Book Reviews

John W. Baldwin. Aristocratic Life in Medieval France: the Romances of Jean Renart and Gerbert de Montreuil, 1190-1230. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000. xvii + 359 pp.

Daniel J. Sherman. The Construction of Memory in Interwar France. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1999. xvii + 414 pp.

C. Brian Morris. Son of Andalusia: The Lyrical Landscapes of Federico García Lorca. Vanderbilt University Press, 1997. xiv + 486 pp. $39.95.

Ramón F. Llorens and Jesús Pérez Magallón, eds. Luz vital. Estudios de cultura hispánica en memoria de Victor Ouimette. McGill University and Caja de Ahorros del Mediterráneo, 1999. 227 pp.

Robert Vilain. The Poetry of Hugo von Hofmannsthal and French Symbolism. Oxford Modern Languages and Literature Monographs. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000. xii + 376 pp. $85.00.

Janet Pérez. Camilo José Cela Revisited: The Later Novels. New York: Twayne Publishers, 2000. 189 pp.

Catherine G. Bellver. Absence and Presence: Spanish Women Poets of the Twenties and Thirties. Bucknell University Press, 2001. x + 294 pp. $46.50.

Allen Thiher. Fiction Rivals Science: The French Novel From Balzac to Proust. Columbia and London: Universiry of Missouri Press, 2001. 215 pp. $37.50.

Michael R. Finn. Proust: The Body and Literary Form. Cambridge University Press, 1999. xiii + 210 pp.

Melveena McKendrick. Playing the King: Lope de Vega and the Limits of Conformity. London: Tamesis, 2000. 230 pp. $75.00.

Willard Bohn. Modern Visual Poetry. University of Delaware Press, Associated University Presses, 2001. 321 pp. $47.50     

Believing in the USA: Derrida,Melville and the Great American Charlatan

ABSTRACT

This essay considers the relationship between the prophet and the charlatan, particularly as they figure in the contemporary American political landscape. It argues that at moments of democratic political crisis these figures arise and reveal the vacancy of sovereignty within the democratic model. The essay treats Herman Melville’s The Confidence-Man along with Jacques Derrida’s writings on democracy and the apocalyptic tone as resources in this endeavor. It considers as well why recent worries over the status of facts in the era of “fake news” have led to critiques of deconstruction.