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198 LETTERS IN CANADA 1994 living with the given limitations of language.' Prometheus Unbound constitutes a hopeful coming-to-terms with the process of communication. Another of Shelley's major poems, Epipsychidion (1821), was inspired by the rather strange infatuation Shelley had with a nineteen-year-old woman; without physical contact, the speaker of the poem (whom Shelley conveniently kills off in the'Advertisement' to the poem) resorts to what might be called metaphysical contact, and Epipsychidion moves uncomfortably , but with great virtuosity, between outright lust and a quest for ideal beauty; the desire comes to be in language and imagination, which is a fiction for the speaker's (a.ka. Shelley's) very real desires. By the time we get to Shelley's final poem, The Triumph of Life, we are told that 'in the end Shelley knows that it is the impulse to fonnulate definitive answers which makes the questions so anxiety-provoking in the first place.' Having now come to acknowledge the inefficacy of language and fiction, and that the deep truth is indeed imageless, he gives notice in this unfinished poem that life conquers all, that we are all either chained to life or trampled by it, and there is little we can do to transcend it. 'Desire for meaning and the means to attain meaning are, perhaps, irreconcilable.' Imageless Truths makes discursive stops at other important Shelley texts as well: A Defence of Poetry, Adonais, the 'Jane' poems, and the Cenci all receive some treatment. But conspicuous by their absence are other important Shelleyan fictions, most notably To a Sky-lark, Julian and Maddalo (they each get a cursory mention), and Ode to the West Wind. These poems clearly fit into the thesis so carefully articulated in Imageless Truths. In one way or another, they are all about how Shelley self-consciously addressed the contradictory difficulties of empowering language. Imageless Truths nonetheless remains a refreshingly new angle on the sceptical Shelley we have grown to love and canonize. (G. KIM BLANK) Pamela Dalziel and Michael Millgate, editors. Thomas Hardy's 'Studies, Specimens &c.' Notebook Clarendon Press. xxvii, 164. $53.95 cloth The sudden availability of a large number of H~rdy manuscripts which have benefited tremendously from expert handling and editing, as well as the correction of countless errors and the clearing-up of puzzling issues in printed editions of Hardy's works, should be accounted one of the more startling phenomena of recent literary history. Although Hardy died in 1928, at a time when his status had already attracted more than two dozen full-length studies, some four decades were to elapse before Carl Weber's reverent biography (first published in 1940) could be reassessed on the basis of new evidence: Emma Hardy's Some Recollections and Diaries, and Thomas Hardy's Architectural Notebooks, Literary Note- HUMANITIES 199 books, Personal Notebooks, Collected Letters (in seven volumes), miscellaneous and previously uncollected writings, and (an embarrassment of riches, this) two first-rate editions (not to mention a Variorum) of the Collected Poems as well as the first scholarly edition of The Dynasts. The novels are being reissued with suitable distinctions being made between their original appearances in periodicals and hard covers. (Hardy kept changing his mind about what was suitable for different media and audiences.) Florence Hardy's The Early Life of Thomas Hardy. 1840-1892 and The Later Years of Thomas Hardy were at long last reprinted with reliable annotations that made available previously unpublished materials . Moreover, the new biographical treatments, particularly those of Robert Gittings, Michael Millgate, and Frank Pinion, have added much to our understanding of Hardy the man, though many of the value judgments contained therein have led, perhaps inevitably, to controversy. For an important fraction of these publications, which both reflect and contribute to our expanded interest in Hardy's contribution to world literature, great credit goes to two individuals: Richard 1. Purdy of Yale University, whose bibliographical study of Hardy's texts has never been superseded, and who carefully guarded important Hardy manuscripts until he could find an editing collaborator he thought trustworthy; and Michael Millgate of the University of Toronto, who lived up to his high expectations of what an...

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