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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Olivia Holmes. <i>Assembling the Lyric
Self: Authorship from<BR>Troubadour Song to the Italian Poetry
Book</i>. Minneapolis:<BR>University of Minnesota Press, 2000.
Pp. 240. $34.95 (cloth)<BR>ISBN:
0-816-63343-6.<BR>
<BR> Reviewed by Gregory B. Stone<BR>Louisiana State
University.<BR><A href="mailto:stone@lsu.edu">stone@lsu.edu</A><BR><BR>Olivia
Holmes' <i>Assembling the Lyric Self: Authorship from<BR>Troubadour Song
to the Italian Poetry Book</i> is a fairly<BR>straightforward
demonstration, documented in tremendous detail,<BR>of a fairly limited "thesis":
that certain manuscript anthologies<BR>of medieval vernacular lyric, from the
time of the first<BR>troubadour chansonniers through Petrarch's composition of
his<BR>Canzoniere, exhibit arranged narrative sequences of an author's<BR>poems
-- sequences that function as "macrotexts" that tell an<BR>implied story of the
life of an implied author.<BR><BR>Holmes treats several authors, ranging from
some who are<BR>indispensable to her project, such as Uc de Saint Circ,
Guiraut<BR>Riquier, Guittone d'Arezzo, Dante, and Petrarch, to
other<BR>little-known early Italian poets such as Monte Andrea and
Nicolo`<BR>de' Rossi. There is much to be admired in Holmes'
scholarship,<BR>particularly her philological diligence and her
scrupulous<BR>loyalty to the manuscripts; and there is much information
that<BR>will prove valuable for scholars of medieval vernacular lyric<BR>and,
especially, of early Italian lyric.<BR><BR>One can hardly dispute Holmes' point,
nor would one wish to, for<BR>the phenomenon that she describes -- that the
sequential order of<BR>lyrics in medieval songbooks was sometimes motivated by
narrative<BR>impulses -- is a fact of literary history that has been known
to<BR>specialists for some time.<BR><BR>Of course, the next step after
establishing a fact of literary<BR>history is to venture an explanation.
It is on this level that<BR>the book is, in my view, surprisingly
timorous. For Holmes' does<BR>not offer much more than a tautological
"this happened because it<BR>happened." Her view, repeated throughout, is
that the emergence<BR>of narrativity in the arrangement of manuscript songbooks
was<BR>purely and simply an automatic by-product of late medieval<BR>literary
culture's transition from being a predominantly oral to<BR>a written one:
"Written transmission congealed both the order of<BR>the component parts of
individual poems and the sequence from<BR>poem to poem. This made possible
the lyric representation of<BR>historical time, for it is a characteristic of
reading to<BR>interpret juxtaposed elements as implying a temporal
sequence."<BR>Holmes speaks of the lyric anthology's impulse toward
narrative<BR>as "inevitable" (37) and "natural" (149), and says, regarding
any<BR>of literature's various formal possibilities, "if it can be done,<BR>it
will be done" (45).<BR><BR>Although a purely mechanistic explanation may have
its<BR>attractions, chief of which is its simplicity, it will not stand<BR>up to
much scrutiny. If the phenomenon in question is truly<BR>"natural" and
"inevitable," then it must necessarily happen in<BR>every time and place in
which a predominately oral lyric<BR>tradition is transformed into a
predominantly written one. But<BR>surely there are instances in world
literary history when (to<BR>borrow Holmes' phrase), "it could have been done
but was not." <BR>What is specific about Italy in the 13th and 14th
centuries that<BR>makes it a privileged locus for the rise of narrativity in
a<BR>lyric context? Why was Petrarch "more concerned with
the<BR>representation of the author's historical self than his
immediate<BR>predecessors were"? The only way to answer such questions is
to<BR>ascribe some causes -- ideological, historical, literary<BR>historical,
philosophical or otherwise -- that are more than<BR>simply mechanistic.
For if literary history is a<BR>formally-powered machine, then it will always
and everywhere give<BR>us the same products.<BR><BR>I am not going to offer any
alterative explanations here, since I<BR>have had my say on the issue elsewhere,
in my <i>The Death of the<BR>Troubadour: The Late Medieval Resistance to
the Renaissance</i><BR>(University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994).
Though I do not expect<BR>that Holmes should agree with any of that book's
claims; I do,<BR>however, feel justified in finding fault with her for showing
no<BR>indication of even having read it. I say this only
because,<BR>although it has substantially different aims and methods, it
is<BR>perhaps the one book that treats, generally speaking, the same<BR>object
of study as does <i>Assembling the Lyric
Self</i>.<BR><BR><BR> <BR></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>