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places, explorer not inward but outward.' The Gospel of John has been all these
things to me, both my sense of place and my displacement, my mask and my
unmasking, equally the source of unfulfilled dreams and the unsettling impetus
to exploration" (197).
Chapter six returns to a more direct consideration of the Gospel of John
through the medieval form of a Passion play. Having read himself from a
postcolonial perspective, Staley now reads the Johannine Passion narrative from
a postmodern perspective. Through five acts the three corpses on the crosses
engage in dialogue, representing the author as social critic, as literary critic, and
as autobiographer. The three struggle with each other and with themselves toward an interpretation of Jesus' crucifixion as expressed by John. At the end of
the chapter Staley introduces yet another possible way of drawing on autobiography, literary criticism, biblical interpretation, and the Gospel of John: "I wonder
if! could construct a postmodern, ethnically and gender I-Isensitive biblical criticism based on that indigenous western carnival: the rodeo" (234).
Staley writes with originality as he draws the reader into a fascinating intellectual and spiritual journey. Literary criticism and biblical interpretation quite
possibly have found a new voice, one that we will anticipate for challenging new
works in the future.
Donna Burney
Howard Payne University
Mary Through the Centuries: Her Place In the HIstory 01 Culture. By
Jaroslav Pelikan. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996. ISBN 0-300-06951o. Pp. x + 267. $25.00.

This book, the 34th by Iaroslav Pelikan in a long career at Yale University,
illustrates why he is highly esteemed by Catholics and Protestants alike. As a
Lutheran commentator on Vatican II, Pelikan has been in conversation with a
wide range of Christians for many years. Catholics admire his ability to remain in
dialogue with the hierarchy of the Roman Church; Protestants respect his thoroughgoing analysis of Church history and tradition. His agility with languages,
ancient and modern, increases his access to theological documents and historical
artifacts in danger of becoming inaccessible as foreign-language study continues
to decline, especially in the United States.
Mary, the mother of Jesus, holds a special fascination for Pelikan. He poses
the same question in this book about Mary that he posed in Jesus Through the
Centuries: His Place in the History of Culture (1987): "If it were possible, with
some sort of supermagnet, to pull up out of that history every scrap of metal
bearing at least a trace of his name, how much would be left?" He answers this
question in the present volume by collecting works of art to illustrate Mary's
presence in Western culture and by discussing literary works and musical compositions in which her presence is essential.
He structures the book according to 21 names ascribed to Mary from differing
times and places. Beginning with "Miriam of Nazareth" and "The Daughter of
Zion and the Fulfillment of Prophecy," Pelikan explores the few biblical references to Mary and then moves to the more controversial titles such as "The
Theotokos, the Mother of God." He explores the paradoxes of "The Heroine of the
Qu'ran and The Black Madonna" and "The Face that Most Resembles Christ's."

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Around each of the salutations Pelikan builds a careful historical context that
describes the time, the place, and, most importantly, the perplexing questions
that led Church officials and ordinary people to the answers they found in Mary.
An example of a perplexing question and Pelikan's treatment of it is found in
the chapter titled "The Great Exception, Immaculately Conceived." Here Pelikan
outlines the dilemma for Church officials: if Mary had given birth to Jesus who
was without original sin, did she herself participate in original sin? The New
Testament gave confusing help in answering the question because, as Pelikan
points out, the Greek word "young woman" had been translated "virgin" by the
early Church Fathers who used the Old Testament to support their claims that
Mary was a virgin. Ambrose of Milan tackled the question by asserting that, in
order to be free from sin, Jesus had to be liberated from ordinary conception.
Ambrose traced his thinking back to King David, who sinned when he took
Bathsheba as his own. Ambrose's influence on Augustine of Hippo led to a broader
discussion and a systematic understanding of original sin.
Augustine addressed the question of Mary's sinfulness by declaring that she
was exempt from the condition because she had given birth to Iesus and that
humans could not disgrace the mother of Jesus by implying that she had participated in sin herself. Augustine made his pronouncement and then went on to
other matters; however, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the question
came up again. In his Epistle 174 Bernard of Clairvaux declared that it was not
necessary for Mary to have been born of a virgin herself since the important point
was to recognize her as Jesus' mother. Duns Scotus finally resolved the question
through "maximalism." Scotus declared that God could do whatever God wanted
to do with this issue. God either preserved Mary from original sin, rescued her
from it at the moment of her conception, or purified her at a particular moment
in time. What God did, God did. In this way Mary could be free from original sin
because of this action.
To modern readers this complex logical explanation might seem superfluous
or bizarre, yet it shows the seriousness with which Church officials took the charge
of answering the disturbing questions. Pelikan is clear and straightforward as he
examines the theological debate from various times in history. Readers of Christianity and Literature will find several features that attract those interested in the
interaction of faith and literary concerns.
While art is the primary medium Pelikan uses to uncover the names of Mary
(one of the delights ofthe book is the nne color reproductions), he also includes
many references to literature-Dante especially. He describes the concluding
sections of The Divine Comedy and the praise of Mary by Bernard of Clairvaux
(139-51). By presenting a thorough analysis of how it is that Mary inspires Bernard and Dante, Pelikan prompts us to look for more references and appropriations of Mary in literature. One such example is Franz Schubert's borrowing the
scene from Lady ofthe Lake by Sir Walter Scott to write the most famous piece of
music about Mary ever written, "Ave Maria." Since Pelikan points out references
to Mary and her image as Woman, we look more closely for the general place of
women and images of women throughout literature.
Pelikan's ecumenical approach encourages readers of literature to consider
new possibilities in conventional interpretations of Mary. His chapter "Model of
Faith" explains the central place Mary took in Protestantism as the Reformers
insisted that they were seeking to reform the idolatry and magic ascribed to Mary,
not to denigrate her as the mother of Jesus (158). Pelikan also points out that
Mary is important to Islam as well since there are more references to her in the

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Qu'ran than any other woman including Hagar, the mother of Ishmael (69). Mary
is seen as "bridge builder" (67), no longer the sole province of the Roman Church.
The combination of ecumenism and an interdisciplinary approach supports the
concept that Mary belongs to all religions and to all cultures.
At the same time Pelikan recognizes, but understates, how particular the crucial choice Mary made was to Christianity. Unlike Leda, whose rape by Zeus
began a new Greek civilization, Mary was "the defining example of the full meaning of human freedom" (86). Mary's choice to participate, despite her fear and
trembling, in the Incarnation underscores the ability of every woman to make a
decision, to say "yes" or "no." Walter J. Ong in Fightingfor Life: Contest, Sexuality, and Consciousness (1981) says it even more strongly: "The symbolic effect of
the virgin birth is massive: a human being gave free consent to, accepted the
redemption of, mankind and thereby made it a reality. Because of Mary,
mankind's redemption is not only God's work, it is humankind's own-or, more
specifically, woman's own."
Pelikan is less comfortable in this book with feminist readings ofMary through
the centuries. He mentions in passing Marina Warner's Alone ofAll Her Sex: The
Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary (1983), quotes Simone de Beauvoir's criticism of Mary's "inferiority," and refers to Elizabeth SchUssler Fiorenza's work in
one sentence. A reader's general impression is that Pelikan prefers to downplay
late twentieth-century questions about Mary. Christine Allen, a sophomore English major at the University of Dayton, in a column for the student newspaper,
asks the question for her Catholic generation: ''What if I tell you my greatest
desire was to be a priest, and I couldn't bet" What has Mary to do with this questtont
Equally serious for this reviewer is the absence of the work done by the Society
of Mary, a teaching order founded by Father Chaminade in Alsace-Lorraine in
1817 for the express purpose of creating the "family of Mary." The order is worldwide and in the U.S. has created Catholic high schools and three universities:
Chaminade University in Honolulu, the University of Dayton, and St. Mary's University in San Antonio. As Gustav Niebuhr wrote in The New York Times on 31
January 1997, the largest library in the world devoted to Mary is the Marian library (founded 54 years ago) at the University of Dayton. More than 90,000 books
and pamphlets (in more than 50 languages-from five centuries) and Marian
memorabilia make up this library, yet Pelikan never mentions it.
Another omission is the scholarly work done by Father Bertrand Buby,
Marianist and Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Dayton. For
more than ten years Buby has been writing the Mary ofGalilee Trilogy: Mary in
the New Testament (1994), The Hebrew Scriptures (1986), and The Marian Heritage of the Early Church (1996). The use of Buby's work would add to the substance of Pelikan's sources and highlight what is basic about Mary: namely, that
she will not go away, this simple peasant girl-the one who, according to two of
the gospels, had the audacity to say "yes" to an angel and marked Western civilization forever.
Betty Rogers Youngkin
University ofDayton
Erotlc Dawn-Songs 01 the Middle Ages: voicing the Lyrlc Lady. By Gale
Sigal. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996. ISBN 0-8130-1381-X.

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