Empire of Magic:Medieval Romance and the Politics of Cultural Fantasy by Geraldine Heng (review)

REVIEWS71 histories discussed in this book, and the careful exploration of this tension on the pan of the authors yields significant and satisfying results. While many critics attempt to treat various aspects of the Arthurian literature across broad stretches oftime, few manage it as successfully as Finke and Schictman do. Having said that, I would like to have seen another chapter discussing postmedieval or modern uses of Arthur—for while the final chapter vividly expresses the main argument oíKingArthur and the Myth ofHistory, it also, as the tip of the pyramid, points us toward other arenas where Arthur's function in the 'myth' of history might be explored. Still, this book is comprehensive and rewarding. Moreover, Finke's and Shichrman's prose is clear, specific, and (when appropriate) makes good use of humor; the jarring, disjointed quality that often attaches to co-authored works is completely absent hete. Historically grounded and thcotetically sophisticated, KingArthur and the Myth ofHistory provides a wealth ofnew insights into the 'making' ofhistory in Arthurian literatute; it belongs on the bookshelfofevery scholar with an interest in the shaping ofthe past and its relation to constructions ofselfand community in the Atthurian legend. DORSEY ARMSTRONG Purdue University Géraldine heng, Empire ofMagie-Medieval Romance and the Politics ofCultural Fantasy. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. Pp. xii, 521. isbn: 0—23112527 -5. $42.50. Empire ofMagic is a book of excesses. It is about excess—in patticular the excesses ofcannibalism as a trope for other kinds ofexcesses—and it approaches its subject matter by providing erudition in excess (the endnotes are almost as long as the book itself)- Sometimes the excess is exhilatating, revealing the author's exuberance for her subject; other times it can be overwhelming and at times monological. In Empire ofMagic, Géraldine Heng examines the vexed telationship between history and romance in the Middle Ages. While many medievalists ate content to see medieval romances as the antithesis of history, Heng wants to explore the ways in which romances take over at what she refers to as 'history's vanishing point,' transforming its raw materials. In fact, Empire ofMagic is most compelling when it explores the relationships between fantasy and history, when it suggests the ways in which the pleasutes afforded by romance and the desires and anxieties it invokes ate inextricably entwined with historical projects and political agendas that speak to the texts' audiences. Far from encouraging escapism, Heng argues persuasively, the fantasies of the medieval romance, like all good fantasies, return us to the historical real, which, for Heng is most frequently the medieval West's encountet with the exoticized other of the Islamic east. At its best, Heng's method of reading romance allows for a nuanced understanding ofthe complexities ofsometimes neglected medieval works; at its wotst, 72ARTHURIANA the texts under scrutiny can devolve into thinly disguised romans a clef. Individual chapters focus on Geoffrey ofMonmouth's History ofthe Kings ofBritain, Richard Cour de Lyon, the Alliterative Morte Arthure, Chaucer's Man ofLaw's Tale, and Mandeville's Traveb. These texts provide stepping offpoints for arguments about an overwhelmingly large number ofdifferent topics. Sometimes it feels as ifHeng is trying to cram too much into one volume (hence the excess). Besides the relationships between history and fantasy, the author unpacks in her readings of these romance texts a whole tange of issues including class, race, gender, nationalism, imperialism, Jews, Arabs, colonization, sodomy and homoeroticism, cannibalism, the historyofthe crusades, and heresy, a testament no doubt to the authot's astonishing erudition but at times a trial for her readers. At one point in chapter three, a section of roughly 15 pages begins with the Alliterative Morte Arthure's account of Priamus and Fortune'swheel and veers from discussions ofgender to Italians, to narrative patterning, to plague, to the relationships between wealth and cannibalism, leaving the reader a bit breathless and wishing for more help in connecting the dots. Theoretically Empire ofMagic belongs among the group ofmonographs beginning to explote medieval postcolonialism, and at times the book feels too wedded to the patadigms ofa postcolonial theory based in nineteenth-centurynationalistic imperialism. Two issues that occupy a prominent space in EmpireofMagic, in particular, merit...