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Starting with Homer, Winn documents the hostility toward performance shown by Plato, Augustine, Spenser, Milton, Dryden (to whom he devoted an earlier book, John Dryden and His World), Kant, and others. Rousseau's vehement denunciation of D'Alembert's proposal for a theater in Geneva is typical: "Like a servant dressed in his master's clothes," Winn explains, "the actor stands accused of 'forgetting his own place'; his trade is 'servile and base.'" But the virtuosity of Winn's historical discussion overshadows his subsequent exploration of "how the turn to theory might help us reconsider the troubled relations between the humanities and performance," which consists largely of predigested and uncritical exegeses of Saussure, Barthes, and Derrida. (Claude Lévi-Strauss, however, is instructively drubbed for his views on music, particularly his "nostalgic" acceptance of Western tonality as natural.) Overall, Winn's assurances that "theory" is the key to reconciling performance and the humanities are less than convincing. More convincing are the claims of the fourth essay, in which Winn proposes a reunion of the humanities and the performing arts--not merely through interdisciplinary studies but also through recognizing that scholarly excellence in teaching and writing requires proficiency in performing. --Glenn Branch
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