MLR, 98.4, 2003 1041 ing, given the cast assembled, not to find a more consistent attempt to reflect recent scholarship. A Companion to Goethe's Faust': Parts I and II, edited by Paul Bishop, shows a similarly loose understanding of the term 'companion'. The contributions take a number ofdifferentapproaches. Some, such as Osman Durrani's helpful discussion of Mephistopheles and Ritchie Robertson's introduction to the poetic analysis of Faust, perform a pedagogical function. Interpretative essays on the notion of progress in Faust II by Franziska Schossler, on classicism by Anthony Phelan, and on tragedy by Alberto Destro, assume considerable prior knowledge. There are also essays on narrower issues, such as John Williams's account of the 'Mutter'. Ellis Dye's essay on the feminine principle in Faust provides a counterbalance to Barbara BeckerCantarino 's negative account of 'Goethe and gender' in The Cambridge Companion to Goethe. Cyrus Hamlin agrees with Jane K. Brown in The Cambridge Companion that the post-1797 'groBe Liicke' material in Faust I must be read as a response to Idealism, though this area remains highly problematic notwithstanding these two contributions. Peter D Smith shows how Faust reflects Goethe's many scientific interests and emphasizes Goethe's scientific method, as opposed to his results, as does Daniel Steuer's essay in The Cambridge Companion. As with all such attempts to defend Goethe's science as methodologically advanced, one might ask whether a good methodology is any more useful than a bad one ifyou are barking up the wrong tree. R. H. Stephenson makes sense of 'the abundance of diachronic hints' (p. 246) in Faust by arguing that Goethe means to make the reader aware of the recurrence of modes of thought through the history of Western civilization. David Luke and Robert David MacDonald offerthe results of practical engagement with Faust by a translator and a theatre director. The volume provides a lively and wide-ranging introduction to Faust. King's College London Matthew Bell Nach Olympia: Holderlin und die Erfindung der Antike. By Alexander Honold. Berlin: Vorwerk 8. 2000. 232 pp. ?19. ISBN 3-930916-51-7 (pbk). As the author warns us in his introduction, the title contains a double ambiguity. First, the genitive 'der Antike' is both subjective and objective, '[d]enn die als Errungenschaften oder Erfindungen der Antike in die Gegenwart hineinragenden Kulturphanomene sind samtlich durch den Filter einer in den letzten zweihundert Jahren ihrerseits neu erfundenen Antike hindurchgegangen' (p. 10). The inventions ofthe ancients are thus in part the inventions ofthe moderns as they reconstruct ancient civilization . Second, the preposition 'nach' is meant 'sowohl temporal als auch vektoriell', though the following explanation is less clear: 'Ankntipfend an unser aller Vorwissen um die Bedeutung eines weltweiten Sport- und Medienspektakels ? und zugleich als Vorschlag eines Wechsels der Blickrichtung: hin zur Vorgeschichte dieser Erfindung der Antike, die unter dem Namen Olympia zu einem schier unverwustlichen Exportgut werden konnte' (pp. 11-12). How exactly do these two arguments (if such they be) correspond to the temporal and spatial uses of 'nach' ?Readers would be right to stumble over this sentence, for it anticipates two tendencies that recur throughout this strange and clever book, one towards imprecision in the logical connections, and another towards vagueness in the location of its core argument and subject matter. As they work their way through Honold's three outrageously erudite chapters, dealing with Olympia respectively as Archaologie', 'Padagogik', and 'Stiftung', readers may well find themselves, as I did, turning frequently back to the introductory chapter to search for a key to what the book is actually about. 1042 Reviews What does Honold tell us about Holderlin? The firstchapter afterthe introduction unearths a new source from which Holderlin informed himself about the excavations at Olympia, so that the knowledge he displays in Hyperion can be called 'state of the art'. The next chapter concerns firstthe Olympic ideal of athletic contest (or agon) and its impact, via Rousseau's Emile, on Holderlin and the German pedagogical reform? ers. The chief text is again Hyperion, though there are now references to a number of poems. The textual evidence for the presence of the agon ideal in Hyperion is rather slender, and rests...