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Reviews Histories of Helen PATRICIA MERIVALE Mihoko Suzuki. Metamorphoses of Helen: Authority, Difference, and the Epic Ithaca: Cornell University Press '989. 271. us $32.50 This valuable book shows each element in its eclectic method to advantage: the 'close' readings of a thematic inquiry based on internal parallels in each text, plus allusions from each text to its precursor texts; the sharp political readings of a feminist inquiry into the scapegoating of female characters to support patriarchal 'authority'; where most authors blur the 'difference' asserted by female autonomy, some, notably the Iliadic Homer and the Shakespeare of Troilus and Cressida and Antony and Cleopatra, will subvert patriarchal authority by asserting such difference. Further, a mildly deconstructionist linguistic reading identifies the poet with the difference-asserting, duplicitous (female) character, and thus links poetry itself with the 'personal,' anti-patriarchal, disorderlyI even (as in Spenser) monstrous female perspective rather than with the aU too orderly monolithic 'political' oversimplifications of male perspective. These latter readings, especially of The Faerie Queel1e and of Troilus and Cressida, while at times stretching the link with the Helen theme, are perhaps the most provocative and exciting of the book. While the introduction is tough and chewy reading, the intricate argument picks up power from its very consistency and coherence; by the time we reach Spenser, both its momentum and its intelligence have us captured, and when the triadic distinction - authority, difference, epic - is recast for the conclusion, it is both amply justified and clear. I advise persevering with this book: even readers not swayed by its argument may find that its thorough knowledge and utilization of relevant scholarship, its feminist semiotic always in service of exact readings, and its canny deployment of internal parallels provide useful interpretations of the individual texts which cannot be dismissed as merely ideologically motivated 'mis'-readings. The liminality of the Iliadic Helen figure and its surrogates corresponds to such blurrings of distinctions as the Greek-Trojan border-crossings in Troilus and Cressida. The doubling of Helen-in-Egypt and Helen-at-Troy serves as paradigm for the dividing of later characters into binary possibilities, into supplements or UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY, VOLUME 60, NUMBER ), SPRlNG 1991 OJ"lVlUL" vr nCLCI" 4Uj surrogates for Helen, into splittings off of her negative or positive features. Briseis in the Iliad is the first of many 'second Helens: Penelope, in the Odyssey, refused Odyssean Helen's fate as a mere marginalized sign; she becomes a generator and a reader of signs, a subjectivity, like the Iliadic Helen. In the Aeneid, Dido and Lavinia both split and double Helen. The passive Lavinia is, in tum, split into Amata, Juturna, and Camilla, aU active, transgressive, and, of course, sacrificed, who free her of many Helenic qualities unsuited to the future mother of Rome. Her own personality is thus as much a sacrifice on the altar of Empire as is that of Dido (herself a substitute for the Helen of book II as a victim of Aeneas). Surprisingly, many of the identifications of 'second Helens' are justified by explicit allusions to Helen in the texts; for example, Paridell and Hellenore, the 'reductive poet' and the 'reductive reader,' respectively, of The Faerie Queene. Some, like the doubled warrior queens, Britomart and Radigund, seem to be detennined, rather, by the structuring of the critic's argument. So, much of the time, Suzuki is not talking about literal renditions of Helen. Readers seeking a strictly thematic study will be irritated by the key strategy of (fair warning in the title) 'metamorphosis' of Helen. But this potentially wobbly method is justified by its interpretive successes. The anthropologicaUcritical notion of woman as scapegoat, as object deprived , of autonomy, as merchandise, as icon, serving only to enable male choice, male autonomous activity, male bonding, is the key feminist concept of the book. Suzuki's judgments of the texts vary according to who is doing the scapegoating - the author, or characters within the text, or readers/critics of the text. The notion permits ingenious revisionary readings: for example, Suzuki's vigorous and compelling feminist defence of the character of Shakespeare's Cressida, over against the vast majority of critics who read the character according to the...

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