The Grounds of English Literature. By Christopher Cannon. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Pp. vi + 237. $65.

Christopher Cannon's brilliant book, The Grounds of English Literature, marks a step forward in theoretical studies of medieval literature, indeed of literature in general, by modeling a new kind of formalist analysis. Asking us not simply to utilize the formalist techniques of the past, but rather to embrace those techniques more fully, his version of formalism does not leave behind the insights we have gleaned from historicism, textual study, and cultural studies, but, rather, encompasses the possibilities afforded by all of these approaches. Observing that there exists a hegemony of preferred forms in the study of medieval literature that has constrained the view of the medieval literary landscape, Cannon offers a method for broadening our perspective by revising the notion of form itself. One cannot pinpoint Cannon's notion of formalism to particular techniques, for ultimately, the form of a text is something unique to each one, its animating principle, its soul. Cannon's formalism is born of the text under consideration rather than one imposed on it from without.

Elizabeth Robertson
University of Colorado at Boulder