(Re)Interpretations: Etudes sur le seizeme siecle.

This volume contains ten essays (two in French, eight in English) framed by John O'Brien's introduction and Terence Cave's "Afterwords." The contributions explore a wide range of texts from critical perspectives including deconstruction, new historicism, feminism, and reader-oriented approaches. The first five contributors write on poetry; the latter five investigate less-canonical prose writing. The unifying theme of the work is announced by the "Re' of the title, for the emphasis is on Renaissance literature's seemingly unending power to spawn new interpretations. Not surprisingly, the words "difference," "uncertainty," "identity," and "other" play a prominent role in these studies.

Examining Jean Lemaire de Belges's use of metaphor, David Cowling attempts to reaffirm the poet's special position among the rhetoriqueurs by demonstrating his "sensitivity to the perils and pitfalls of the reading process without providing a ready-made solution to the problem of textual interpretation" (11-12). Giving special attention to sonnet 45 of L'Olive, George Hugo Tucker deftly examines the troublesome junction of divine inspiration and personal application in Du Bellay's poetic vision. Tucker's comments on the complexities of intertextuality and the role of the reader are quite revealing.

Sarah Alyn-Stacey tests Riffaterre's hermeneutics by proposing informed and uninformed readings of three poems from Marc-Claude de Buttet's L'A malthee. She indeed shows that to some extent "les deux approches hermeneutiques se completent" (71), thereby underscoring, at least tacitly, the insufficiencies of the "uninformed" approach. An uninformed reading would fare poorly against Malcolm Quainton's extremely informed and impressive investigation of the presence of the alternative Helen myth (known principally through Euripides) in Ronsard's sonnet cycle of 1578. Considering various aspects (lexical, stylistic, thematic, etc.) of these poems, Quainton convincingly carves out a place for this intertext among the more obvious and studied ones. The Ronsard Ann Moss analyzes is the subject variously manifested in its own poetry. This unstable medium, open to pressures of the ever-shifting present and the inescapable past, exhibits a protean author/subject often emasculated or hermaphroditic.

Elizabeth Guild focuses on gender in her examination of the Martin Guerre trial as recounted in Jean de Coras's Arrest memorable. Guild aims to show how the logic of identity, classical and courtroom rhetoric, the unjust social order, and the intolerance of uncertainty coalesce to misapprehend the "meaning" of Bertrande de Rols's feminine presence in the masculine courtroom. Though at moments engaging, the essay proves disconcerting on the whole. One wishes, for example, that the author had clearly stated the meaning of the word "meaning."

Neil Kenny addresses questions of meaning (and the linguistic turn) in his contribution on Francois du Souhait's Le Bonheur des sages and Le Malheur des curieux. Kenny's perceptive readings bring him to conclusions such as: "Sagesse and curiosite are . . . constructed not as abstract concepts but as lines of actions and consequences, as narrative" (262).

Margaret McGowan writes on the creative powers of "conjecture as a method of discovery and making" (221) in the reconstruction of ancient ruins through mental representations and artistic renderings. She considers also the analogous process in instances of Renaissance writing and philology. Reading Montaigne's Journal de voyage, Warren Boutcher examines science and faveur in their political and social contexts. Closely considered are the extra-scholarly ramifications of the Vatican library's borrowing policy. Wes Williams's insightful essay considers the metamorphosis of pilgrimage accounts into travel narratives, using the pilgrim episode of Gargantua as a reference point.

On the whole, this is an interesting volume. Any reservations readers may have will be principally attributable to the inevitable theoretical disagreements arising from such a collection.

TODD ANDERSON University of Texas, Austin