Gender and Genre in the Folklore of Middle India. By Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger. Myth and Poetics Series. (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996. Pp. xxiii + 351, foreword by Gregory Nagy, preface, photographs, drawings, maps, notes, bibliography, index. $ 49.95 cloth; $ 19.95 paper) The book under review is a long-awaited revision of the author's doctoral dissertation, and although a significant number of the chapters have been published elsewhere, it is convenient to have all of the material bound together within one volume. Flueckiger's study can best be characterized as an intertextual analysis of performance genres belonging to a region of Madhya Pradesh known as Chhattisgarh, a multilingual borderland populated by Hindus, Christians, Muslims, and tribal groups. Each chapter is a thick description of one specific genre performed, viewed, and heard in the region. She does not, however, analyze each genre in isolation from the others. Instead, she emphasizes the distinct but overlapping systems of genres produced in the area in order to understand indigenous genre terminology and how such terms are used within the community to construct social identity. Beginning with a caveat, Flueckiger warns that an indigenous taxonomy is difficult to translate into English, for certain indigenous terms that would be considered to be distinct genres in Western literary theory can stand for Chhattisgarh's entire performance complex. This is the logic and legitimation for studying the region's entire genre system as an integrated whole. The first three chapters of the book focus on genres (bhojal', dalkhai, suit nac) performed primarily in ritual contexts. Quite often, such ritual contexts are gendered. For example, the genres of bhojali and dal discussed in chapters one and two respectively, are performed mostly by unmarried girls. But unlike bhojali, dakhai a rite of reversal marking the transition to marriageable age, is now performed outside of its original festival context. At present, it is being usurped by local men who feel that the rite is too lewd and lascivious to be performed by females, which has resulted in the genre's loss of power and authority for women. In chapter four, while discussing the sua nac (parrot dance), Flueckiger further shows how genres adapt to change by introducing the concept of revoicing. Revoicing is to be understood as a method employed by performers-in this case adivasi (tribal) women-to fulfill a dual function. On the one hand, the dance is performed for patrons as a Hindu rite to transform grain into Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth and prosperity; on the other hand, it is also danced by these same women in their own autochthonous community to fulfill a vow or to raise money for the adivasi gaura festival. These sorts of revoicings, according to the author, demonstrate the fluidity of generic boundaries and suggest the need to understand all locally performed genres as an integrated sytem of performance forms. The next three chapters focus on narrative genres (kathan kuha, candaini, pandvani) that can be performed in numerous contexts for the purpose of entertainment (manoranjan) during leisure time, even though they often incorporate and address religious themes. Kathani kuha (storytelling) is also a distinct form of professional performance because it is an individual genre not specifically linked to the community of listeners. As such, it can deal with themes that are more pan-Indian in nature and not unique to the local culture. Although the pandvani narrative also deals with pan-Indian themes drawn from the Sanskrit epic Mahabharata, the difference is in the amount of regional configuration that takes place. …