Conversations with Lotman: Cultural Semiotics in Language, Literature, and Cognition by Edna Andrews (review)

MLRy 100.3, 2005 885 yardstick' (p. 1). The issue of gender as cultural signifier is thus one of the foremost concerns in Colvin's evaluation of selected examples of each author's dramatic writ? ings, regardless of whether these were successful, either in terms of publication or of performance. This alone is an excellent aspect of the book, since it draws attention to many worthwhile dramatic works which have failed to receive the critical attention they deserve. In six chapters Colvin brings together plays which share certain gender concerns, albeit more often than not their approach is radically divergent. Under the heading 'Experiments in Dramatic Writing' she offersan interesting evaluation of Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach's Maria Stuart, Marie Roland, and Das Waldfrdulein, as well as her struggle to have these plays performed at the Viennese Burgtheater. They are set alongside the intriguing, but now virtually forgotten, Helene Druskowitz and her self-abasing play Die Emancipations-Schwdrmerin. In another chapter, entitled 'The Gender of Creativity', a comparison of the Kiinstlerdramen of Julie Kiihn, Elsa Bernstein-Porges, Mathilde Paar, Gertrud Prellwitz, and Anna Croissant-Rust is developed in terms of the authors' acceptance or rejection, as the case may be, of 'male' notions of artistic value. Similarly Colvin initiates her discussion of the political plays of Marie Eugenie delle Grazie, Lu Marten, and Berta Lask with the question to what extent 'these three dramatists are prepared to sideline ideas about women's subjectivity and emancipation to portray the emancipation ofthe (primarily male) worker' (p. 103). In these political plays by women Colvin's preoccupation with gender issues seems somewhat misplaced. It is true that Berta Lask, for example, in her drama Leuna 1921, does focus primarily on the male worker's experience, but this was inevitable since the play was an explicit record of the ill-fated revolt of the Leuna workers in 1921. One might remember, in this context, that in her earlier piece Befreiung Lask did place women's experience at the centre of the action. Surely it is not reasonable to expect every play by a woman to focus upon the woman's angle or issues of gender? The last two chapters focus on Else Lasker-Schuler and Marieluise Fleisser. Both discussions are well anchored in the critical debate, past and present, which surrounds their work and Colvin here succeeds in opening up further angles of understanding. Her reading of Lasker-Schuler's Die Wupper and of Arthur Aronymus, in particular, shows a shrewd awareness ofthe 'metalevel of humor' (p. 132) as an all-important subversive dimension in the plays. Where the work of Marieluise Fleisser is con? cerned, Colvin is in agreement with critics such as Elke Briins that these plays are 'peculiarly corporeal' (p. 160), and she suggests, convincingly, that the visceral di? mension of Fleisser's plays reaches beyond the body to become manifest in a language and a discourse which are displayed outside and beyond the patriarchal realm. Ulti? mately, this is the endeavour which operates as the touchstone against which, in the conclusion, the dramatic writings of all the playwrights discussed in earlier chapters are situated. University of Kent Agnes Cardinal Conversations withLotman: Cultural Semiotics in Language, Literature, and Cognition. By Edna Andrews. Toronto, Buffalo, and London: University ofToronto Press. 2003. xvi + 204pp. ?32. ISBN 0-8020-3686-4. Edna Andrews makes it clear from the outset that the aim of this book is not to lionize Iurii Lotman: The reader will not find an attempt to construct a cult of personality around Lotman or to use him to deconstruct other theorists of his day, either in the Soviet Union or 886 Reviews abroad: Lotman and his work constitute but one portion of the larger fabric of our analysis and exploration of complex questions encompassing dynamic modelling of human language, cross-cultural enquiry, and the relationship between cultural systems and other symbolic systems with which they intersect?especially human languages and the construction of individual and collective cultural memory. (p. xv) The three parts into which the book is divided (' Lotman's Cultural Semiotic Theory', 'The Construction of Semiotic Space in Verbal Texts', and 'Semiotic Theory as a Cognitive Science') reflectand confirm...

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