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'BOOK NOTES French and the Other, an encounter that, fortunately for understanding the topic, gives both sides of the story. In the reading of Corneille's Médée, for instance, Longino's discussion about the double status ofMédée as "outsider" is counterbalanced by that ofthe Turks and their relationship with the French, as they were portrayed in the documents ofthe period. But, ifdocuments, events, and mentalities are privileged over literary texts, the latter are rediscovered through new readings ofthe texts themselves: Pollux, the traveler-savant, becomes the center of attention in Corneille's Médée; the alien's mediation of French politics in Le Cid; the problem oftranslation (among others) in Molière's Le Bourgeois gentilhomme; the East-West gendered rivalry in Corneille's and Racine's respective plays, Tite et Bérénice and Bérénice; and the "staging of France" in Racine's Bajazet and Mithridate. The stage is transformed into a cultural crossroads in which real people— diplomats, historians, merchants, translators—enter into dialogue with theatrical characters. The theatre is thus placed at the intersection of several discourses on language, commerce, custom, religion, class, and nationhood drawn from real life and from literary texts. It is not surprising that the book's conclusion, after taking a detailed look at the past, leaves a question mark about the future ofhistory, but this is, as the author suggests, another possible new reading ofthese plays. Longino's work makes a convincing case for the importance ofnew readings ofold texts. Although it deals with a rich array ofinformation from both cultures' theoretical and practical fields, this book is surprisingly accessible to a wide range ofreaders, from scholars to the general public. Roxana VeronaDartmouth College ROBERT ALTER Canon and Creativity: Modern Writing andtheAuthority ofScripture. New Haven/London: Yale UP, 2000. ? + 198 pp. A Hebrew scholar and comparatisi, Robert Alter marshalls all his skill and experience to investígate how the Bible informs works by three modemist writers. Debates on canonicity in literary study have led Alter to take the fundamental canonical text ofthe Western tradition as a test case to examine how canons in general are flexible and less ideologically binding than recent literary theory might suggest. The author calls into question current notions ofcanonicity and how ideas of canonical authority have shifted according to fashion and ideology. He suggests how issues of gender, ethnicity, and social class have not always been pervasive elements in canonicity. In contrast to Harold Bloom, Alter focuses less on how texts clash with their precursors and more on the creative and playful continuity they exhibit in relation to authoritative texts. The author focuses on three culturally and religiously disparate writers—Franz Kafka, HaimNahman Bialik, and James Joyce. None ofthese three appropriated the Bible as believers, although their work clearly accepts the canonicity ofthe Bible and its authority engages their imagination. Alter begins with a briefreview ofthe history ofbiblical canonicity. He then engages in a close reading ofKafka's Amerika, Bialik's "The Dead ofthe Desert," and Joyce's Ulysses to reveal how each of these authors ignores canonicity and previous biblical exegesis in order to bring aspects of the Bible into a nexus of references and meanings within modemist novels and poetry. The heart ofthe book and the locus ofits eloquence and beauty are to be found in Alter's subtle readings Vol. 27 (2003): 188 THE COMPAKATIST ofthe modemist texts and his ability to make clear where biblical references appear, how they function to create new meanings, and how their insights play upon and radically redefine biblical motifs and themes. It is also Alter's intention to show how the writer's assimilation and often radical appropriation of the Bible can inform our understanding ofthe range and nature ofmodernism as a movement. Of the three authors, it is Bialik who makes the most direct use of the Bible. The language, tone, and poetic structure are acutely biblical, yet his intention is radically anti-canonical. In essence, this biblical style is in service ofwholly different values—the heroic act becomes war against God. It is a kind ofNietzschean straggle against the Ultimate that the frozen dead ofthe desert symbolize and...

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