Review

Author(s): Jane E. Averill

Review by: Jane E. Averill
Source: Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature, Vol. 42, No. 4 (1988), pp. 252-253
Published by: Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1346987
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252 Rocky Mountain Review
must be a vibrant delight. His present book on Aristophanes certainly is.
We await in expectant awe its sequel, to be entitled Clouds of Glory.

WILLIAM H. HESS
University of Utah

RONALD SCHLETFER. A.J. Greimas and the Nature of Mean-

ing: Linguistics, Semiotics and Discourse Theory. Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press, 1987. 223 p.
In Schleifer's words, his purpose is to "describe the project of the career of
A.J. Greimas in linguistics, semiotics, and discourse theory, his overriding
attempt to 'account for' or 'make sense of' the phenomenon of signification
in human affairs" (xviii). In so describing, the author presents one or two of
Greimas' major works in each chapter and examines their significance in
relation to other influential theories of the times.
In the first chapter, "Semiotics and Language: An Analytical Dictionary,"
the author sets forth the rationale for the creation of the dictionary which
establishes a metalanguage for understanding of Greimas' and other
structuralists' work. Paralleling the conventional breakdown of linguistics
into morphology, syntax, and semantics, the book is then divided into lin-
guistics, semiotics, and discourse theory. In chapter 2, for instance, the
author first defines structuralism and then illustrates how Greimas in
Structural Semantics integrates methods and assumptions of the major
structuralist schools of linguistics: Prague, Copenhagen, and Bloomfieldian.
Schleifer presents the concept of isotopy, a term associated with Greimas'
early work, which presents a means to account for a "sense of discourse"
(76).
In chapter 3 he moves to a focus on semiotics by examining what Greimas
refers to as the level of "Semio-narrative structures" (85). Through this
level, he attempts to integrate system and process in contrast with
Chomsky who separates them into "hierarchically distinct levels" (85).
Chapter 4, "Maupassant and Semiotique et Sciences Sociales: Discourse and
Narrativity," examines the relationship between the semio-narrative struc-
tures and discursive structures in a search for various interlinking threads
which account for signification. This relationship forms a basic premise of
semiotic theory, and thus an essential element in Greimas' work.
In the final chapter, entitled "Avatars of Semiotics: Greimas and
Poststructualism," Schleifer analyzes "the appropriating power of lan-
guage-its ability to take up and put aside anything at hand for the sake of
its meanings" (163). The author explores the "crisis" in semiotics which he
attributes to "a crisis in the hierarchical structure of linguistics, semiotics
and discourse theory" (168) and then illustrates how the deconstructionist
or post-structuralist work of Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, and Paul de
Man relates to the work of Greimas.
Schleifer's work is a timely account of an important structuralist theorist
whose work cannot be discarded in light of post-structuralist critique.
Schleifer points out that Greimas was actually able to anticipate future
critiques of projects like his own. With the current focus on
post-structuralism, this book may give insight into exactly how Greimas'
theory may overlap, rather than contrast, with that of the
deconstructionists. Schleifer's ability to draw on numerous works,

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Book Reviews 253

comparing theories and terms is admirable. He gives extensive opportunity

for the scholar to pursue further research through references to related
works, often across disciplines.
It is perhaps the complexity of the work which constitutes its weaknesses.
First, the book is geared to an audience which is well grounded in theoreti-
cal linguistics. This work is quite unlike John Lyon's work on Chomsky
which offered those who were familiar with Chomsky an avenue through
which they could gain access to the important concepts of his work and thus
gain confidence to tackle the original.
Secondly, the author attempts to integrate the work of other theorists
with that of Greimas. In order to do so, he had to introduce distinctions in
terminology attributable to each theorist. Take for example, "immanence"
and "manifestation"or "langue and parole" which he explains Hjelmslev
describes as "system"and "process"and Chomsky refers to as "competence"
and "performance"(82). Although such distinctions are necessary to situate
Greimas' work in its intellectual context, one must continually refer back to
definitions to assure properinterpretation.
In sum, Ronald Schleifer is to be applauded for the compilation of
Greimas' work in relation to its intellectual context and the examination of
the work in relation to the latest developments in literary criticism.
However, he may find that his audience is limited to those seeking to
strengthen their existing knowledge in the field.
JANE E. AVERILL
Emporia State University

JUDY SIMONS. Fanny Burney. Women Writers Series.

Totowa, New Jersey: Barnes and Noble, 1987. 153 p.
In "Towardsa Feminist Poetics," Elaine Showalter remarks that especially
before the mid-nineteenth century "The feminist content of feminine art is
typically oblique, displaced, ironic and subversive; one has to read it be-
tween the lines ... " (WomenWriting and WritingAbout Women,ed. Mary
Jacobus, Totowa, New Jersey: Barnes and Noble, 1979, 35.) Judy Simons'
Fanny Burney demonstrates both the value and pitfalls of reading between
the lines to discover what Showalter calls "the missed possibilities of the
text." Not all writers are ironic, and once Simons establishes that Burney
"misses the opportunities to exploit the ironic potential of the authorial
tone" (63) in the novels following her epistolary first novel, Evelina, Simons'
reading of the spaces struggles to reconcile itself with the printed lines.
Fanny Burney's novels are often so openly satiric of her environment that
Simons' effort to account for Burney's many submissive and hierarchically-
supportive statements as "outward orthodoxy [which] concealed a revolu-
tionary spirit" (17) seems inconsistent.
The book's strongest offering is its presentation of Fanny Burney, the
private, self-fulfilling writer of Evelina and the diaries confronting the
publicly acclaimed and scrutinized writer of the later novels. Burney's early
and anonymous writings are powerful, says Simons, because they
"assert . . . the centrality of the self in defining the nature of experience"
and "embody the triumph of contingency over form" (40). Yet once Burney
became aware of her audience, her fiction became more formally prescribed

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