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276 LETTERS IN CANADA 2000 ordinated work of many expert contributors the ever-impressive range and diversity of Trollope=s life as prolific writer, man of many parts, and >seismograph of Victorian life.= Amplifying the focus on Trollope, there are also learned entries on such topics as the Church, the law, the press, women, America, and Judaism. Biographical entries for figures like Palmerston , Disraeli, Gladstone, and Bright provide not only information about them, but focus especially on how Trollope reconfigured them, enlisting them, thinly disguised, as secondary but weighty and resonant characters in his novels. In fact, better than any other approach, the integration in alphabetical order of >biographies=of Trollope=s characters with >biographies= of actual figures, of his imaginary geography with real places, of historical topics with fictional ones confirms for any reader ambling along with this >companion= a peculiar sense of parallel worlds. The frisson of delight we can experience in Barchester Towers as Bishop Proudie snuggles down in his study with the latest number of Little Dorrit is slight compared to the almost uncanny sensation of familiarity and strangeness as we turn, say, from the entry >Charles Dickens= B Trollope=s laudatory memorial article in Saint Pauls Magazine B back to the lengthier account under >Dickens, Charles= of his relations with his great rival, the mixed feelings that on other occasions he expressed about him, and then on to the entries >Proudie, Thomas,= >Proudie, Mrs.= and >Proudie, Olivia.= These point us to B or remind us of B the Proudies= appearances beyond Barchester Towers, in The Last Chronicle of Barset, Doctor Thorne, The Small House at Allington, and Framley Parsonage, as if, along with the Grantlys and the Thornes and others, they enjoyed a substantive, continuing mortal existence like their author in his works and days as well as everyone of note who crossed his path and whom we can find here, including the author of Little Dorrit. Quite fortuitously, because of the nature of Trollope=s quintessential achievement B the recurring characters and localities as well as the geographical and historical coherence of the Barsetshire and Palliser series B and the nature of this Companion, we can catch here a whiff, elusive and illusive but nonetheless potent, of >something,= as Judith Sutpen says in Absalom, Absalom!, >that might make a mark on something that was once for the reason that it can die someday, while the block of stone cant be is because it can never become was because it cant ever die or perish.= The link with Faulkner and the cumulative saga of Yoknapatawpha County is not as bizarre as it may first seem, although a similar >companion= even to Faulkner, let alone to Dickens or George Eliot, would not yield the distinctly >paratextual= effect of the Oxford Companion to Trollope. And for those who like that sort of thing, here is plenty of it B a reference book with added value. (HENRY AUSTER) Brent Zimmerman. Herman Melville: Stargazer HUMANITIES 277 McGill-Queen=s University Press 1998. xi, 142. $55.00 Although the relationship between Herman Melville=s creative practice and science has been widely discussed in the past, Brent Zimmerman focuses on Melville=s overlooked preoccupation with the literary possibilities of astronomy. In fact, Zimmerman ambitiously claims that this preoccupation forms >an integral part of the vision= of an author >for whom the problem of the universe was a vital, ongoing concern.= Furthermore, he argues that, >after Typee and Omoo, Melville wanted to write mighty books with mighty themes,= implying that Melville succeeded because of his creative appropriation of astronomy, inasmuch as astronomy itself >engenders philosophical questions about humanity=s relation to the rest of the cosmos.= The mighty-themed books which best reflect this appropriation are Mardi, Clarel, and Billy Budd, Sailor. In the end, however, Zimmerman has charged Melville=s use of astronomy with a responsibility beyond its competence. Not that astronomy is irrelevant to Melville=s work, for, as the author points out, >there are simply too many references to astronomical subjects ... for us to neglect them.= It=s just that Zimmerman is unaware of how very narrow that relevance is. In fact, his insistence on its wider significance yields...

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