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116 Reviews European medieval archaeology is desirable, especially as the Danish village excavations of Axel Steensberg seem to have been initially inspirational to the Wharram Percy excavators. Wharram Percy deserted medieval village has been developed as an English Heritage site for visitors, as is explained in the book. Located within thirty kilometres of York, it thus provides a rural medieval counterpart to the Jorvik Viking Centre which is the enduring outcome of another outstanding English medieval archaeological excavation. Lynette Olson Department of History University of Sydney Berger, Harry, jr., Revisionary play: studies in the Spenserian dynamics, Berkeley/Los Angeles/London, University of California Press, 1988; paper; pp. 494; R.R.P. US$14.95. In 1957 Harry Berger, Jr. published The allegorical temper, a full-length study of Book II of The Faerie Queene based upon his doctoral dissertation, and in 1968 he edited Spenser: a collection ofcritical essays. Both works have been accorded canonical status within the outstanding corpus of Spenser scholarship which emerged in the 1960s and '70s. Revisionary play is divided into two sections. Thefirstbringstogethereleven critical articles on The Faerie Queene which were originally published between 1961 and 1971 in such prestigious journals as Studies in English literature. Studies in philology, and English literary Renaissance. More specifically, seven of these articles appeared in what was evidendy a burst of intense creativity in the years 1968-69. These essays are reproduced substantially in their original form. The second section consists of seven essays on The Shepheardes Calender, and approximately half of its material appears here in print for the first time, constituting in effect a fulllength , self-contained monograph on this teasing and elusive poem. Here there has been 'revision and integration of work produced during two distinct phases of Berger's career: the earlier work was composed between 1959 and 1968; the later work during 1979-80' (p. 4). Revisionary play is by definition an important book by a Spenserian of great stature. While most Spenser enthusiasts will be familiar with the majority of its component parts, they will nevertheless be grateful for the chance to come to terms with it as a discrete entity. The focus of the attention of the majority of readers will inevitably be Part I, The Faerie Queene (pp. 19-273). The essays are not reprinted in the strict chronological order of theirfirstappearance. Rather, there has been an attempt to shape, control, and chronicle one scholar's evolving response to a great and complex literary artefact by reananging the original tesserae. Reviews 117 Revisionary play exudes an atmosphere of uneasiness which at times verges on agitation. The component parts are propped upright as it were, by a pair of supportive bookends, these being the Introductory Essay by Louis Montrose (pp. 1-16), and Berger's own Afterword (pp. 453-73). Montrose's curious essay, in effect renders the reviewer's task otiose. It is an attempt with Berger's own assistance, to come to terms with the critical stance which the main body of the work historicallyrepresents,and it is at times carping and fretful. Berger, asserts Montrose, has worked with Renaissance poems, plays, paintings, and pitilosophical discourses in order to insist 'that such cultural texts are sites of seriously playful intellectual work — imaginative spaces within which cultural paradigms may be formulated,tested,evaluated, and revised or discarded' in order to affirm 'the status of imaginative forms as modes of ideological production that do not merely reflect social reatity but actively shape it'. Further, Berger's essays over the last decade 'enact [his] coming to terms with both the cunent scholarly literature and the debates on theory and method in several disciplines' (pp. 1-2). In other words, Revisionary play denotes Berger's attempts to assimilate the N e w Historicism, and to make a contribution to it. Both Montrose and Berger represent themselves as reformed and contrite N e w Critics, sometimes comically so: 'I must note the androcentric bias of Berger's language here, a bias he has since acknowledged and repudiated' (p. 2, n. 2). W e must at all costs be Politically Conect. So, in a Paterian and Wildean sense, Berger has found Spenser's world 'a heterocosm...

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