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Laments for the Lost in Medieval Literature (review)

throughout Byatt’s work between artistic shaping and order on the one hand and, on the other, everything in life that is formless and contingent. Campbell links Byatt’s suspicion of the consolations provided by artistic patterning with chaotic events in her fiction such as the unexpected, accidental deaths of Stephanie Orton in Still Life (1986) and the painter Joshua Riddell in “Precipice-Encurled” (1987). The latter death especially dramatizes the theme memorably, since Riddell shockingly plunges from a cliff to his death in the very act of trying to order nature artistically by composing a painting of a storm that is brewing. Campbell also explains that, along with Murdoch, Byatt accepts the ethical obligation to respect the impenetrable otherness of real people, who cannot be represented in art without being falsified. Campbell analyzes the novelist Julia Eskelund in Byatt’s second novel, The Game (1967), as an example of an artist who fails “to recognize and respect [...] the opacity of persons” (48). The result is bad, destructive art that precipitates the suicide of her sister, Cassandra Corbett, who feels trapped and distorted by Julia’s transformation of her into a character in one of her novels. Readers interested in A. S. Byatt will find much to profit from and enjoy in Jane Campbell’s book. Her commentary on the fiction is informative, tactful, and often illuminating. Her mature judgment and her extensive knowledge of both Byatt’s texts and the relevant contexts for understanding them give her critical readings a real authority and persuasiveness.