Studies in the Novel articles from December 1994

Studies in the Novel archives from December 1994

Of woman borne: male experience and feminine truth in Jane Austen's novels.
December 22, 1994... Although Austen's novels have always been open to widely divergent interpretations, the two basic stances taken by critics are to view her as a conservative holding the values of the landed gentry in the late eighteenth century or as a...

Apocalypse when? 'Shirley''s and the politics of reading. (Charlotte Bronte's novel)
December 22, 1994... Among the essays, or devoirs, that Charlotte Bronte wrote in French for Constantin Heger while she studied with him in Brussels is one entitled "The Fall of the Leaves" (1843). A response to a poem by Charles-Hubert Millevoye, it speculates on...

The choice of innocence: Hilda in 'The Marble Faun.'
December 22, 1994... It's not easy for modern readers to like Hilda. She is self-absorbed, narrow-minded, shallow, and priggish. Armed with an unforgiving set of standards, she censors, silences, and banishes her closest friends. She has no empathy, no loyalty, no...

Apropos of nothing: chance and narrative in Forster's 'A Passage to India.' (E.M. Forster)
December 22, 1994... "Passage to more than India! Are thy wings plumed indeed for such far flights? O soul, voyagest thou indeed on voyages like these? Disportest thou on waters such as these? Soundest below the Sanskrit and the Vedas? Then...

Wifely silence and speech in three marriage novels by H.G. Wells.
December 22, 1994... In Experiment in Autobiography (1934), H. G. Wells predicts that his Edwardian "Writings About Sex" will be the first of his works to be swallowed by the waters of oblivion.(1) "If any survive they will survive as a citation or so... They had...

Jane Austen at Play: Self-Consciousness, Beginnings, Endings.
December 22, 1994... In addition to over sixty doctoral dissertations, the years 1990 to 1993 saw the appearance of more than 300 books, essays, and articles devoted to Jane Austen. Of the fifty books on her published in these years, some of course need not detain...

Jane Austen and the Body: "The Picture of Health."
December 22, 1994... In addition to over sixty doctoral dissertations, the years 1990 to 1993 saw the appearance of more than 300 books, essays, and articles devoted to Jane Austen. Of the fifty books on her published in these years, some of course need not detain...

Domestic Realities and Imperial Fictions: Jane Austen's Novels in Eighteenth-Century Contexts.
December 22, 1994... In addition to over sixty doctoral dissertations, the years 1990 to 1993 saw the appearance of more than 300 books, essays, and articles devoted to Jane Austen. Of the fifty books on her published in these years, some of course need not detain...

Our Ladies of Darkness: Feminine Daemonology in Male Gothic Fiction.
December 22, 1994... Joseph Andiamo's Our Ladies of Darkness: Feminine Daemonology in Male Gothic Fiction attempts to answer a question posed by Nathaniel Hawthorne: "What if the fiend should come in women's garments, with a pale beauty amid sin and desolation, and...

Narrative Innovation and Incoherence: Ideology in Defoe, Goldsmith, Austen, Eliot and Hemingway.
December 22, 1994... Responding to critical pronouncements heralding the disappearance of the author, Michael Boardman's wide-ranging, eclectic study aims to return the author to a central place in discussions of the relationship between ideological meaning and...

The Novels of Nadine Gordimer: History From the Inside, 2nd ed.
December 22, 1994... As Stephen Clingman remarks in the prologue to The Novels of Nadine Gordimer recent events have provided a compelling context for new readings of the work of Nadine Gordimer, not least the award of the 1991 Nobel Prize. Almost simultaneously...

Betrayals of the Body Politic: The Literary Commitments of Nadine Gordimer.
December 22, 1994... As Stephen Clingman remarks in the prologue to The Novels of Nadine Gordimer recent events have provided a compelling context for new readings of the work of Nadine Gordimer, not least the award of the 1991 Nobel Prize. Almost simultaneously...

Mixed Feelings: Feminism, Mass Culture, and Victorian Sensationalism.
December 22, 1994... As feminist and historicist criticisms have developed increasingly sophisticated theoretical apparatus, sensational novels have come into their own as objects of critical, as well as historical interest. Mixed Feelings provides a thoroughly...

Proust: Philosophy of the Novel.
December 22, 1994... In this study, Vincent Descombes proposes a philosophical reading of Remembrance of Things Past by attempting "to understand how Proust could conceive of his novel as a 'search for Truth,' as an effort to clarify unclear thoughts... It is...

Joseph Conrad: Betrayal and Identity.
December 22, 1994... Robert Hampson's Joseph Conrad: Betrayal and Identity is centrally concerned with "the interaction between Conrad's ideas about identity and his ideas about society" (p. 7). A Lecturer in English at the University of London and an Assistant...

Narrativity: Theory and Practice.
December 22, 1994... In recent years, narrative theory has largely focused on questions of cultural representation with particular emphasis on issues of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and ideology. Supporting this focus has been the assumption that many of the...

Henry James and the Lust of the Eyes: Thirteen Artists in His Work.
December 22, 1994... In that select company of writers for whom the visible world thrillingly exists--Goethe, Ruskin, Pater, Peter Ackroyd, Bruce Chatwin--Henry James has an eminent place. Goethe's admission in Dichtung und Warheit might have been made by his...

Eighteenth-Century Sensibility and the Novel: The Senses in Social Context.
December 22, 1994... Van Sant's book speaks to us from the intersection of eighteenth-century philanthropy, philosophy, science, and fiction. All these disciplines meet for her in the intertextual language of sensibility: it influences their discourse; their...