Myths and Realities of Contemporary French Theatre: Comparative Views ed. by Patricia M. Hopkins and Wendell M. Aycock (review)

Book Reviews103 may co-alliterate. At least one non-alliterating syllable must follow the lift in onelift A verses, and at least two such syllables must follow the B verse lift. There must be a minimum of four syllables per verse (see Hoover's rules, 149-50). While Hoover's system is internally consistent and demonstrates significant predictive power in categorizing verses, one may argue that it is not really a metrical system at all. Hoover asserts that since "meter" is nothing but "a way of ordering and conditioning prose" (47), or more elaborately, "a set of the abstract patterns and a set of the rules that specify if and how stretches of language fit those patterns" (47), there is no logical need to posit rhythm as the ordering principle of meter. This is a dubious claim. Hoover's definition is so broad that it would allow us to categorize the rhyme scheme of the Shakespearean sonnet as a constituent of its meter, much as Hoover makes alliteration a constituent of Old English meter. And indeed Hoover introduces his definition of meter with the example of the heroic couplet's rhyme scheme (47). Most of us, however, would find unsatisfactory a definition of meter that fails to distinguish between rhyme and the kind of rhythmic phenomenon we call iambic pentameter. Meter is not simply "a way of ordering or conditioning prose." It is a particular kind of ordering, one that, in Germanic languages at least, addresses our experience of the stresses and rhythms of language unfolding in time. What Hoover offers us is not a metrical theory but a set of rules governing the interface of two distinct ordering principles at work in Old English poetry: alliteration and patterned stress. Hoover demonstrates that his system can provide a taxonomy of verse-types, but he never proves conclusively that alliterating stresses are not implicated in a more fundamental metrical urge. A New Theory ofOldEnglish Meter is erudite, ingenious, and full of important local observations. Scholars may find Hoover's system of alliterating stress useful to varying degrees. But whether students of Old English will ultimately be satisfied with a "simple proposal" that purchases its simplicity by diverting us from the powerful rhythms of Old English poetry remains to be seen. JOHN LONGO Colorado College PATRICIA M. HOPKINS and WENDELL M. AYCOCK, eds. Myths and Realities of Contemporary French Theatre: Comparative Views (Proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual Comparative Literature Symposium, Texas Tech University, Feb. 29-Mar. 2, 1984). Lubbock: Texas Tech Press, 1985. 195 p. "Is there something rotten in the state of French theatre?" asks Jeanyves Guérin in the title of his keynote address. By way of answer, he reviews with discernment the development over the past thirty years of French Theatre as an artistic, cultural, and political enterprise. His presentation serves as an excellent introduction to understanding French theatre today, as he documents the systematic sacrifice of the text to the primacy first of politics, then to "art above all," which discouraged and demoralized new writers. For the eighties, Guérin projects a propitious turn-around. He finds in contemporary French drama an absence of any dominant aesthetic system 104Rocky Mountain Review or ideological polarization. This cultural equilibrium, along with the assimilation of the most significant theatrical attainments of the avant-garde, has finally prepared the ground for the (re)establishment of the meaning of the text, which should in turn foster the advent of new authors. In the second address, "Myths and Realities in the Latin American Theatre: the French Connection," George Woodyard also begins with an overview of the major currents of Latin American drama. In his examination of French and Latin American plays of the fifties and sixties, he shows how, as Latin American authors used the optic of existential and absurdist theatre to explore and interpret every aspect of their own existence, their plays became increasingly engaged politically. Woodyard thus portrays the emergence of a dynamic theatre, enabled by foreign models to assume its own cultural heritage and take its place on the world stage. Both addresses close on such a note of promise for French and Latin American theatre of the eighties that I...