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Book Reviews the genre: its tendency to shock, the excess of description, and the entropie vision of reality. Baguley has written an excellent, well-supported study which, despite the complexities inherent in post-modern literary criticism, contributes to our understanding of the paradox of naturalist literature. Shelley Thomas Middle Tennessee State University Mary B. Collier. La Carmen essentielle et sa réalisation au spectacle. (Currents in Comparative Romance Languages and Literatures, no. 14.) New York: Peter Lang, 1994. Pp. χ + 194. In this year of grace, when theaters around the world, from London to San Francisco, are presenting their versions of Carmen, nothing could be more appropriate to the air of general revival than this study by Mary B. Collier. Since the day when Nietzsche could demand, after hearing Bizet's opera, that music must be more Mediterranean, or Mahler advise aspiring composers to study carefully the opera score, Western audiences have been not merely attracted to this work, well-known to the point of becoming trite, but also fascinated, as if under a spell. The early attention paid to the opera was concerned primarily with the love-interest, or how Carmen was to bed Don José; while a later public, no doubt under the influence of Freud and his successors, has been more drawn to the prevalence of a death-wish in both the heroine and the hero. Amid critics raving about various interpretations of Carmen as hoyden, or seductress, or disturbed (if not deranged) woman, or of Carmen as any number of other "cases, " the simple opera-goer would like—in fact needs—a surer guide than the writers of morning-after reviews. This book fulfills that need. Divided into three parts, the first deals with the origins in Mérimée and Bizet, completed by an essay on the transformation of genres. It seems that not a stone in the critical literature has been left unturned in the attempt to be definitive. For Mérimée, the author has consulted not only the basics, like Trahard, Raitt et al., but also the sometimes neglected but important work of F. P. Bowman; while for Bizet, she has dug into nineteenth-century sources and such ephemeridae as articles and reviews, completing this last with twentiethcentury criticism in newspapers and magazines. She remarks time and again on the importance of the air "En vain pour éviter..." (Act III), and, despite many another critic, defends Bizet for remaining true to Mérimée's original. This interpretation is the key to the second part, where the author treats a selection of twentieth-century works. Here there are chapters devoted to Carmen Jones, Roland Petit's ballet, Peter Brook's stage version, Carlos Saura's transmogrification, and other adaptations by Igesz, Rosi and Hall. In each instance, there is a careful, objective presentation, followed by a nice analysis with conclusions that do honor to Mérimée-Bizet no less than to Ms. Collier herself. The pages devoted to Carmen Jones and Saura seem the most satisfying , but in every case the interpretation is founded on excellent critical acumen. The whole is completed by a conclusion in which the originals are again summarized and their glories noted for today's interested reader. But this work is more than a guide or handbook; it is an informed and most intelligent piece of both literary and musical criticism, accompanied by a table of musical illustrations, an apparently exhaustive bibliography, and an index that make of it a truly "essential" offering. Basil Guy University of California, Berkeley VOL. XXXVII, NO. 3 97 ...

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