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73 Anglican careerist Chilvers embodies another form of comedy. Both men help the reader to see Peak from a less dramatic angle. But in this reviewer's opinion, an occasional unfairness to Gissing regarding The Odd Women and such minor novels as Denzil Quarrler and The Town Traveller, for Instance, is largely compensated for by many shrewd insights and illuminating rapprochements . The passage on Richard Hoggart's sociological enquiries and Born In Exile, for example, might be the starting point of a reassessment of this novel in a profitable light. If the less ambitious novels are given scant praise (nothing is said in particular of comedy in The Town Traveller, nor of this same narrative as a period piece), the short stories are revalued in a suggestive manner. After some appropriate general comments, Selig focuses his attention on four of them, "A Victim of Circumstances," "Comrades in Arms," "The Schoolmaster's Vision" and "The House of Cobwebs," and devotes a couple of pages to each. The analysis of the pre-Freudian theme in "The Schoolmaster's Vision" offers suggestions which should not be overlooked in a reconsideration of Gissing's art of characterization. It is Professor Selig's opinion that the mature short stories, that is, those published from 1893 to the writer's death, "have an impressive consistency. His own characteristic version of the short narrative form suited his fundamental attitudes. Its inconclusive brevity seems particularly appropriate to his vision of human beings as fallible little creatures entangled In their petty social webs." The notes and references cover twenty pages and the selected bibliography ten. They are models of accuracy. The brief commentary on the essential books and articles will serve as a fully reliable guide to readers unfamiliar with this material. Professor Selig is invariably fair and generous to his predecessors. It is perhaps a pity he did not list all his own articles on the novelist, since they are, like the present volume, a significant and discriminating contribution to Gissing studies. Pierre Coustillas University of Lille 6. LITERARY CRITICISM AND THE "WORLDLY TEXT" Edward W. Said. The World, the Text, and the Critic. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1983. $20.00 Literary criticism is practiced today in four major forms: practical criticism found in book reviewing and literary journalism, academic literary history, literary appreciation and interpretation, and literary theory. The twelve essays on criticism and related subjects which Professor Edward W. Said has collected in The World, the Text, and the Critic are derived from all four forms. Written during a period of twelve years (1969-1981) and reprinted here with little revision, these essays must succeed, Said asserts, in their attempt "to go beyond" the forms of criticism. The prevailing situation of criticism is such, Said believes, that each of the four forms represents specialization and an exact division of labor; and it is supposed that literature and the humanities exist generally in the 74 culture—"our" culture, as it is known by many people. In the version of culture advocated by professional humanists and literary critics, the approved practice of "high" culture is marginal to the serious political concerns of society. This situation has produced a cult of professional expertise with an effect that is generally pernicious. Academic critics—and criticism now is largely pernicious—tell students and the general constituency that they defend the classics, the virtues of a liberal education, and the "precious" pleasures of literature even as they show themselves to be silent about the historical and social world in which all these things take place. Said's major interest is not only in criticism but also in the social and political milieu in which it exists or, more accurately, of which it should be a part. Said goes "beyond" criticism in his collection of essays by taking account of the world around criticism and integrating the two. In this integration, texts are seen to contain an interest in the events and the circumstances entailed by and expressed in the texts themselves. Those events and circumstances are textual also, and much that goes on in texts alludes to them and affiliates itself directly to them. Said's position is that texts are...

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