On Deconstruction. Theory and Criticism after Structuralism by Jonathan Culler (review)

90ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW the two brothers, so close in life, were forced into a posthumous rivalry by literary historians anxious to categorize and in the process, as the sportscasters say, Thomas was annihilated. In his remarkable little essay on French Classical Tragedy, a critical gem of incisive originality that scholars would be well-advised not to ignore, Mandel goes about proving — yes, proving — that "Thomas Corneille created a work (Ariane) more nearly irreproachable — as classical drama — than any written by the two masters, his brother and Racine" (p. 57). Today, scholars and critics would not dream of "proving" a point. We merely utter truths, the eternal truths of the moment. But prove? Horresco referens, Oscar Mandel does precisely that. Moreover, he is totally and elegantly persuasive. Indeed, Thomas Corneille did succeed in writing an Ariane that is sober, pure, and powerful. Adeeply compelling tragedy that resorts to none ofthe invraisemblances that mar the best Racine. No gimmicks here, no useless scenes or events, no gratuitous characters: only naked passion and politics. Rereading the original after putting down Mandel's book, one has to admit that the worse one can say about Ariane is that it is a masterpiece indifferently writ. The essay is preceded by Mandel's re-creation of the tragedy in modern English prose. By re-creation is meant a terse yet eloquent condensation of the French text. This not another belle infidèle; nothing of substance is eliminated, every psychological move and shading is respected. The whole work emerges in its fresh and cruel beauty. Clearly, its re-creator owns a rare sense of stage and language. By the compact rendering, he imparts to the play the immediacy that it must have had for audiences of the past, an immediacy frequently lost upon generations impatient with long dialogues. Even a nasty reviewer will find little to quibble about. "Groans" for soupirs may be a bit much (p. 4), just as "... so I can drink her blood" for mafureur de son sang enivrée" (p. 43). And "Follow your intuition, and obey one voice only: the voice of love" strikes me as less poetic and less revealing of Phaedra's suspicion of Theseus's shallowness — one which she will pay for at Racine's hands — than n'écoutez que l'amour, si vous savez aimer (p. 11). Perhaps also Mandel's concern for contemporary immediacy inclines him to endow amorous relationships with a sensuality that the original prefers to leave to our discreet imagination (at the end though there can be no doubt that forsaken Ariadne sees the invisible truants making love on their floating vessel). Still, the re-creation is, in the main, as dramatically irreproachable as the original. Preface, play, notes, and essay are written in a prose so firm and exact that curiosity urged me to check that, of course, Oscar Mandel could not be a professor. Sad to relate, the re-creator is indeed an academician. More improbable yet, a professor of English! Enough said. JEAN-JACQUES DEMOREST University of Arizona Jonathan Culler. On Deconstruction. Theory and Criticism after Structuralism. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1982. 307p. It is always a pleasure to read Jonathan Culler. It is not so much because his writing is gracefully authoritative (which it is), but because he has emerged as the clear master of the major late-twentieth century literary genre, the metametatheoretical commentary. The enormous growth of literary theory in our century has led to the establishment of theory as a discipline almost independent of Book Reviews91 literature: if one is a dedicated reader of theory, there can hardly be time enough in life to read literature, and it is no wonder some scholars have specialized in theory where others have specialized in poetry. Of course, most contemporary literary scholars are energetic readers of theory and most critical analysis is explicitly identified with rarities of critical debate. The result is the emergence of metatheoretical commentary to assess the nature of the theories and the consequences of their application to various forms of literature. As a metametatheoretical commentator, Culler undertakes to scrutinize dominant modes of metatheoretical discussion. His own discoursive mode is deconstruction. This is not so...