The Dictionary of Old English, Fascicle D ed. by Angus Cameron et al. (review)

102 LETTERS IN CANADA 1987 might apply as well to the activities of any of his fellows - deZabyrinther in the sense of getting out of the runnels of the labyrinth onto higher ground where its intricacies may be seen in overview. Again, the book is drawn together by the fact that the writers pay attention to one another, and by this I do not mean that they simply drop one another's names. Moles sees the analogy between Jung's mandala and the architecture of the French Revolution as explored (for the first time) by James Leith, and, stimulated by Douglas Jones's weighty and polished 'Steel Syntax: The Railroad as Symbol in Canadian Poetry,' Moles speculates cogently and adventurously on the 'dynamic spatial myth of the West.' Eva Kushner in discussing the regulation of the symbol in the French Renaissance finds useful the observations of Wilfred Cantwell Smith on the life and death and resurrection of symbols in a Biblical context. She and Anthony Starr independently praise and use the writings of Susanne Langer, so germane to the general topic. Another unplanned and happy convergence: Bogomila Welsh-Ovcharov quotes a letter of Van Gogh to his brother Theo: 'Perhaps death is not the hardest thing in a painter's life ... the stars always make me dream ... Why I ask myself shouldn't the shining dots of the sky be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France? Just as we take the train to get to Tarascon or Rouen, we take death to reach a star.' Every reader of the book will enrich the passage with the insights just derived from thinking, symbolically, about railroads. The book is further graced and further drawn together by the 'Reflections,' at the end, of Norman Mackenzie, about whom one's only complaint is that he anticipates what a reviewer might want to say, and then provides an overplus of new observations. In particular, his expansion on Smith's discussion of the symbolism of heart and stone, juxtaposing as it does the Bible and W.B. Yeats, set me thinking anew in a vocabulary enriched by both sources and both contributors. The original idea came from the editor, James Leith. How appropriate, when this various, probing, lucid collection appeared, that it should be dedicated to the memory of his colleague, George Whalley, the friend and mentor of so many of us. (WILLIAM BLISSETT) Angus Cameron et aI, editors. The Dictionary of Old English, Fascicle D. Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, University of Toronto 1986. 4 fiches. $5·95 I am a habitual browser in the Bosworth-Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, seeking amusement and enlightenment in its pages rather than contenting myself with the answer to whatever question drew me to either or both of its volumes. But that simple pleasure has now been spoiled for HUMANITIES 103 me: comparing the 'd' entries of the DOE with those in B-T has revealed how inadequate, and sometimes downright misleading, those grand old volumes canbe. I have even become a convert to the view that microfiches are more appropriate for the publication of the fascicles of a dictionary than printed volumes. Preparation on the computer means that errors can be corrected and mechanically entered, and fascicles can be continually corrected and reissued in the economical fiche format. While the Dictionary will be available in book form when it has been completed, and presumably when the editors are satisfied that it is sufficiently corrected, that time does not appear to be at hand: only 'c' is soon to be added. Those of us who work with Old English will have to buy ourselves microfiche readers so that we can consult the Dictionary - and, of course, the Microfiche Concordance - in our studies. This will actually be easier than double- (and triple-) checking the 'Supplement' volume of B-T to make sure that information in the main volume has not been completely superseded or rescinded: which seems to have happened quite frequently . But what I would really like to see is all of this information on computer-readable disks. Then we could use search procedures to find anything, including words in (at least some) cited...