Robert Challe: A Utopian Voice In The Early Enlightenment by Sister Lois Ann Russell, S.H.C.J. (review)

similar to a description of clothing and, indeed, the two may be paired to indicate a person's character or mood. The concluding chapter focuses on the multiple transformations in the Conde Olinos, in which the young lovers' souls change into embracing plants, then into birds, a healing spring and finally a shrine. In some versions the last stage predominates, in an obvious attempt to emphasize the Christian motif, while giving rational explanations to the supernatural elements. A minor point that may be noted is the bizarre use, for English, of the misleading and long discredited term "Indo-Germanic" (p. 136) in place of Indo-European. In addition, it would have been a welcome service to provide, whenever possible, the original versions of ballads from less common languages, which appear in the text only in translation. Finally, a more substantial introduction than the useful but sketchy five pages offered would have been helpful to tie together the six images discussed. In particular, one sorely misses a preliminary theoretical statement stating precisely how the author interprets the terms image and imagery, symbol, motif, and theme, which sometimes appear to be used virtually interchangeably. The dust jacket promises that this book will make "available important new critical tools sure to have significant results for ballad scholarship." This may be its most serious long-term aim, for which it is certain to be of great value, but it also offers the scholar and advanced student alike new, richer interpretations of many well-known ballads and it does so in a most lively, readable style.