The Journal of English and Germanic Philology articles from January 1999

The Journal of English and Germanic Philology archives from January 1999

The Widow's Mund in AEthelberht 75 and 76(*).(Review)
January 1, 1999... Chapters 75 and 76 of the law-code issued by King AEthelberht of Kent during the early seventh century contain important evidence relating to the legal status of widows in early Anglo-Saxon society. The consensus of scholarly opinion is that...

The Genesis Narrative and the Primogeniture Debate in Seventeenth-Century England.
January 1, 1999... "O thou A-dam, thou Esau, thou Cain, thou Hypocritical man of flesh, when wilt thou cease to kill thy younger Brother? Surely thou must not do this great Work of advancing the Creation out of Bondage; for thou art lost extremely, and drowned...

Parzivals "Absage an die Freude" als Moment der Gralsuche.
January 1, 1999... Die sich als Gast am Artushof aufhaltende junge heidnische Konigin Ekuba von Janfuse hat versucht, Parzival zu trosten, nachdem dieser wegen der auf Munsalvaesche unterlassenen Frage durch Cundrie la surziere beschimpft und verflucht worden...

A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.(Review)
January 1, 1999... A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. By N. F. Blake. New York: New York University Press, 1997. Pp. xv + 382; 3 maps, 7 illustrations. $50 (cloth). Norman Blake has produced an interesting history of the English Language as an offshoot...

AN HISTORICAL STUDY OF ENGLISH: FUNCTION, FORM, AND CHANGE.(Review)
January 1, 1999... AN HISTORICAL STUDY OF ENGLISH: FUNCTION, FORM, AND CHANGE. By Jeremy Smith. New York: Routledge, 1996. Pp. xvii + 223. $18.95 (paper). Norman Blake has produced an interesting history of the English Language as an offshoot from his...

THE EMERGENCE OF STANDARD ENGLISH.(Review)
January 1, 1999... THE EMERGENCE OF STANDARD ENGLISH. By John H. Fisher. Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 1996. Pp. x + 208. $34-95 cloth; $14.95 paper. Apart from the introduction, which places its chapters in context, for those who are...

SPENSER'S LIFE AND THE SUBJECT OF BIOGRAPHY.(Review)
January 1, 1999... SPENSER'S LIFE AND THE SUBJECT OF BIOGRAPHY. Edited by Judith H. Anderson, Donald Cheney, and David A. Richardson. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1997. Pp. xiv + 215. $37.50. Not since at least Freud have we been able to take...

FAT KING, LEAN BEGGAR; REPRESENTATIONS OF POVERTY IN THE AGE OF SHAKESPEARE.(Review)
January 1, 1999... FAT KING, LEAN BEGGAR; REPRESENTATIONS OF POVERTY IN THE AGE OF SHAKESPEARE. By William C. Carroll. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996. Pp. xiii + 237. $37.50 William Carroll's Fat King, Lean Beggar is a fascinating as well as...

LYRIC WONDER: RHETORIC AND WIT IN RENAISSANCE ENGLISH POETRY.(Review)
January 1, 1999... LYRIC WONDER: RHETORIC AND WIT IN RENAISSANCE ENGLISH POETRY. By James Biester. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997. PP. xii + 226; $39.95. In this book James Biester argues that aspiring courtiers of the late sixteenth and early...

JOHN DONNE'S "DESIRE OF MORE": THE SUBJECT OF ANNE MORE DONNE IN HIS POETRY.(Review)
January 1, 1999... JOHN DONNE'S "DESIRE OF MORE": THE SUBJECT OF ANNE MORE DONNE IN HIS POETRY. Edited by M. Thomas Hester. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1996. Pp. 265. $39.50. In the first half of the twentieth century, Donne studies flourished...

TEXTUAL INTERCOURSE: COLLABORATION, AUTHORSHIP, AND SEXUALITIES IN RENAISSANCE DRAMA.(Review)
January 1, 1999... TEXTUAL INTERCOURSE: COLLABORATION, AUTHORSHIP, AND SEXUALITIES IN RENAISSANCE. DRAMA. By Jeffrey Masten. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Pp. xiii + 223; 14 illustrations. $54.95 (cloth); $18.95 (paper). In Textual...

FRANCIS BACON REVISITED.(Review)
January 1, 1999... FRANCIS BACON REVISITED. By William Sessions. New York: Twayne, 1996. Pp. xx + 181. $26.95. This admirable addition to the Twayne series expresses throughout its author's deep appreciation of and long involvement with Bacon's ideas and...

CONFORMING TO THE WORD: HERBERT, DONNE, AND THE ENGLISH CHURCH BEFORE LAUD.(Review)
January 1, 1999... CONFORMING TO THE WORD: HERBERT, DONNE, AND THE ENGLISH CHURCH BEFORE LAUD. By Daniel W. Doerksen. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1997. Pp. 181. $33.50. In his preface to Conforming to the Word: Herbert, Donne, and the English...

HISTORIOGRAPHY AND IDEOLOGY IN STUART DRAMA.(Review)
January 1, 1999... HISTORIOGRAPHY AND IDEOLOGY IN STUART DRAMA. By Ivo Kamps. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Pp. xiv + 255. $54.95. Ivo Kamps takes on a daunting subject, the reading of Tudor-Stuart historical drama in terms of Renaissance...

DIVIDED EMPIRE: MILTON'S POLITICAL IMAGERY.(Review)
January 1, 1999... DIVIDED EMPIRE: MILTON'S POLITICAL IMAGERY. By Robert Thomas Fallon. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995. Pp. xviii + 190. $40. This book by Robert Fallon is uneven, but the successful parts are successful indeed....

THE MATTER OF REVOLUTION: SCIENCE, POETRY, AND POLITICS IN THE AGE OF MILTON.(Review)
January 1, 1999... THE MATTER OF REVOLUTION: SCIENCE, POETRY, AND POLITICS IN THE AGE OF MILTON. By John Rogers. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996. Pp. xvi + 257. $39.95. Seventeenth-century English literature is complicated by the perplexed...

TRICKSTERS AND ESTATES: ON THE IDEOLOGY OF RESTORATION COMEDY.(Review)
January 1, 1999... TRICKSTERS AND ESTATES: ON THE IDEOLOGY OF RESTORATION COMEDY. By J. Douglas Canfield. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1997. Pp. xi + 315. $44-95 J. Douglas Canfield's Tricksters and Estates: On the Ideology of Restoration...

RESTORATION THEATRE AND CRISIS.(Review)
January 1, 1999... RESTORATION THEATRE AND CRISIS. By Susan J. Owen. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. Pp.xii + 343. $76. J. Douglas Canfield's Tricksters and Estates: On the Ideology of Restoration Comedy offers a new taxonomy of Restoration comedy. In the...

POETRY OF OPPOSITION AND REVOLUTION.(Review)
January 1, 1999... POETRY OF OPPOSITION AND REVOLUTION. By Howard Erskine-Hill. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. Pp. xii + 272. $68. Each of these scholars sets out to discover political meanings probably intended by their authors but never satisfactorily...

ILLUSORY CONSENSUS: BOLINGBROKE AND THE POLEMICAL RESPONSE TO WALPOLE 1730-1737.(Review)
January 1, 1999... ILLUSORY CONSENSUS: BOLINGBROKE AND THE POLEMICAL RESPONSE TO WALPOLE, 1730-1737. By Alexander Pettit. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1997. Pp. 254. $39.50. Each of these scholars sets out to discover political meanings probably...

THE LITERARY GENRES OF EDMUND BURKE: THE POLITICAL USES OF LITERARY FORM.(Review)
January 1, 1999... THE LITERARY GENRES OF EDMUND BURKE: THE POLITICAL USES OF LITERARY FORM. By Frans De Bruyn. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. Pp. ix + 318. $72. Frans De Bruyn begins with a few truisms about Burke as a "literary" writer who...

GRAY AGONISTES: THOMAS GRAY AND MASCULINE FRIENDSHIP.(Review)
January 1, 1999... GRAY AGONISTES: THOMAS GRAY AND MASCULINE FRIENDSHIP. By Robert F. Gleckner. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. Pp. x + 231. $45. One is hard pressed to think of a poet who has enjoyed a place in English...

SPIRITUAL HISTORY: A READING OF WILLIAM BLAKE'S VALA OR THE FOUR ZOAS.(Review)
January 1, 1999... SPIRITUAL HISTORY: A READING OF WILLIAM BLAKE'S VALA OR THE FOUR ZOAS. By Andrew Lincoln. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995. Pp. xviii + 322. $74. Blake's notoriously inaccessible 4,000-line illustrated epic, named VALA or The Death and...

BLAKE'S NOSTOS: FRAGMENTATION AND NONDUALISM IN THE FOUR ZOAS.(Review)
January 1, 1999... BLAKE'S NOSTOS: FRAGMENTATION AND NONDUALISM IN THE FOUR ZOAS. By Kathryn S. Freeman. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997. SUNY Series in Western Esoteric Traditions. Pp. x + 208. $49.50 (cloth); $16.95 (paper). Blake's...

JOHN CLARE: POEMS OF THE MIDDLE PERIOD, 1822-1837.(Review)
January 1, 1999... JOHN CLARE: POEMS OF THE MIDDLE PERIOD, 1822--1837. Volumes I and II. Edited by Eric Robinson, David Powell, and P. M. S. Dawson. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. Pp. xxix + 376; xiv + 402. $105; $105. First, caveat emptor. The Later Poems...

SHAKESPEARE AND DICKENS: THE DYNAMICS OF INFLUENCE.(Review)
January 1, 1999... SHAKESPEARE AND DICKENS: THE DYNAMICS OF INFLUENCE. By Valerie L. Gager. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Pp. xx + 419; 10 illustrations. $59.95. In summing up his subject's achievement in the penultimate chapter of Charles...

THE CONVERSATIONAL CIRCLE: RE-READING THE ENGLISH NOVEL 1740-1775.(Review)
January 1, 1999... THE CONVERSATIONAL CIRCLE: RE-READING THE ENGLISH NOVEL 1740-1775. By Betty A. Schellenberg. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1996. Pp. 165. $34.95 The way women talk to each other has long held a powerful fascination for...

THE EROTICS OF TALK: WOMEN'S WRITING AND FEMINIST PARADIGMS.(Review)
January 1, 1999... THE EROTICS OF TALK: WOMEN'S WRITING AND FEMINIST PARADIGMS. By Carla Kaplan. NewYork and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Pp. vii + 240. $35 (cloth); $17.95 (paper). The way women talk to each other has long held a powerful...

VIRGINIA WOOLF.(Review)
January 1, 1999... VIRGINIA WOOLF. By Hermione Lee. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1997. Pp. xv + 893; 86 illustrations. $39.95. Since Quentin Bell's ground-breaking biography of his aunt in 1972, several others have been published, most notably Phyllis...

ALL IS TRUE: THE CLAIMS AND STRATEGIES OF REALIST FICTION.(Review)
January 1, 1999... ALL IS TRUE: THE CLAIMS AND STRATEGIES OF REALIST FICTION. By Lilian R. Furst. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1995. Pp. xi + 213; $46.95 (cloth); $16.95 (paper). Given the deep discursive roots of the realist grammar of...

POSTCARDS FROM THE TRENCHES: NEGOTIATING THE SPACE BETWEEN MODERNISM AND THE FIRST WORLD WAR.(Review)
January 1, 1999... POSTCARDS FROM THE TRENCHES: NEGOTIATING THE SPACE BETWEEN MODERNISM AND THE FIRST WORLD WAR. By Allyson Booth. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Pp. xii+ 186; 13 illustrations. $35. When W. B. Yeats dramatically expelled the...

HIGH AND LOW MODERNS: LITERATURE AND CULTURE 1889-1939.(Review)
January 1, 1999... HIGH AND LOW MODERNS: LITERATURE AND CULTURE, 1889-1939. Edited by Maria DiBattista and Lucy McDiarmid. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Pp. x + 259. $49.95. Like most anthologies, High and Low Moderns is a mixed bag. It aims,...

REMEMBERING AND THE SOUND OF WORDS: MALLARME, PROUST, JOYCE, BECKETT.(Review)
January 1, 1999... REMEMBERING AND THE SOUND OF WORDS: MALLARME, PROUST, JOYCE, BECKETT. By Adam Piette. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. Pp. xii + 252. $65. Adam Piette has written a densely argued and complex book about the function of what he calls "prose...

THE SOCIAL SELF: HAWTHORNE, HOWELLS, WILLIAM JAMES, AND NINETEENTH-CENTURY PSYCHOLOGY.(Review)
January 1, 1999... THE SOCIAL SELF: HAWTHORNE, HOWELLS, WILLIAM JAMES, AND NINETEENTH-CENTURY PSYCHOLOGY. By Joseph Alkana. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1997. Pp. x + 167. $29.95. Majoring in English in the 1970s, I was often taught, like...

HUCKLEBERRY FINN AS IDOL AND TARGET: THE FUNCTIONS OF CRITICISM IN OUR TIME.(Review)
January 1, 1999... HUCKLEBERRY FINN AS IDOL AND TARGET: THE FUNCTIONS OF CRITICISM IN OUR TIME. By Jonathan Arac. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997. Pp. ix + 254. $39.95 cloth; $17.95 paper. What troubles Jonathan Arac is a "structure of...

QUANTUM POETICS: YEATS, POUND, ELIOT, AND THE SCIENCE OF MODERNISM.(Review)
January 1, 1999... QUANTUM POETICS: YEATS, POUND, ELIOT, AND THE SCIENCE OF MODERNISM. By Daniel Albright. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Pp. viii + 307. $59.95 Romanticism/classicism, abstraction/empathy, subjective/objective--these are some...

THE POETICS OF SENSIBILITY: A REVOLUTION IN LITERARY STYLE.(Review)
January 1, 1999... THE POETICS OF SENSIBILITY: A REVOLUTION IN LITERARY STYLE. By Jerome McGann. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. Pp. x + a 17. $35. An extraordinary amount of new material and provocative thinking is contained in Jerome McGann's short hook....