MLR, 100.2, 2005 489 speech' (p. 28, quoting from'Visible Language: Blake's Wond'rous art of Writing', in Romanticism and Contemporary Criticism, ed. by Morris Eaves and Michael Fischer (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 1986), pp. 54, 59). Mitchell's seems part of a historical argument about Blake's place within printing which could profitably be expanded (as by Jon Mee's and David Worrall's work, brieflycited by Pierce at p. 109), rather than a statement putting Blake at variance with logocentrism, creating a new vice to rival logocentrism. Writing, following Derrida, 'centres' nothing; it disseminates . A 'graphocentric' Blake, in Mitchell's terms, would be logocentric (believing in the possibility of presence). There seems a tendency to over-literalize the opposition between speech and writ? ing. Pierce admits that he literalizes Foucault's image of 'archaeology' (p. 117) and this literalizing plays through his take on Derrida's opposition of speech and writing. But drawing attention to the writing's priority signals how utterance is part of repre? sentation, and so part of discourse, or, for a Marxist, ideology. If poststructuralism 'empowers' the reader (p. 113), a regrettable phrasing in my view, it is in indicating how there is no innocent reading, no innocent speech?no 'close, naked, natural way of speaking' as Pierce quotes Thomas Sprat, writing for the Royal Society (p. 41). Blake's 'London' knows that when it 'marks in every face' it colours, impugns, or represents in a particular discursive mode those souls encountered. It recognizes that Sprat's empiricism is an ideology. That makes Blake proto-deconstructive, but does not mean that deconstruction is irrelevant for Blake, since its territory is the unconscious within discourse. Pierce, however, goes elsewhere. He thinks a graphocentrism in Blake inclines him towards a total narrative involving 'closure'?a term over-simplified here?which the text also challenges, or ruptures (p. 71). Since Blake seems to be doing both these things (pp. 89-90), Pierce has not surrendered the au? thority of the author at this point, as he does not in his chapter on revisions of The Four Zoas. He writes a book with good local points, but an uncertain argument. University of Hong Kong Jeremy Tambling Dickens's Fiction: Tapestriesof Conscience. By Stanley Friedman. New York: AMS Press. 2003. xii + i95pp. $72.50. ISBN 0-404-64460-0. Stanley Friedman's book, analysing the complex patterns employed by Dickens in eight of his major novels, moves through crucial periods of the author's career and life. Friedman's critical approach identifies in the wide use of duplicating strategies Dickens's main method in organizinghis narrative materials, and examines the novels through key techniques, interpreted as a means to rouse the reader's moral conscious? ness, his perception ofthe contradictions of modernity. The critical discourse, though interesting and stimulating in various parts, does not always display the same depth and quality. It does in the firstsegment, in the comparison of Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby , where Friedman singles out the Dickensian strategy based on the repetition of storylines and motifs (such as forced marriage, deprived child, mysterious origin, unavoidable and at the same time avoidable heredity), and leads to the discovery of surprising similarities between plots and characters. The following chapters deal with single novels, where diversifiedapplications ofthe same method are seen at work. A Christmas Carol is tested through 'Paradox, Puzzle, Exemplum', a system which equivocally builds up characters and situations, uses Christian sources, interprets ghosts (possible links might have been discovered with A Lazy Tour, where Collins's rationalism is juxtaposed to Dickens's metaphysical propensities). The complexity of David Copperfield is mainly perceived through the multiple narratorial perspectives, 49? Reviews which extensively use devices of foreshadowing, change, and ambiguous chaptertitles . Convincing are the 'paired protagonists' oiHard Times, as well as the detailed discussion of Great Expectations, of the intricate web of coincidence which unexpectedly links characters and situations, and guides, through the coincidental last meeting of Pip and Estella, to their partially happy ending. In the analysis of Bleak House, Friedman again refers to Oliver Twist as a model for plotlines, episodes, and characters; if on the one hand this approach underlines the...