((( tioned among the discussion of the founding fathers of life-writing and textual self-exploration. But such minor queries must not discredit the merit of Müller’s monograph, which discusses a corpus of texts that may be reckoned among the most ‘writerly’ and least ‘readerly’ samples of experimental world literature - and yet the reader of The Self as Object gets the impression that Müller accomplishes this task of extremely challenging textual analysis in a concentrated but quite relaxed state of authorial serenity. A case study of the works of one of the three authors presented by Müller would have constituted the topic for a dissertation of potentially very high quality - the way in which Henry James, James Joyce, and Ernest Hemingway are integrated into the much wider scope of the present book, however, deserves to be greeted with admiration. , *% ) 5 / " % 7 ' B ! E 5" > "0 7 ( % * (5 6 * - ". : 0 - + *% % *% Its blurb claims for this monograph what Thomas Carlyle would have called "grand combinations" (History of Frederick the Great [1858-65], IV, 3). To translate the blurb’s florid language into more sober English: in a first step Old English saints’ lives will be reduced to a single structural model, a model that will emerge from meticulous analyses, combining text linguistics, traditional rhetoric and pragmatics. In a second step the new and important results from these analyses will be related to the historical and cultural setting of late tenth-century England. Such a combination of texts and history will reveal, most importantly, that the texts’ raison d’être was the strengthening of English national identity and the legitimation of Anglo-Saxon kings (cf. also 285). The book’s grand title is reduced on the blurb to a selection from Ælfric’s Lives of Saints (which, however, is not - as maintained throughout - a homiliary, and its uitae were not used for preaching during Mass; cf. 31-2, 48 and passim). Unfortunately, the corpus of texts under scrutiny here is nowhere clearly defined; the information given on the non-Ælfrician pieces in London, BL, Cotton Julius E. vii (the principal manuscript of the Lives of Saints collection) is negligible (33); and vernacular verse hagiography, of which there is a substantial amount, for example, is entirely neglected by the author. With regard to the first step - the textual analyses of the various uitae -, it has to be said that what seems to have come as a surprise to the author (a fairly uniform ‘Textstrukturmodell’) may occasion much less surprise in other students of hagiography: the pattern according to which saints’ lives (not only Old English ones) unfold themselves allows for little variation, irrespective of the method of narratological analysis that is applied. It has also to be said that not many readers will feel inclined to accompany the author on her quest for the ‘model’ through some 130 pages (141-273) of analyses "entlang von Nacherzählungen der Legenden" (30), lengthy repetitions of contents which are combined with long lists of ‘motivemes’ ("Motiveme") for the uitae under discussion; recurring ones, of course, such as "/ gefangennehmen, fesseln/ ", "/ vor den Richter führen/ ", "/ zum Götzenopfer auffordern/ ", etc. (193). As to the second step - the texts’ message to a late tenth-century English audience - the development of a common ‘English’ identity among the Anglo- Saxons has been a moot point and the subject of much and often controversial discussion among Anglo-Saxonists during recent decades - a discussion which is scarcely mentioned in Lensing’s book. In any case, scholars are agreed that a sense of ‘common Englishness’ had been established well before the 990s (the date of the Lives of Saints), and that by then, ‘English’ minds were preoccupied with the more pressing needs of dealing with the Viking onslaughts - a preoccupation which is prominently reflected in the Lives of Saints. Lensing’s second hypothesis, that Ælfric’s saints’ lives served to legitimize the Anglo-Saxon kings, has not much to speak for it either. The West Saxon dynasty, acting as ‘Kings of all England’ from about 927 onwards, was the oldest royal house in tenth-century Europe, and as such, it enjoyed a considerable prestige in Carolingian, Capetian and Ottonian court circles, who sent their embassies with costly presents in exchange for royal princesses as marriage partners. Even if English influence on the Continent was diminishing in the second half of the tenth century, there is plenty of unequivocal and contemporary evidence for the respect and loyalty which the West Saxon royal house could command from its subjects right up to the disastrous end of the reign of King Æthelred II (‘the Unready’), in 1016. In other words, it would have been rather pointless for Ælfric to aim to legitimize Anglo-Saxon kings and kingship by the examples of (say) the Northumbrian king Oswald (d. 642) and the East Anglian king Edmund (d. 869), in spite of what Lensing says (e.g. 272). In her historical discourse as well as elsewhere, Lensing reveals a pervasive failure to consult the literature relevant to the points under discussion. Thus, her authority for King Æthelred’s reputation (and for her philologically flawed discussion of a byname, "rædeleas", which, however, was not attached to him at any time) is a German history of Old English literature, published in 1971 (64-5 and n. 174). Her authority for the date of the synod of Whitby (663 or 664) is a German medievalist with a focus on Middle English literature (40, n. 67). Her authority for coronation orders in Francia and Anglo- Saxon England is an article by a historical linguist on the structure of Ælfric’s Life of King Edmund (268-9, 271, and notes). Her authority for the composition of the king’s council (the witan) and for the Winchester style in art history is a standard work on the monastic order in early medieval England (48, n. 93 and 62, n. 169). And so on. The author is astonishingly unaware of the scholarly tools for, and the recent significant advances in, source studies of Anglo-Saxon authors (the Fontes Anglo-Saxonici project; it is not possible to source any Anglo-Saxon text by means of the Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts …Written or Owned in England up to 1100; cf. 35 and n. 62). For Ælfric’s sources and for all other medieval texts readers are referred to secondary literature and their quotations of such texts; as a rule, references to, and quotations from, editions of the primary texts themselves do not occur (e.g. 264, n. 682; 281, n. 756; 288, n. 784). There is a great number of errors concerning simple historical facts (e.g. King Edgar was not educated at Glastonbury [54]; there was no revival of double monasteries [housing monks and nuns] during the Benedictine reform [55] - on the contrary; no second translation of St Swithun in 974 is reported by the Frankish monk Lantfred [264 and 290]; the remarks on the tenthcentury cult of the female saints of Ely glaringly contradict the historical evidence [288]). Numerous further errors concern the texts discussed by the author (e.g. St Æthelthryth did not suffer from a chronic disease [264]; Ælfric’s Life of King Oswald is not a frame narrative, the king’s marriage to a West Saxon royal princess cannot have mattered to Ælfric since he does not even mention it, and Oswald’s relics did not remain in Lindsey but were transferred to Gloucester in Ælfric’s Life [266-7]). One could fill page after page recording the errors and manifold shortcomings in this monograph. Thomas Carlyle’s remark alluded to above referred to the Anglo-Saxons, whom he held incapable of fostering "grand combinations" with regard to political theory and philosophy in general. Unfortunately, Lensing fails to refute him. Her book was accepted as a doctoral dissertation by the University of Münster in 1998; how it obtained its imprimatur is not easy to see. It was published by an established publisher in a series directed by three editors (one of them deceased). Did neither of the survivors realize that the book in its present form was not suitable for publication? + *% % *% 1 5 $ / " *% =% " 7 ' 8 J "