Briefer Mention

216 BRIEFER MENTION Badolato, Francesco, ed. George Gissing: AntologÃ-a Critica, with a Foreword by Pierre Coustillas (Herder Editrice, 1984). This paperback critical anthology contains seventeen articles on Gissing, most of which are in English. Virtually all the selections are reprinted from books and journals, particularly The Gissing Newsletter. Professor Coustillas points out that the aim of Baldolato's anthology is twofold: "to stimulate further reading and study of Gissing's novels in Italy . . . [and] "to enlarge his readership in Englishspeaking countries. . . ." Among the many contributions are "George Gissing: Humanist in Exile" (Jacob Korg); "Gissing as a Romantic Realist" (Pierre Coustillas); "George Gissing's Thyrza" (J. W. Blench); "The Emancipated" (C. J. Francis); "A World of Literature: Gissing's New Grub Street" (Jerome H. Buckley); "The Unmasking of the Artist: Woman and Economics in Gissing's New Grub Street" (David B. Eakin); and "Gissing's Unfinished Romance" (Alfred Gissing). Egan, Susanna. Patterns of Experience in Autobiography (Chapel Hill and London: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1984). $19.95 Egan discusses the uses of fiction in autobiography and examines how four patterns—the myths of paradise and paradise lost, the heroic journey, conversion, and confession— enable an author to remember and to narrate the most important aspects of his experiences. ELT readers will find two chapters of particular interest: "The Inevitability of Fiction. Hale White and Moore: From Autobiographer to Fictive Narrator" and "Youth. The Heroic Journey and the Process of Art: Moore: Redemption of Self through Art." Knowland, A. S. W1B. Yeats: Dramatist of Vision (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe; Totowa, NJ: Barnes and Noble [Irish Literary Series 17], 1983). $29.50 Knowland attempts to analyze Yeats's plays "not as appendages to or extensions of his poetry, or as expressions of his 'philosophy,' but as viable theatrical experiences, offering insights to audiences with and without previous acquaintanceship with his work." The plays are divided into four stages in the playwright's development: Early Stages, Plays of Transition, The Central Achievement, and Last Stages. Graham, Desmond. The Truth of War: Owen, Blunden and Rosenberg (Manchester: Carcanet Press, 1984). $20.00 Desmond offers exegeses of the poetry in three separate chapters: "Wilfrid Owen and the Truth of War"; "Edmund Blunden's Deceitful Calm"; and "A Reading of Isaac Rosenberg 's War Poems." 217 Morton, Peter. The Vital Science: Biology and the Literary Imagination, 1860-1900 (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1984). $29.95 Morton argues that though the natural selection hypothesis was in retreat before its critics, later Victorian novelists capitalized on the prevailing uncertainty for their own artistic and polemical ends. Four chapters examine ideas emerging from the new biology which appealed to literary minds. ELT readers may wish to peruse chapters which deal with W. H. Hudson's A Crystal Age, H. G. Wells's The Time Machine, Samuel Butler's The Way of All Flesh, and Thomas Hardy's Tess. Motto, Marylou. "Minded with a Motion": The Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1984). $22.50 Motto argues that Hopkins poems "contain motions of language—discernible patterns—that themselves express the religious affirmation the poetry is talking about," motions called "assent" (the way Hopkins' voice moves "to celebrate the revealed world") and "recurrence" (the way his voice moves "to discover meaning by sighting connections between events in time"). She contends that the "struggle to enact belief" through the motions of assent and recurrence reflects a larger struggle between the "secular Romantic world" and the "Christian world he elected." Yeats, W. B. The Poems: New Edition. Richard J. Finneran, ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1983). $19.95 "The main purpose of this edition," says Finneran, "is to provide accurate texts of all poems by W. B. Yeats published in his lifetime or planned for publication at the time of his death." Professor Finneran's textual policy is "to present the final versions of the poems authorized by Yeats," and "emendation has been held to a minimum." There are nearly 100 pages of explantory notes and more than 120 new poems not included in earlier standard editions. ...