Reality Fictions: Romance, History, and Governmental Authority, 1025–1180. By Robert M. Stein. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006. Pp. x + 294. $30.

Reading Robert Stein's Reality Fictions is a curious experience. Without wanting to straitjacket the author, most readers do expect certain things of an academic work; it is perhaps traditional to begin with an overview of the theoretical enjeux, before presenting the findings of textual analysis and making sense of them by means of the critical tools previously established, and concluding with a summing up that may include contextualization and a suggestion of further avenues for research. There is nothing cut and dried about this approach, and there are plenty of important works that proceed differently; some writers privilege theory over analysis; others, although they will of course be making use of critical theory, tend to hide it behind the text. To some extent this will depend on the startingpoint; to some extent it is a matter of taste. It is part of the art of a good writer to be able to bring together theory and analysis in a seamless way.

Peter Damian-Grint
University of Oxford