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Benson, S. (2003). Cycles of Influence. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. 314 p. $39.95. [ISBN 0814329497]

Stephen Benson’s book, Cycles of Influence, provides scholarly research regarding the relationship between folktales, literature, and narrative theory with its cyclical nature. Benson gives great insight into what he calls the postmodern narrative, which involves a return to storytelling based on a sequence of events, rather than a spiraling of events as found in modernism.

The book is composed of five chapters where each is as an individual study into narrative relationships. This style demonstrates Benson’s definition of the “folkloric story cycle”. Framed by an introduction and conclusion, each chapter discusses and studies a folktale in order to establish parallels between particular tales in different contexts and to demonstrate theory associated with them.

In the first two chapters of Cycles of Influence, the reader is given a detailed description of folktale structure and characteristics. A few examples include: emphasis on self-contained fictional environment rather than realism, the presence of a storyteller as a self-confessed fabricator, and an ever-changing state that defies authoritative versions.

Throughout the remaining chapters, Benson describes the folktale as a model in narrative fiction and the presence of its structure in a significant amount of recent fiction. Benson uses the interaction between the following literary works to support his findings: interactions between folktale and Italo Calvino’s Fiabe Italiane, between selected fictions of John Barth and the Arabian Nights, between the work of Robert Coover and the subgenre of the fairy tale, and between the “Bluebeard” stories and recent feminist retellings by Angela Carter and Margaret Atwood.

Cycles of Influence is a demonstration of creativity and critical thinking, brought together in an interesting novel with scholarly support. The book provides scholars interested in narratives, postmodernism, gender roles, or folklore unlimited potential for topics in the classroom and many colleague discussions.

Author Stephen Benson is a lecturer in the Department of English at Brunel University in the United Kingdom.

Reviewed by Carrie Croatt-Moore, Information Services Librarian, Science and Engineering Library, Wayne State University, ao3219@wayne.edu

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