emphasizes that she is not trying to present “a detailed account of the chronological development of the myth” (p. 12) or its sources and various incarnations. The “Key Themes” section of the book begins with chapter 3, “Origins, Folktale and Structuralism.” It, along with the following four chapters, take up major issues related to the Medea myth or important approaches to its understanding. Chapter 3 looks at both general theories on the nature of myth and specific attempts to explain the development of the Medea myth. Griffiths discusses folktale analysis, particularly the “helper-maiden” story pattern, as well as structuralism and Lévi-Strauss. Here as elsewhere, she does not provide a comprehensive account of any particular theory or reading of the myth but merely outlines each approach and mentions some of the difficulties associated with it. This strategy should make the book more accessible for its target audience and more appealing to the teachers who assign it. Griffiths’s treatment of any particular question or theory does not preclude further class discussion by an exhaustive treatment of its merits. Students can consult the “Further Reading” and “Works Cited” sections at the end of the book for references to more substantive works on everything from Jungian archetypes to Medea in film. Chapter 4, “Witchcraft, Children and Divinity,” looks at the most notorious aspects of the Medea myth. Griffiths notes that the “strongest image of Medea in the ancient world was undoubtedly that of the witch” (p. 41) but rightly observes that the term “witch” is rather problematic. She argues that the “witch” lies at the “intersection between two powerful discourses: concern about the divine, and concern about the position of women” (p. 46). This is what makes Medea so hard to categorize. She can be either killer or victim, mortal or divine and, indeed, “seems to exist outside the boundaries of classical Greek religion” (p. 54). Chapter 5 turns to questions of “Ethnicity, Gender and Philosophy” and seeks to examine “fundamental issues of self-image within Greek society, extending into a more philosophical consideration of what it is to be human” (p. 59). The figure of the witch continues to receive attention here as Griffiths notes that “witches have traditionally been linked with places or ethnicities different from the dominant culture” (p. 60) and discusses the...

The Monstrous debt: modalities of Romantic influence in twentieth-century literature

authors in this collection join an animated debate on the persistence of Romanticism. Even as dominant twentieth-century cultural movements have contested Romantic myths of Nature, individualism, perfectibility, the transcendence of art, and the heart's affections, the Romantic legacy survives as a point of tension and of inspiration for modern writers. Rejecting the Bloomian notion of anxious revisionism, The Monstrous Debt argues that various kinds of influences, inheritances, and indebtedness exist between well-known twentieth-century authors and canonical Romantic writers. Among the questions asked by this volume are: How does Blake's graphic mythology submit to redemptive translations in the work of Dylan Thomas? How might Ted Hughes' strong readings of a snaky Coleridge illuminate the mercurial poetic identity of Sylvia Plath? How does Shelley sustain the work of W. B. Yeats and Elizabeth Bishop with supplies of imaginative oxygen? In what ways does Keats enable Bob Dylan to embrace influence? How does Keats prove inadequate for Tony Harrison as he confronts contemporary violence? How does cockney Romanticism succeed in shocking John Betjeman's poetry out of kitsch into something new and strange? The Monstrous Debt seeks to broaden our sense of what influence is by defining the complex of relations that contribute to the making of the modern literary text. Scholars and students of the Romantic era will enjoy this informative volume.

Race, Paternalism, and "California Pastoral": Rural Rehabilitation and Mexican Labor in Greater Los Angeles

In Southern California, regional and national myths of agrarian life as pastoral became entwined with paternalistic policy and racialized visions of the Mexican laborer. Re-worked in the context of the New Deal and increasing strike activity across California after 1928, these rural myths and policies shaped plans for the resettlement of Mexican-American workers in self-sustaining villages within Los Angeles County. Under the direction of government officials, reformers, and employers, these plans articulated diverse ideologies and agendas: the New Dealer's commitment to reform and rehabilitation through planning and paternalism, and the employer's drive to segregate and racialize labor under a pastoral ideal. Yet the village schemes foundered; weakened by employers' lack of commitment to worker welfare and fears of rural sedition, by the inconsistencies of the New Deal rehabilitation policy, and by an inability to manipulate the realities of agribusiness. This failure bore testimony to the mythic nature of an agrarian tradition in California.

Race, Paternalism, and “California Pastoral”: Rural Rehabilitation and Mexican Labor in Greater Los Angeles

Abstract In Southern California, regional and national myths of agrarian life as pastoral became entwined with paternalistic policy and racialized visions of the Mexican laborer. Re-worked in the context of the New Deal and increasing strike activity across California after 1928, these rural myths and policies shaped plans for the resettlement of Mexican-American workers in self-sustaining villages within Los Angeles County. Under the direction of government officials, reformers, and employers, these plans articulated diverse ideologies and agendas: the New Dealer’s commitment to reform and rehabilitation through planning and paternalism, and the employer’s drive to segregate and racialize labor under a pastoral ideal. Yet the village schemes foundered; weakened by employers’ lack of commitment to worker welfare and fears of rural sedition, by the inconsistencies of the New Deal rehabilitation policy, and by an inability to manipulate the realities of agribusiness. This failure bore testimony to the mythic nature of an agrarian tradition in California.

Excavating 'Underworld', disinterring 'Ulysses' Don DeLillo's dialogue with James Joyce

This article examines James Joyce's Ulysses (1922) as an unacknowledged intertext of Don DeLillo's 1997 epic Underworld. After identifying a series of overlaps in the writing modes and philosophical outlook of both writers, the article proposes that DeLillo uses the methods and adopts the motives of Joyce in the consolidation of his own epic of the United States. The scope of the article is threefold. First, it examines the role and the nature of myth as considered by the authors. It unravels a thread of association linking DeLillo, through Joyce, to the Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico, who assigned myth a concrete historical substance. Second, the article examines both authors' conceptions of national identity and their reconfiguration of the epic hero. Finally, it examines the role of language in the national epic and the shared linguistic experimentation of Joyce and DeLillo, in their alternation between the oral and the written. The emphasis of the article falls upon uncovering links between the contemporary, the modern and the antique. Thus, DeLillo's Underworld is envisioned as part of a deep, trans-generic literary tradition rather than the autonomous construction of contemporaneity. This provides a new context and mode of interpretation, casting a fresh light upon the role of the contemporary American novel as a commentary on the tenor and texture of national life.

Tema e variantes do mito: sobre a morte e a ressurreição do boi

O texto indaga sobre a presença e o sentido de processos míticos relacionados ao folguedo do boi, em uma abordagem de inspiração estruturalista. A primeira parte trata de desconstruir a difundida idéia de que o folguedo do boi corresponderia, ou teria correspondido em suas supostas origens, à encenação de um auto. Argumento que essa crença é um notável efeito da ilusão do arcaísmo característica dos estudos de folclore. Reformulando o "problema do auto", proponho sua compreensão como um conjunto de narrativas de origem que emerge da bibliografia em meados do século XX. Trata-se de demonstrar a natureza mítica dessas narrativas. As conclusões, seguindo sugestões da análise realizada, buscam situar em nova perspectiva a relação entre mito e rito na brincadeira do boi.

Introduction: Statistical and Methodological Myths and Urban Legends

Although a kernel of truth or appropriateness underlies each one, numerous methodological and statistical criteria have been stretched beyond that kernel and have evolved into myths and urban legends. They are truly legends in that those applying it were told it was so and have thus accepted it and perpetuated it themselves in interactions with others. This is particularly prevalent in the manuscript development and review processes in which the mythical aspects of those criteria are applied. The end result is a degradation of the research process. The feature topic's purpose is to uncover the kernel of truth underlying the mythical nature of alternative model testing, cutoff values for certain criteria, common method bias, and mediation test. It is developmental in nature in that the desired result is to end the legendary application of those criteria and return to applying them in their intended manner.

Authenticity and Asceticism: Discourse and Performance in Nude Culture and Health Reform in Belgium, 1920-1940

Authenticity and Asceticism: Discourse and Performance in Nude Culture and Health Reform in Belgium, 1920–1940 Evert Peeters Katholieke Universiteit Leuven There are numerous studies of nude culture in the twentieth century. Interestingly, many appear to share a similar and quite revealing perspective, describing sexual and bodily liberation through the prism of cultural discourse. This approach may seem only logical, since it would be impossible to understand nudity without also considering its accompanying cultural context. For example, scholars have shown how nudity and the accompanying search for physical beauty often reflected contemporary worries of cultural dissolution and racial degeneration. This focus may stem from the predominantly German origins of nudism, and, indeed, it is obviously important to stress the affinity of nudism with the Wilhelmine and Weimar discourses from which it originally sprang. German practitioners of nudity often considered the race as being threatened by degeneration.1 In order to overcome this alleged decline many early naturists advocated a seemingly [End Page 432] apolitical program of individual change subsumed within national renewal, part of the broader movement of Lebensreform (life reform). At the same time, the first generations of naturists promoted nudity not only as opposed to this decline but also as imperative to overcoming it. Reflecting classical preoccupations with the mythic nature of male beauty, many nudists dreamed of a new, naked man who was, at the same time, stronger and more pure, a being who had reconciled himself with his natural origins.2 Nudism, however, was never a purely conceptual matter. Life reform and nudity were, above all, lived and experienced. As Nina Morris has shown in her study of British nudism, the renewal of personal existence that naturists advocated, whether for the ethnic "race" or for mankind as a whole, was always linked with the primacy of personal sensual experience. Nudist discourse, moreover, was widely permeated by a so-called feeling of nature, a feature that was gradually developed through the practical techniques of nudism and shared through countless personal commentaries. These commentaries describe the experience of personal liberation and the accompanying euphoria that many nudists claimed when practicing it. The unveiling of one's sex and the accompanying desexualizing of the naked body created allegedly pure and natural joy.3 Indeed, the underlying assumptions about race stressed in modern scholarship typically remained a latent feature in early-twentieth-century nudism, subservient to the more transformative experience of following a "natural" lifestyle.4 [End Page 433] The core assumptions of naturism were reproduced in different contexts within Europe. Scholars have most frequently analyzed the German experience and the process by which the concepts of physical beauty and natural purity became intertwined with racist and socialist utopias. In the völkisch discourse of anti-Semitic nudists like Richard Ungewitter, on the one hand, an exclusive conception of racial pureness was contrasted with the degenerative fancies of urban modernity. Writers such as Adolf Koch, on the other hand, exemplified a more social democratic inspiration in their writings. Both types of discourse nonetheless invested the very same nudist practices with a wholly different image of a naked and classless equality—an image they contrasted with the alleged false conventions and distinctions of bourgeois society.5 Still, recent scholarship has shown the breadth of views among naturists at this time throughout the whole of Europe. Dating from the turn of the century, Scandinavian naturists, followed by the French and British naturists during the early 1920s and thereafter Dutch and Belgian nudists after the late 1920s, practiced their ideals with reference to markedly different political and social discourses. Progressive, conservative, racist, and even religious perspectives coexisted within the nude cultures of these countries. Accordingly, nudism in Europe developed within local traditions that, even while they clearly reflected the German model, also contained genuinely national aspects and incorporated various cultural traditions.6 As a result, while the behavior and practices of...

UK Building Societies: ‘Deregulation’ change myths

An academic and official orthodoxy has it that late 1970s and 1980s UK Building Societies ‘deregulation’ (part of wider financial services/banking ‘deregulation’) foreshadowed great change in the nature of the industry and its markets and, so, in the task for management (change from stewardship to strategic management requiring greatly enhanced capability and from regulation protected marketplace, and permitted industry cartel, to open aggressive competition). In this article the orthodoxy is challenged and is exposed as being largely in the nature of myth through statements of building society finance directors in semi-structured interviews and financial data concerning the profitability nexus and markets.

Myth and Philosophy: From a Problem in Phaedo

This article investigates the relation between myth and philosophy in Greek philosophy in general and in Plato in particular. Although philosophical thinking and mythical thinking are in general mutually opposed, Greek reason is yet to be separated from its fantastic temperament. The mythic atmosphere of Phaedo is striking, given the well known hostility on the part of Plato against mythopoeic poets such as Homer. By putting the relation between myth and philosophy in a proper perspective, this article argues that myth is not only the source of wisdom for philosophy but also the sole guide for a philosophical person when his or her reason fails. There is an apparent tension between mythologein (mythology, telling stories) and apology (for philosophy) in Phaedo. The two themes stand side by side throughout the dialogue but contradict each other because of the well-known rivalry between myth and philosophy in Socratic philosophy. In order to solve the puzzle, this article will conduct a general inquiry into the nature of myth and philosophy and argue that their true rivalry is not on the issue of wisdom but on that of temperance. Although philosophical thinking and mythical thinking represent, as Cassier writes, the exact opposite of each other, Greek reason is yet to be separated from its fantastic temperament (section 3). In Greek arts of discourse, poetry (myth), philosophy, and rhetoric form a triangular opposition.' In order to gain a clear sight of the dynamics between philosophy and poetry, we will use the opposition of philosophy and rhetoric as a contrasting mirror image and claim that wisdom is the area where poetry and philosophy find their common ground (section 4) because philosophical wisdom abounds in Greek objective poetry (section 5). We will use Phaedo's text as a lead, establish the contradiction between mythologein and apology by dismissing in the first two sections the alternative readings of Phaedo, and conclude our inquiry by offering a solution to the riddle in the last four sections (6-9) along the line of opposition between philo-sophia and eroto-sophia.

The Myth of Nature and the Nature of Myth: Becoming Transparent to Transcendence

The Myth of Nature and the Nature of Myth: Becoming Transparent to Transcendence

(review)

2i 6 Reviews works on Rimbaud and a note bibliographique sourcing each of the articles to its origi? nal appearance. In their avant-propos the three editors pay rich tribute to the scholarly rigour, perceptiveness, and objectivity that characterize all of Sacchi's work. Steering away from the straitjacket of biographical interpretation on the one hand, and also the cul-de-sac offered by those who cling to the alleged illisibilite of Rimbaud's poetry, Sacchi emphasizes the key theme of childhood. This does not imply any allegianceto psychoanalytical approaches but rather the critic's relentless attention to the minutiae of the texts, a feature that is evidenced over and over again in the studies of individual poems. The three general pieces are illustrative of Sacchi's sensitivity to the origina? lity of Rimbaud's poetic voice, to the poet's proclivity forthe role of parodist, and to the central role of dreams in his work along with its mythic nature. Turning to the twelve individual studies, one is impressed on every occasion by the attentiveness and perceptiveness of Sacchi's analyses. In Apres le deluge' he sees Tangoisse de 1'homme devant le Temps' (p. 63), while he identifies 'Enfance' as illustrative of 'cette perpetuelle "mutation" qui est l'un des traits typiques des Illuminations' (p. 76). One is equally struck by Sacchi's familiarity with Rimbaldian criticism, which enables him at any point in his discussions to reach foran utterlyapposite critical perspective from Susanne Bernard, Jean-Pierre Richard, Guyaux, and many others. How well put is his conclusion that 'Conte' dramatizes 'la parole du conteur , etat de grace musical ? et ses limites' (p. 109) and how adept is Sacchi in every instance at finding patterns and structures hidden beneath the ostensibly fragmentary texture of Rimbaud's prose poems ('Vies', 'Phrases')! Equally, his description ofthe scene evoked in 'Ville' as 'une sorte de Waste Land avant la lettre' (p. 185) is very characteristic of his felicitous turns of phrase. Allied to a flairforpicking up all sorts of thematic implications in the Illuminations is a fine sense both of poetic structure and of the interpenetration of poetry with theatre, music, and the visual arts. All of these virtues make this volume indispensable material for the Rimbaud scholar. University of Ulster Gerald Macklin Palimpseste et merveilleux dans Vozuvre de Marcel Schwob. By Agnes Lhermitte. Paris: Champion. 2002. 565 pp. ?88. ISBN 2-7453-0602-2. A standard criticism of Schwob is that he lacks an individual voice: Paul Leautaud's judgement on his tales in 1903 as 'de la marqueterie' assembled from his vast reading has often been echoed. Agnes Lhermitte prefers to see the reprise of pre-existing works in terms of the tension between erudition and writing/imagination. She ex? amines the relationships between (in Genette's terms) the hypotexts, which range in nature from legal archives to literary works and folk tales, and various forms of hypertext , from translation through pastiche and parody to the Vies imaginaires, where the works of individual writers and artists become the source of a reinvented life. She examines only part of Schwob's output: the merveilleux (albeit interpreted loosely; there are excellent discussions of realistic tales like 'La Terreur future' and 'MM. Burke et Hare, assassins'). She brings out the extent of Schwob's reworking: even when a tale seems to have a single acknowledged source, as with the Satyricon in 'Les Striges', what is advanced as genuine borrowing often turns out to be invented, what is borrowed?from other authors?is disguised. Mimes is 'un pot-pourri antique' (p. 80) owing little to the ostensible model, Herondas. 'Documentation' is often invented: the 'fifteenth-century' quotations of 'Le Papier-rouge' are pure fiction,a key hypotext is Merimee's Carmen. Lhermitte's detailed analyses persuasively demonstrate Schwob's individual con? tribution, what she terms 'perversion': changes of tone, the elimination of key ele- MLRy ioo.i, 2005 217 ments in the hypotexts, the role ofthe young girl, shifts of meaning. The reworkings of Perrault are not tales of adjustment to reality (Bettelheim is judiciously used) but the dangerous indulgence of fantasies; 'La Barbe-bleue' becomes a tale of masochism in 'La Voluptueuse...