In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviews 255 'Reasonableness' and instilling 'good and useful opinions' are objectionable in the Utopian priests, for example, although these qualities have been identified with More throughout. One is surprised to read at the end of this section that 'nevertheless, many aspects of Raphael's ideal republic deserve praise and even implementation' (p. 149). The author seems unaware that his interpretative perspective does not allow such a possibility. The third part of this study describes the political practices of the last decade of More's life and in particular defends More's polemical works against the charge, of critics such as Fox, Elton and Marius, that these writings are the products of unrestrained fury. Wegemer claims instead that More was 'highly motivated and passionately committed' (p. 166) to defend the humanist means of reform—collective reason, progressive legal improvement and rational argumentation—against the challenge of religious and political radicalism. The writings, with their scrupulous, repetitive argumentation and mocking tone, are seen as the conscious rhetorical constructions of the responsible statesman. This total vindication is worth comparing with Fleisher's sympathetic but more moderate view. O n the matter of rhetoric, I do not know why Wegemer should state that More 'did not write about it in any notable passage' (p. 212). Would the defence of humanist rhetoric in the Letter to Martin Dorp and the Letter to Oxford University (Collected Works 15) not qualify? There is little ground for not accepting the principles of statesmanship that Wegemer proposes, and his placing of More's political ideology between what one might call a rejection of moral positivism and an avoidance of idealism is well founded and worthy of further inquiry. But the applications he makes, to Utopia especially, do not inspire confidence. Thomas More on Statesmanship makes a positive contribution only if, as Wegemer says of Utopia, one is prepared to read it with discrimination. Pina Ford Department of English University of Western Australia Weisl, Angela J, Conquering the Reign of Femeny: Gender and Genre in Chaucer's Romance (Chaucer Studies XXII), Cambridge, D. S. Brewer, 1995; cloth: pp. ix, 133; R.R.P. £29.50, US$51.00. This study examines Chaucer's reworking of the medieval romance genre. The development of the genre is discussed at some length in the introduction, 256 Reviews from the European influences of Chretien and Boccaccio, and from Marie de France, through to the extensive English vernacular tradition. After carefully defining romance as it was available to Chaucer Weisl explores how his romances move within and around the constraints of the genre, and how he makes it for thefirsttime a self-reflexive genre. Six of Chaucer's romances are explored at length. The work makes direct comparisons between these romances and Chaucer's narrative and generic sources, and comments on the position of Chaucer's work within the development of the genre. The groundwork on genre described above is given added dimension by extensive explorations into the alignment of this genre with gender. Weisl, as others have done before, presents the genre of romance as gendered feminine due to the centrality of women to the narrative imperative. She hastens to add, however, that while the heroine is at the centre of the love plot she is simultaneously marginalised by being reduced to an object of desire. Weisl argues that medieval romance is written from the point of view of the desiring hero: the heroine is not 'real', but merely a construction or reflection of the masculine desire of the hero who stands in the subject position. The heroine is, therefore, aligned with the romance itself. She is a construction of the hero, as the romance is the construction of the author. Weisl finds that gender and genre are inextricably linked: the restrictions which define the genre are aligned with the restrictions which delineate the scope allowed to the heroine within it. The work is presented in four chapters with a lengthy introductory chapter and a very short prologue. The introduction 'Gender and Genre in Chaucer's Romance' opens beautifully with an illustrative discussion of Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, and moves on to explicate Weisl's main argument. The four chapter have enticing titles...

pdf

Share