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THE COMPARATIST BOOKNOTES DOROTHEA E. VON MUECKE. Virtue and the VeU of Illusion: GenericInnovation andthePedagogicalPmjectinEighteenth-CenturyLiterature. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford UP, 1991. xiii + 331 pp. In her very first book, Dorothea E. von Muecke, assistant professor of German Literature at Columbia University, achieves sweeping scholarly aims in a bold and creative manner. She treats English, French, and German works, focusing primarily on Richardson's Clarissa, Lessing^s Miss Sara Sampson, Rousseau's Julie, SchUler's Maria Stuart, and Wielaiid's Agathon. Drawing on Foucault's discourse analysis, she demonstrates how the cultural program for the formation of a new type of subjectivity in the eighteenth century led not only to the shaping of pivotal Uterary genres, but also to changes in educational and pubUc poUcy. The genres discussed include the epistolary novel, the bourgeois tragedy, the Classical German tragedy, and the BUdungsroman, whUe coverage ofpolicy issues emphasizes the training of teachers and civil servants in Germany. Von Muecke's writing is dense, her vocabularyprecise, yet expansive, as she uses psychological and other scientific terms to lend concreteness to often difficultly abstract subjects. The result is that the reader's mind is stretched on virtuaUy aU fronts—from a deft appUcation of current historico-semiotic theory, to a comparison of these theories with eighteenth-century attitudes toward language, to a highly sophisticated understanding of Freudian and other psychological schémas. The detachment with which von Muecke discusses the sometimes conflicting theories of the era is exemplary, especiaUy when she treats the attitude toward women, where she is equaUy conversant in feminist criticism. Her work is enhanced because it is obvious that she knows and is in communication with the leading and most influential scholars in the many fields under discussion. Her book, rich in engravings and generous with helpful notes, leaves the reader eager for her next scholarly study. Jeanne J. Smoot North Carolina State University DIANALOXLEY. Pwblematic Shores: The Literature of Islands. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990. xi + 193 pp. Although its title promises more than the book deUvers (The Literature of Islands surely conjures up, for some of us, the Islands of the Blessed, Circe, Sappho, or even H. D. ), Diana Loxle/s Problematic Shores adds to the readings of familiar classics a new dimension outside of strictly Uterary analysis, but helpful to it. Writing from the perspective of the sociologist and poUtical thinker, Loxley situates her choice of six novels within the "colonial, poUtical, cultural and educational discourses of the age" (xi). Her point of departure is Robinson Crusoe, the first book Rousseau's EmUe was to read. As the founding 155 REVIEWS work ofthe "Problematic Shores," Crusoe captures the colonial/imperial imagination to the present day. The first chapter, "The Latitudes ofEmpire: Jules Verne's Mysterious Islands ," reviews Verne's appeal to the "white, Uterate, British male" (29) as it transformed the model of Crusoe by replacing authorial voice with scientific discourse. Chapter 2, "Islands of CivUity, Seas of Savagery," points to The CoralIsland's equation of moral order and linguistic truth, explores The Swiss Family Robinson's substitution of the name of God for the mother-country, and sets Marryat's Masterman Ready in the context of the Separatist view chaUenged by the Colonial Reform Movement. To the high moralism critics generally find in these three island tales, Loxley opposes the morality of "militarism , warfare, aggression, and violence, a reification of the language efforce which acts in aU cases as the correlative to the exaltation of national assertiveness" (117). Chapter 3, "'Slaves to Adventure': The Pure Story of Treasure Island" treats the history of Stevenson's reception and chaUenges the notion of the "purity" of his adventure story. WhUe authority shifts here from the group to the individual, and away from a stable referent, piracy as portrayed by Stevenson is, according to Loxley, both a threat to and a defender of national security in an age when boundaries were coUapsing. The threat to Victorian imperialism no longer comes from natives on exotic islands, but from "piracy" within and ruthless exploitation of the island—no longer a place of refuge or empire building, but the fragile repository of overseas investment. In an "Afterword," Loxley gathers a...

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