Texas Studies in Literature and Language articles from June 2003

Texas Studies in Literature and Language archives from June 2003

"Sounding the Wilderness": representations of the heroic in Herman Melville's Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War.
June 22, 2003... In August of 1866 Herman Melville surprised his reading public by publishing a book of poetry entitled Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War. A parenthetical statement of purpose prefaces this collection: [With few exceptions, the Pieces in...

"Singularly like a bad illustration": the appearance of Henry James's "The Real Thing" in the pot-boiler press.
June 22, 2003... When Henry James has the narrator of the short story "The Real Thing" (1892) say he is the kind of artist "who worked in black and white, for magazines, and for storybooks," James is making an implicit joke that readers commonly miss (RT, 309)....

Historical and archetypal intimations of the Grail Myth in Cather's One of Ours and The Professor's House.
June 22, 2003... Among the best early examples of Willa Cather's enduring "affinity for romanticism" (Rosowski, ix), particularly her affinity for the spirit of the Age of Chivalry, is the last stanza of her poem "Then Back To Ancient France" (1899): "Lift high...

Yuman belief systems and Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian.
June 22, 2003... When New York Times reporter Richard Woodward called Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian the bloodiest book since the Iliad, he was probably right (36). Rarely does one find a novel so full of maimings, murders, massacres, and general mayhem as...