authorites, the Church and the organized professions’ (p. 10). If this was true, then it is difficult not to feel that the needs of the English state in encouraging the development of Oxford and Cambridge was not very great. Of some 1,300 felfows of New College between 1386 and 1547, only 70, we are told, ‘attained positions within royal, aristocratic and episcopal households’ (p. 398); and this was a college where the fellows were predominantly lawyers. Most students from Oxford and Cambridge seem to have either have dropped out or become beneficed clergymen, which makes one wonder xhat professional value the education they received there served. Of course, it may have been the case that contemporaries beheved an educated clergy was a desideratum, so that prospective clergy were forced to go to the universities. But whether a university education had much real point for a parish priest is a different question entirely. Far from the medieval university being a response to a professional need, the intellectuals who created the institution ma) have invented its practical purposes, as R. Emmet McLaughlin argues in a forthcoming article in Hisfor), of Univerriries. Admittedly, Cobban may still be right. but it is difficult for the reader to be convinced when he deliberately says next to nothing about the curriculum. Given the difficulty of tracing the careers of medieval students. especially the majority who Iived in halls rather than colleges. a study of the curriculum would seem to be the best way of deciding whether the medieval university can really be seen as utihtarian.

However. this IS not to detract from the value of Cobban’s work. As an account of the foundation of the two universities, the development of the halls and colleges. and the student-bodt. it is unlikely to be bettered for a long time. Anyone who wishes to see in what ways Oxford and Cambridge differed from the Parisian model and how the college> gradually came to dominate the two institutions should read this book.

L.W’.B. Brockiiss

Darwin and the Novelists: Patterns of Science in Victorian Fiction. George Levine (Cambridge. Mass and London Harvard Cniversity Press, 3988). x + 319 pp.. SY.50 H.C.

George Levine’s latest uork forms a welcome addition to the growing body ofwork on the mterrelations betueen Irterar? and scientific writing. Draumg on rhe uork of Michrl Serres. Levme argues that science is ‘a cultural formation’ ’ equivalent to an> other’. His concerns. therefore. lie not v+ith ‘influence’ but with ‘the absorption and testing of Darwinian ideas and attitudes (e\,en when the ureters are nor thmking of them as Darwinian) in the imagination of Victorian novelists’ (p. 3). Makmg a bold break uith customar\- practice. he has chosen to focus on the work of novelists who have manifesti! not been directI> mtluenced b> Darwinian thought. This strategy issues in man! challenging and provocative claims. as in the suggestion. for example. that Troliope’s pre- 1859 novels are more ‘Darwmian’ than those of George Eliot in which she specificall! addresses Darnm’s Ideas.

Throughout the text our commonsense. comfortable assumptions are under attack Our understanding of what constitutes a ‘Darwinian’ perspective is problemattsed: Levine draws out the conflicting tendencies in Darwin’s work and the different forms ofpossible interpretation. In addition he also pomts to the fact that ideas he designates as ‘Darwmian’ often pre-date Darwin’s writing. The end result is a ver? subtle and complex text--H’e are forced to discard unified mterpretation of Darwm’s work, and lingering ideological comictions that situate science as the great originator. Such complexit>.

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however, gives rise. inevitably. to further methodological questions. If science is indeed equivalent to any other cultural formation, is it then helpful to label specific tendencies as ‘Darwinian’? or are the vestiges of a tradttional privileging ofthe scientific domain evident here? The problem is often one of emphasis. Levine points. for example, to the very significant parallels between Darwin’s narrative strategies and preoccupations and those of the Victorian realist novelists as represented by Trollope: ‘Disinterested, empirical. obsessively observing particulars. conscious of time and change, Trollope is. in short. Darwinian in his approach to fiction’ (p. 195). With the designation ofthese tendencies as ‘Darwinian’, the argument’s emphases on the important point ofparalleirsm (rather than influence or derivation) tends to be lost.

The methodological problems faced. and courageously confronted, by Levine are common to all scholars currently working within mterdisciplinary studies and challenging traditional boundaries. Once the isolattonist mould is broken, and science is placed within a contextual frame, is tt then possible to pin-point and define specific scientific elements and their impact? Is it possible to devtse a language and a methodology which can take due account of the undoubted social impact of scientific thought without resorting to the language and practices of previous non-contextual accounts? The problems. indeed, are precisely those faced by Darwin himself. and so astutely charted by Levine: although Darwin blurred the boundaries between species and thus undermined the stabihty of deftmttons, he was nonetheless forced to express hts radical new vision within language whtch carried the fretght of discarded meanmps.

Damin ond rhe Kovehszs forms a good complement to Gillian Beer’s Darwin’s Plors.

Although there is necessarily some overlap of concern, Levine’s orientation is very different: he 1s concerned as much wtth pre-Darwinian as post-Darwinian writing. tracing through the shift from the ethos of natural theology (as embodied in Austen’s Monsjield

Park) to that ofnatural selection in the mtd-to-late Victorian novel. Like Beer. Levine also pays close attention to Daruin’s rhetorical strategies. producmg further illuminattng tnstghts mto the textual base of Darwm’s arguments. HIS analysts of the novels IS stmtlarly suggesttve. as m the parallels he traces. for example. between the techntques of defamiltarisatton m Dtckens and Darwm

Levine’s own project is an exerctse In defamiltarisatton. as he discloses unexpected parallels between the sctentrfic and literary spheres. HIS attentton rests so firmly on these two domains. hou-ev er. that the materral and tnstttuttonai changes which underptnned the transformations and parallels he charts tend to be downplayed. Causal connecttons are left unclear. perhaps deliberately. although the tracing of parallels seems to operate at ttmeb as a form of explanation. where ‘Daramlan’ IS the priv,tleped term Le\,tne has not walked blandly mto these dangerous naters. houever: the methodologtcal problems he faces are a direct result of the boldness of hts project. The end result IS an excellent. thought-provoking uorh. to whtch all scholars in tnterdtsctplrnary studtes a-ill be Indebted.

Sally Shuttleaorth

L’nil,ersir\ of Leeds

Sexual Science. The Victorian Construction of M’omanhood. Cynthia Eagle Russett (Cambridge. Mass. and London: Harvard Cntversity Press. 1989). 245 pp.. S25.00

Thts is an excellent book. Erudite and beautifully written. it examines scientific theories of sex difference m the mneteenth and early, twentieth centuries. viewng these theories both as part of an ongomg tradttton of sctentific Inquiry and as a response to a parttcular