European Literary Careers: The Author from Antiquity to the Renaissance ed. by Patrick Cheney and Frederick A. de Armas (review)

MLR, ioo.i, 2005 193 the significance of the mother (mothers are important formale writers too, as we have seen in the discussion of Handke's work, while the parallel figure of the father often looms large in these narratives). This approach certainly allows for the discussion of feminist theory in relation to the writings of these women, and sometimes use? fully problematizes it, but the end result is a strange bracketing offof these works. Some odd conclusions are also reached, as in the generalizations about the figure of the mother as obstacle, when even the compliant mother can often function in the narratives of women autobiographers as a cautionary force and consequently act as an enabler; moreover, the association of negative emotions with the mother here is overwhelming and is not always supported in the texts discussed: for example, the assertion that, as Cardinal repeatedly expresses her love forher mother at the end of her narrative, she 'frees herself from the strong feelings she had towards her mother' (p. 127); by implication, strong feeling is negative and love is not a strong feeling! Despite some serious disagreements with this study, I nevertheless found it illu? minating. Its treatment of memory, of the interplay of past and present, of generic fluidities in the context of autobiography and postmodernism is most worthwhile. It also offersan excellent bibliography of primary and secondary sources. The first hundred pages or so are relatively free of typographical and syntactic errors, but the prevalence of these in the rest of the volume may suggest a certain haste, which is, perhaps, mirrored in some of the generalizations reached somewhat precipitously. University College Dublin Ursula Fanning European Literary Careers: The Author from Antiquity to the Renaissance. Ed. by Patrick Cheney and Frederick A. de Armas. Toronto, Buffalo, NY, and Lon? don: University of Toronto Press. 2002. x +366 pp. $65; ?28. ISBN 0-80204779 -3Patrick Cheney and Frederick A. de Armas's book is informed by both a modern and a traditional framework of study that has been revisited and has gained new currencies in theories of communication. These are understood as involvinga process in which a message is transmitted by an emitter/writerto a receiver/reader in a definite code and through a medium. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, literary studies were mainly centred on the author; however, in the mid-twentieth century?and mainly in post-war American literary criticism?the focus of scholars was on the text, with little attention paid to the other elements of the literary process. In the last quarter of the past century,the emergence of reader-response criticism saw this process turn full circle with its renewed emphasis on the role of the reader in literature. In the present day, literary criticism continues with this integrating perspective, although the focus may be on a particular aspect of the text under consideration. European Literary Careers: The Author from Antiquity to the Renaissance is a case in point since, as its subtitle indicates, it is written from the point ofview of authorship seen in a new light, that of 'career criticism'. After the 'death of the author', declared by Roland Barthes, and Michel Foucault's questioning of his/her identity,this collection of critical essays 'connects traditional with revisionist notions of authorship and career' (p. 21), and it attempts to enlarge the concept and the function ofthe author, both as a construct and as an entityto be discovered. Thence, the firststatement in this review is commendatorysince this extensive study provides a new exploration ofa fascinating concept, that ofthe subject who produces a text and the historical framework that makes itpossible. The concept of agency is explored here from classical antiquity to the Renaissance by different generations of scholars belonging to English, Spanish, Classical, and Comparative disciplines. Young specialists and eminent scholars with expertise in 194 Reviews their respective fields of study contribute articles published in chronological order of subject, which offerthe reader a panorama of the building of literary careers from Ovid to English women writers of the Renaissance period. In the firstchapter John Farrell develops the idea that 'the literary career took shape in Rome [mainly with Virgil] under the...

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