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92Rocky Mountain Review and his "fops of fancy" such as Bantam, Berserk, Carlos, Peter Quince, and Crispin (117). In "The Comedian as the Letter C," Crispin imagines himself as "A clown, perhaps, but an aspiring clown." These masks give way to medium man during Stevens' middle phase and to the paysan in the late poetry. Bates points out that the latter is marked by traditional images of stability and authority such as God and family. The book is also useful in that it places Stevens in a historical continuum with particular references to the English decadent movement, Stevens' literary predecessors, and to the leftist critics who regarded Stevens as an "ivory tower" poet (166). The leftists were not his only critics, however: Frost accused Stevens of writing "bric-a-brac," and others such as Louis Untermeyer charged that his verse was merely "decorative" or decadent (147). In presenting Stevens' poetic theory as well as the reaction of his contemporaries, Bates provides the reader with a solid introduction to the poems and their intellectual milieu. Also helpful is Bates' discussion of key terms intrinsic to any consideration of the works. The Interior Paramour is Stevens' term for the muse, his creative anima (60). Pure poetry, according to Stevens, consists of "images and images alone, or images and the music of verse together" — as opposed to didacticism (148). "The Emperor of Ice Cream" was Stevens' favorite poem because it contained the "essential gaudiness of poetry" (144). Bates defines supreme fictions as "poems or as poetic images that strike a perfectly satisfactory balance between the reality and imagination of the day," or as poems in which "an exquisite illusion is deliberately contrived and sustained in the face of a sordid or humdrum reality" (201). Medium man, according to Bates, was that side of Stevens that "was notoriously fond of good food and drink" (183). Major man (reflective of Nietzsche's influence) is Stevens' hero, the noble figure in his mythology of self, not a conventional "event-making" hero, but one who may be "found at a cafe table, before a dish of country cheese and a pineapple." He will not alter the course of history or even save us from our daily routine, but he will "help us to see the ordinary in an extraordinary way" (245). Despite occasional problems with focus and with unsupported speculation, A Mythology of Self is overall a valuable introduction to Wallace Stevens. KARYN RIEDELL College ofSouthern Idaho DAVID M. BERGERON. Shakespeare's Romances and the Royal Family. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1985. 257 p. David M. Bergeron proposes that James I, his wife, Ann, and their children represent a "text" that Shakespeare "read" as a way to gather material for his romances. Bergeron expects to use topical references in a specialized way, as he attempts to answer a question he draws from Maynard Mack: " '. . . what do we know about the family of history that might cast at least an oblique light on the Shakespearian family of art?' " (4). More pointedly, Bergeron asks what we know about the royal family of King James, particularly during the crucial years 1603 to 1613, that influenced Shakespeare's writing of the romances and of Henry VIII. Bergeron believes his study might also help explain why the romances appeared when they did. Book Reviews93 Recognizing critics who object to the search for topical references as a critical approach, Bergeron hopes to avoid the speculative nature of applying names, places, and situations from the royal family of history to the families of Shakespeare 's romances by avoiding dogmatic ascriptions. Bergeron believes, for instance, that Josephine Bennet "creates needless difficulty by arguing that Measure for Measure was written 'expressly' for James" (11). Showing courage , Bergeron cites Richard Levin's criticism of Bennet with approval — a criticism which might also be applied to his own study: " 'If . . . [Measure for Measure as royal entertainment] is the strongest occasionalist case yet made for any play written by Shakespeare or his contemporaries, we can be spared the trouble of investigating the others. They must all fall with the "King James Version" oí Measurefor Measure, and so, too, must the entire approach . . .' " (12). Bergeron also takes a sidelong...

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