Authority and Female Authorship in Colonial America by William J. Scheick (review)

Reviews structive and, therefore, anti-Juvenalian theory of satire. She argues further that the discourse ofmodernism becomes the discourse ofempire and colonialism, with the representation ofOrientals changing from neutral Renaissance accounts to the Restoration Oriental "Other" as lecherous, cruel and irrational. In her conclusion, Zimbardo argues that postmodernism points to the arrival ofanother zero point. "The ideas that language is mimetic, that 'reality' is material , that the 'self is a naural entity, that Western hegemony is God-Ordained, are collapsing under the weight of questions" currently being raised (170). Future scholars will need to trace the historical change occuring in our own zero point at the millennium. Zimbardo brings a wealth ofknowledge and critical acumen to her views on Restoration literature. Both students and scholars alike will benefit from her readings of particular poems and plays, particularly less well-read works such as Dryden's Don Sebastian (1690). Some of the deconstructionist language can be annoying, such as Zimbardo's discussion ofOldham's "Aude aliquid. Ode (Satire Against Vertue)" in which she finds that the speaker "erases himselfinto the corner ofME, and at the close ofthe poem erases that monument to nothingness as well" (75). But on the whole, her writing is vigorous and clear, and her premise concerningdeconstructive and constructive satire is convincingand thought-provoking . Only rarely does such a radical reexamination of culture occur, and Zimbardo's AtZero Point brings new insights into both Renaissance and Restoration scholarship. At Zero Point is the culmination of Zimbardo's impressive career . ? William J. Scheick. Authority andFemaleAuthorship in Colonial America. Lexington: University ofKentucky Press, 1998. 150p. Angela Athy Bowling Green State University William Scheicks book is part of the current project of revision in studies ofcolonial America and the broader revision of literary history based on gender. In addition to addressing the establishment of authority in Puritan culture and its diversity, this book takes part in literary archeology — documenting the work of previously unheralded women writers. Scheick asserts that women's voices were both "evident" and "distinctive" during the colonial period, and he pays special attention to women's assertions of identity and responses to authority. However, Scheick's attention to gender is not essentialist; in addition to a close consideration of texts written by women, he considers a text written for women — CotSPRlNG 1999 * ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW H- 109 ton Mather's Ornamentsfor the Daughters ofZion — as an example ofthe conflict between divine and individual audiority during the colonial period. In his previous study, Design in PuritanAmerican Literature, Scheick advanced the notion of the "logogic site" (a textual locus where author or reader pauses to consider the confluence ofsecular and divine meanings), and in this book he takes that concept a step further. Employing a New Critical attention to texts, Scheick reveals sites of"logonomic conflict" where an anxious negotiation between orthodox and personal authority is evident. These sites ofconflict can be "unconscious resistant impulses" which tarnish aesthetic design or conscious exploitations which signal "deliberate resistance and revision" (3). The book goes on to catalog examples of logonomic conflict, both unconscious and deliberate, in the work of Cotton Mather, Mary English, Anne Bradstreet, Esther Edwards Burr, Elizabeth Hanson, Elizabeth Ashbridge, and Phillis Wheatley. Chapter One, "Audiority and Witchery," focuses on Mather's Ornamentsfor the Daughters ofZion and Mary English's sole surviving poem. Scheick points out that die authorship ofMather's conduct manual is itselfindicative oflogonomic conflict. Mather's attention to female piety created a sense ofuneasiness — a concern that his authority may be diminished by his concentration on women. His conflict, suggests Scheick, is represented by his use of Eve (a figure of female disempowerment) rather than Mary as an example offemale identity and empowerment . The second author Scheick focuses on in the chapter, Mary English, was better known for her imprisonment as a witch than for her writing; however, in one surviving poem which uses the letters of her name as the beginning ofeach line, her negotiation oforthodox and personal authority is evident. In the second stanza the poem shifts, both in its content and form; the author suggests she may "stray" rather than "obey" and asks for protection from such temptation. According to Scheick, this slight suggestion...