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Book Reviews Throughout his life, Matthew Arnold had "an enduring interest" in Sand (p. 1 13), so much so that on her death, he called her the "greatest spirit in our European world" since Goethe (pp. 117-18). In a critical article on Sand in 1877, Arnold chose four books as representative of her: Lettres d'un Voyageur, Mauprat, François le Champí, and Valvèdre. In the concluding chapter, the lesbian element in Sand is minimized (against the position of Joseph Barry). Her appeal to Victorians was due in part to her role as an emancipated woman, and in part as a woman involved in politics. Her greatest attraction, though, was as a writer, who "could create characters, describe nature, and entertain" (p. 145). Blount, therefore , reveals the Victorian literary climate in which Sand's work found opposition, but also strong support and acceptance. FRANCIS S. HECK, University of Wyoming Alia Bozarth-Campbell. The Word's Body: An Incarnational Aesthetic of Interpretation. University, Ala.: The University of Alabama Press, 1980. 181 p. $15.50. The author seeks to show how the metaphorical language of incarnational theology may illuminate our understanding of the nature of interpretation . She discusses interpretation by reflecting on such notions as word, creation, transformation, kenosis, plerosis, theopoiesis, synergia, kairos, participation, and communion. Writing mainly of public or oral interpretation, Bozarth-Campbell draws heavily on Wallace Bacon and Leland Roloff. But in addition to these, she introduces an astounding (and disconcerting) number of authorities. The use of sources is disjunctive and distracting, and Bozarth-Campbell surely would have done better to delete much of the secondary material and to make her argument more directly. While the way in which the books makes its case is disappointing, the general approach to literature is significant. Drawing heavily on the hermen éutica! perspective of biblical scholarship, Bozarth-Campbell wants us to understand "the poem as a subject in its own right, as potential voice that deserves to be heard and answered rather than dominated, used, and controlled as an object of the interpreter's manipulation." The author concludes "that interpretation is indeed a process of incarnation through which the word as poem becomes flesh, by means of interaction with a human interpreter, and that the communion between these two subjects reveals the truth of the poem to the audience in a transforming experience of power and energy that may be described as spirit-charged." Bozarth-Campbell attempts to wed the theological and the aesthetic, but often she only juxtaposes theological ideas with a dimension of the interpretive process. The argument is sometimes forced and the explanations of theological terms are too often conceptually ragged. But the scope of the author's reading and the stretch of her intelligence are to be commended . Her ideas are rich and the vision of literature serious and instructive. TED L. ESTESS, University of Houston ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW271 ...

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