Literary Texts as Nonlinear Patterns: A Chaotics Reading of Rainforest, Transparent Things, Travesty, and Tristram Shandy by Hans C. Werner (review)

69 HANS C. WERNER. Literary Texts asNonlinear Patterns: A Chaotics Reading of Rainforest,TransparentThings,Travesty, and Tristram Shandy. Göteborg,Sweden: Gothenburg Studies in English, 1999. Pp. 182. The introductory discussion of modern chaos theory and the finalchapteronTristram Shandy may be of interest to Scriblerian readers. Mr. Werner’s discussion of the six concepts of chaos is certainly a useful exposition, and, given the number of critics (see p. 30 above for our review of John Freeman’s ‘‘Delight in the (Dis)order of Things’’) who are offering chaos as yet another theoreticalparadigm to mystify literature (and themselves), it offers something of value. Complexity , turbulence, unpredictability, selfsimilarity , iteration,andself-organization are simple enough terms, and if it is difficult at times to grasp howtheydifferone from the other, Mr. Werner guides us through his definitions with skill; it is certainly not his fault that distinctions of some use to scientists may not seem immediately apropos to literary texts. For example, while it is interesting to note that ‘‘complexity’’ has to do with feedback and noise (or turbulence—there seems to be a difference), it does seem likely that ‘‘complexity’’was recognized in literary texts (and life) prior to chaos theory. Similarly, when we are told that ‘‘when complex literary texts are described in terms of chaotic patterns, the characteristic combination of predetermination and unpredictability is often an important feature . . .’’ we might well wonder if we did not also know that before chaotics; did not St. Augustine read texts—including the text of the world— in precisely that combination? Textsarefoundtobenonlinearbecause language is ‘‘notoriously unpredictable andindecisive’’—acommentatoncepredictable and decisive. Far better is the discussion of fractals, but even here the mathematics dwindles to Iser’s notion that there are gaps of indeterminacy in a text that the reader must complete. In every instance, we are left wondering why chaos theory is required to describe a text that is complex yet subject to interpretation , indeterminate not because it lacks information, but because of an overabundance of it, difficult because it is both ordered and unpredictable, erratic yet controlled . Insofar as all significant literary texts have demonstrated for centuries their refusal to be herded under one definitivereading ,ithardlyseemsnecessary to invoke science and math to open ‘‘the text for a multitude of readings.’’ Interesting on chaos theory, Mr. Werner, as a literary theorist, does not advance our understanding of literature one fractal. His chapter on Tristram Shandy, never wrong-headed, is also never new. He simply torments some very old saws about the work into reflections of his six terms; fortunately, he promises us at the beginning that he will not make Sterne ‘‘into a chaologist,’’ for which we must be grateful. Yet, where we might have thought that digressions were Sterne’s way to interrupt straightforwardnarrative (surely a definition of digression), we are told that they ‘‘advance the unpredictability of the text,’’ ‘‘unpredictability’’being , of course, the shibboleth of postmodernity —and of chaos theory. We are also told that Walter and Toby cannot control their worlds, however hard they try. Again, perhaps we need to learn that by way of the Mandelbrot Set, but just as likely, Sterne learned it from 2 Corinthians . However, Mr. Werner is correct in reminding us that ‘‘Digressions represent 70 just one of the conditions in the novel that indirectly promote order, life and meaning . At first digressions contribute to the development of more nonlinearity, more chaos, which is iterated, reread, by the reader; then meaning can emerge out of chaos though [sic]self-organization.’’Put in less chaologistic jargon, literature is often a combination of randomness and design, although the more we read, the more randomness seems to turn into design —a not unpredictable phenomenon. I believe it is called reading—both good and bad reading. Melvyn New University of Florida Dryden and the World of Neoclassicism, ed. Wolfgang Görtschacher and Holger Klein. Tübingen: Stauffenburg, 2001. Pp. 299. £45.50. In 1999, the University of Salzburg hosted a Dryden tercentenaryconference, starting what was to be a string of conferences , and a steady supply of tercentenary volumes: John Dryden: Tercentenary Essays, edited by Paul Hammond and David Hopkins (2000), ‘‘Enchanted Ground’’: Reimagining John Dryden, edited by Jayne Lewis...