Humanities

380 LETTERS IN CANADA pp 49-152), situee en 1911 dans la plaine du Richelieu, a un certain charme vieillot, romanesque. En plus d'une reedition, nourrie d'hommages, des Crasseux et de La Sagouine, Antonine Maillet nous olfre en fin d'annee Gapi et Sullivan (72, $3.25), monologue-dialogue d'un 'jongleux' et de son ami Ie 'navigueux,' disparu et reapparu. Autres diseurs, conteurs: Yvon Deschamps, dont on ne peut lire les Monologues (236, $4.50) sans reentendre les disques; Clemence Desrochers, La Grosse T~te (J 36, $4.50), qui se passe en revue et se donne en spectacle; Jacqueline Barrette, qui gesticule et bavarde dans Flatte ta hedaine, Ephreme et Bonne F~te Papa (Le Theatre actuel du Quebec/ Les Grandes Editions du Quebec, 79 et 95, $2.50 et $2.75). Aux memes Grandes Editions du Quebec, dont Ie travail technique est soigne, signaIons Ie beau petit livre noir, carre, d'Yvon Boucher. L'Ourohoros (82, $3.00), qui sappelait jadis Les Sequestres de Daytona (lu au CEAO), est du theatre dans Ie (hall du) theatre, pas tres neuf, mais habile, brillant, ironique. Theoricien, estheticien, critique dans sa 'creation au carre,' 'piece au cube,' these et antithese, Boucher est traditionne!, anecdotique , melodramatique dans ses 'Prolegomenes pour une chrestomathie concernant l'esprit de certains editeurs...,' ou il raconte l'histoire d'un manuscrit errant. Avant la 'secheresse elfarante,' I"apologie du Ricn' qu'cst L'Ouroboros, Ie lecteur a droit aune sympathique apologie du Tout qu'est la premiere oeuvre - 'qui sera peut-etre son oeuvre theatrale complete ' - d'un jeune auteur. Fiction et realite entretiennent, en elfet, des rapports ambigus. Je n'ai pu lire Le Reformateur, publie acompte d'auteur par Ie moraliste Jean Tetreau. ( LAURENT MAILHOT) HUMANITIES Judith M. Kennedy & James A. Reither, editors, A Theatre for Spenserians, University of Toronto Press, ix, 144, $10.00 A Theatre for Spenserians contains six papers originally read to the International Spenser ColloqUium held at Fredericton in 1969, the success of which witnessed to the vigour and buoyancy of current Spenser studies. (One of its lasting elfects was the establishment of an invaluable Spenser Newsletter.) The prime mover behind the Colloquium and an editor of the present volume, Judith Kennedy, deserves great credit for her timely initiative. lIlIMANlTIES 381 Like the Colloquium, the book opens eloquently with Millar MacLure 's semi-poetic meditation on one of Spensers leit-motifs, the ruins of time. In spite of the aureate medium that breaks with usual conventions of academic prose, M acLure makes sOme telling points of the historyof -ideas and biographical sort. In the last essay G.K. Hunter argues persuasively that the Amoretti stand over against the Elizabethan tradition of the sharply focused, epigrammatic sonnet, and that their peculiarity results from suspensions, syntactical ambivalences, and analogies typical of stanza management in The Faerie Queene. But it is the intervening four essays that press more urgently upon two of the frontiers of present Spenser scholarship: the investigation of the inner structure of FQ, and of its literal or verbal surface. Beginning with the discovery ( by him and others) that Spenser acknowledges the exact arithmetical mid-point of each of the first three books with the phrase 'in the middest' in the appropriate stanza, A. Kent Hieatt argues that the Philotime episode is piyotal to the meaning of Book 2. His method implies that the (to some) pcn·ersely arcane symmetries so far demonstrated in the poem are in fact remarkably relevant clues to interpretation. Indeed, it is probable that the initiate or 'more curious' reader commonly referred to in Renaissance: prefaces proceeded by means of such numerical and structural aper~· "s. Significantly, the lirst stanza of FQ to appear in print (quoted hy Ahraham Fraunce in 1588) was the so-called arithmetical stanza ( 2.9.22). Though less numerological, Alastair Fowler's essay on Neoplatonic triads in FQ proceeds along the same path - from hidden pattern to in terprl"tation. In particular, his perceptive discussion of the Graces' dance on Acidale happily compensates for his curtailed chapter on Book 6 in Sl'e11scr mltl tlIe Numbers of T ·i1lle. Turning to an arca broached by l\1artha Craig's...