Transformations of Circe: The History of an Enchantress (review)

THE COMPAnATIST dowed with a "transideological identity" (15, 27, 35, etc.). It can be "both political andapolitical, both conservative andradical, both repressive anddemocratizing." Its political meaning—and very presence—may be ignored, read offfrom, orjust read into texts and images depending upon the groups to which the readers belong. In mis regard, Linda Hutcheon's pluralist view of irony addresses a concrete, multicultural urgency. She convincingly argues that ironic meaning is fundamentally "relational," bringing "together ... the said and the unsaid, each of which takes on meaning only in relations to the other" (59). Irony does not only "dissemble ," as its Greek etymology suggests; as a "relational strategy," it also reunites people and meanings. Most importantly, while underscoring the contribution of "discursive communities" to the actual enactment of ironic connotations, the critic rejects the canonical definition ofirony as antiphrasis (58). Ironic discourse does notjust mean different things to different people; these meanings (interpretations) need not write each other off since the ironic signification, the "unsaid," is not simply the opposite ofthe "said." In various interpretive contexts and from various standpoints, ironic discourse signifies differently—or may not signify at all. The examples the critic advances are very eloquent. Whether she deals with a Wagnerian or a Shakespearian production, with Foucault's Pendulum, Coetzee's Foe, Anselm Kiefer's paintings, or a Royal Ontario Museum exhibit, Hutcheon's analyses are always compelling and illuminating. They convincingly argue for a "post-rhetorical ," pluralist redefinition ofirony. Elegantly written, exceptionally informative and original, Irony's Edge is arguably the most important study ofirony to date. Christian Moraru Indiana University JUDITH YARNALL. TransformationsofCirce: TheHistory ofan Enchantress . Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1994. ? + 245 pp. Circe first appears in Homer's Odyssey, where she acts as the hero's lover and guide—and transforms men into swine. The Circe myth has since served as a magnet for what writers ofdifferent eras have had to say about the relationship of sexuality, with all of its vulnerability and power, to human nature as a whole. Western literature attests to Circe's remarkable staying power, once she emerges from the mists ofprehistory, as Yamall's chronological study demonstrates. Beginning with a detailed study ofHomer's balance ofnegative and positive elements in the Circe-Odysseus myth, Yarnall employs text and illustrations to demonstrate how Homer's Circe is connected with age-old traditions ofgoddess worship. She then examines how the image ofa one-sided "witch," who first appeared in the commentary ofHomer's allegorical interpreters, proves remarkably persistent throughout the ages. Circe is first adapted by Virgil and Ovid, appearing in the Aeneidas the ruler ofa promontory to be avoided at all costs, a place where the air resounds with the howls ofchained and enraged beasts, and in the fourteenth book ofthe Metamorphoses, playing a starring role as the Queen ofLust, personifying a female passion so extreme that it destroys all who impede its satisfaction. This view of Circe prevailed through the Renaissance and the seventeenth century, as evidenced in mythographies, Calderón's plays, and Edmund Spenser's VcH 20 (1996): 203 BOOK NOTES The Faerie Queene, where she becomes Acrasia, the fair witch who lounges on a bed ofrose petals in a Renaissance bower ofbliss, waiting for virile young lovers to appear and offer themselves for her satisfaction. In the nineteenth century, many writers and especially painters still found the old Greek myths to be imaginatively stimulating and expressive ofhuman truth. The dark, dangerousfemmefatale expressed the evil, sexual half ofthe good-evil polarization into which nineteenthcentury patriarchal culture forced the feminine. Circe was thus a popular figure in such a climate, appearing in the paintings ofLouis Chalón in France and ofEdward Burne-Jones, J. W. Waterhouse, and Arthur Hacker in England. Yarnall examines the predominant representations of Circe in such paintings, exposing how these artists, while reveling in the enchantress's exuberant vitality, nevertheless perpetuated the dogma that to be female and fully sexual was malevolent. Because allegorical interpretations ofthe Circe myth were founded on a bodysoul dualism, not until James Joyce and other twentieth-century writers questioned, then abandoned this belief, are more original and/or positive images ofCirce to be found. In Ulysses, she appears as...