The I (review)

344Philosophy and Literature "Irony's patent refusal ofsemantic univocality matches parody's refusal of structural unitextuality" (p. 54). This lovely sounding sentence bulges widi the vague, and pseudotechnical jargon typical of much literary dieory. Is it satire or parody? If either, I would incline toward calling it parody, but according to her account it would have to be considered satire. She concedes that many people do not share her views, but she makes nothing of the conflict. So what is Hutcheon's general dieory of satire and parody? Unfortunately, it is never enunciated clearly anywhere in the book, although there are bits of it here and diere. What is clear is that she thinks there can be no overlap between them. But this is not just a matter of presentation or opinions; it has to do with method. Hutcheon believes diat theories should be developed from the bottom up. She says that "any consideration of modern parody at the theoretical level must be governed by die nature and function of its manifestations in actual works ofart" (p. 3). This is naive: theories make predictions ifthey have deductive consequences, not if one decides beforehand that one knows what the necessary properties of the phenomena are. This is not to say that her book does not have lots to interest the reader— it does. It is just that, like so much literary theory, it is inadequate as theory. University of Canterbury, New ZealandKoenraad Kuiper The I, by Norman Holland; xvi & 390 pp. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985, $30.00. Many readers in the field of psychology and literature will view Norman Holland's The I as one of the most important studies of recent years. At a time when psychoanalytic readings of literature appear to many as mere collages of various psychological theories, such as those of Lacan, Kohut, Klein, Irigaray, and Derrida, Holland brings us back to basics in constructing a coherent and rational model by means of which die assumptions of literary thought and psychological insight are reconciled within a unified or holistic field of relations. That writers and readers perceive selves is important for Holland, since die notion ofself gives coherence to a thematic understanding ofa text as a transparent and logocentric reflection of personality or identity. Applying diis idea to Winnicott 's case histories, Holland notes that "An interpreter groups details together into similar or contrasting diemes, then brings those themes together toward a still more central theme so as to structure the symbolic space into a focal generalization and peripheries of detail" (p. 22). Holland terms this approach "holistic" and views it as compatible with thematic or pattern analysis. This approach leads Holland to view literary works as expressions of a single "identity theme," or, "the continuing core of personality" (p. 35). Reviews345 This conviction accords with Proust's famous remark in Remembrance of Things Past that "the great men of letters have never created more than a single work." Close to this remark are thoughts about "key phrases" in music and literature which are situated, interestingly enough, in "that stonemason's geometry in the novels ofThomas Hardy." Yet, although Marcel in Remembrance is attuned to the "little themes" constituting artistic identity, Proust disarticulates the notion that an artist has a "core of personality" to which these themes point. For Proust "personality" is the "effect" these themes produce for one who recollects their significance, not an a priori truth the themes embody. Whereas Holland discusses the "identity theme" as a fixed "script" which writers variously develop into art, much as analysands reflect them as life histories, Proust's remark about men of letters recalls the Vinteuil Sonata with its "litde theme" that underscores an artistic identity in suspension — a recollection of themes only temporarily resolved as a clue to a given moment but temporally unresolved in the "passage" of time. That Proust's view of die artist is much more elusive than Holland's with respect to identity and its relation to theme suggests that Holland's theory may not be as compatible with some literature as one might at first suppose. However, The I offers clear and accessible chapters on Identity; Symbols (contra Lacan, Holland writes...