College Literature articles from September 1998

College Literature archives from September 1998

The modern academy raging in the dark: misreading Mamet's political incorrectness in 'Oleanna.'.
September 22, 1998... In discussing the 1992 debut of David Mamet's Oleanna, audiences and critics tended to highlight two features of the play: its indictment of political correctness on college campuses in America and its treatment of sexual harassment, an issue...

'Finnegans Wake,' colonial nonsense, and postcolonial history.
September 22, 1998... If it is a critical commonplace, even a cliche, to suggest that we are still learning to be Joyce's contemporaries, it is nevertheless worth reiterating the point with regard to Finnegans Wake. For it is Joyce's last text more than any other...

Was Shakespeare gay? Sonnet 20 and the politics of pedagogy.
September 22, 1998... A woman's face with Nature's own hand painted Hast thou, the master mistress of my passion - A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted With shifting change, as is false women's fashion; An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,...

"Abysses of solitude": acting naturally in 'Vogue' and 'The Awakening.'.
September 22, 1998... It is hard to imagine a literary text that has affected the study of nineteenth and twentieth-century American culture more profoundly than Kate Chopin's The Awakening (1899). Those who have taught it know that however the novel is framed - as...

Politicizing Samuel Johnson: the moral essays and the question of ideology.
September 22, 1998... Critics of Samuel Johnson have tended to represent him in one of two ways: either as the ideologically committed guardian of an old order or as an independent thinker free of constraining political allegiances and therefore superior to ideology...

Portraying male same-sex desire in nineteenth-century French literature: Pierre Loti's 'Aziyade.'.
September 22, 1998... Twentieth-century French literature has had a remarkable number of major novelists who have focused on homosexuality in their works, beginning with Proust and Gide. Before that, however, male same-sex desire seems to have played almost no role...

Culture, the academy, and the police; or reading Matthew Arnold in "our present unsettled state.".
September 22, 1998... [T]he encroachments of the rich are more destructive to the constitution than those of the people. (Aristotle 1993, 100) Never did people believe anything more firmly than nine Englishmen out of ten at the present day believe that our...

Grief, doubt and nostalgia in detective fiction or ... 'death and the detective novel": a return.
September 22, 1998... It's over four years since I finished my research on feminism and crime fiction, so recently I returned to my book to reread, and reassess, my position. The experience became a series of returns, and, like all returns, each time they become...

The children's revolt against structures of repression in Cristina Peri Rossi's 'La rebelion de los ninos' (The Rebellion of the Children).
September 22, 1998... Uruguayan writer Cristina Peri Rossi is concerned with all forms of repressive cultural practices which limit individual freedom. As a liberal intellectual who was exiled in Spain during the military dictatorship which terrorized Uruguay in the...

Books, aesthetics, markets, and debts.(the ideal book)
September 22, 1998... Bell-Villada, Gene. 1996. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. $40 hc. x+340 pp. Brantlinger, Patrick. 1996. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. $42.50 hc. $17.95 sc. xii+291 pp. Erickson, Lee. 1996. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins...

Art for Art's Sake and Literary Life: How Politics and Markets Shaped the Culture of Aestheticism, 1790-1990.(Review)
September 22, 1998... Bell-Villada, Gene. 1996. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. $40 hc. x+340 pp. Aesthetic ideals have a complex inter-play with the production of the texts hat present them. Texts not only represent the marketplace but are conditioned...

Fictions of State: Culture and Credit in Britain, 1694-1994.(Review)
September 22, 1998... Brantlinger, Patrick. 1996. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. $42.50 hc. $17.95 sc. xii+291 pp. Aesthetic ideals have a complex inter-play with the production of the texts hat present them. Texts not only represent the marketplace but are...

The Economy of Literary Form: English Literature and the Industrialization of Publishing, 1800-1850.(Review)
September 22, 1998... Erickson, Lee. 1996. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. $35 hc. xii+219 pp. Aesthetic ideals have a complex inter-play with the production of the texts hat present them. Texts not only represent the marketplace but are...

Literature and the Marketplace: Romantic Writers and Their Audiences in Great Britain and the United States.(Review)
September 22, 1998... Rowland, Jr. William G. 1996. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. $40 hc. xv+229 pp. Aesthetic ideals have a complex inter-play with the production of the texts hat present them. Texts not only represent the marketplace but are...

The new "New Negro": recasting the Harlem Renaissance.
September 22, 1998... Davis, Thadious. 1994. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. $34.95 hc. $17.95 sc. xxiii + 492 pp. Hutchinson, George. 1995. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. $35.00 hc. $16.95 sc. xii + 541 pp. McLendon, Jacquelyn. 1995....

Nella Larsen, Novelist of the Harlem Renaissance: A Woman's Life Unveiled.(Review)
September 22, 1998... Davis, Thadious. 1994. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. $34.95 hc. $17.95 sc. xxiii + 492 pp. If, as Ralph Ellison remarked in 1953, the "whole of American life [is] a drama acted out upon the body of a Negro" (28), the...

The Harlem Renaissance in Black and White.(Review)
September 22, 1998... Hutchinson, George. 1995. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. $35.00 hc. $16.95 sc. xii + 541 pp. If, as Ralph Ellison remarked in 1953, the "whole of American life [is] a drama acted out upon the body of a Negro" (28), the Harlem...

The Politics of Color in the Fiction of Jessie Fauset and Nella Larsen.(Review)
September 22, 1998... McLendon, Jacquelyn. 1995. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. $29.50 hc. x + 142 pp. If, as Ralph Ellison remarked in 1953, the "whole of American life [is] a drama acted out upon the body of a Negro" (28), the Harlem...

Harlem's Glory: Black Women Writing, 1900-1950.(Review)
September 22, 1998... Roses, Lorraine Elena, and Ruth Elizabeth Randolph, eds. 1996. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. $29.95 hc. xiii + 538 pp. If, as Ralph Ellison remarked in 1953, the "whole of American life [is] a drama acted out upon the body of a...

Cultural studies and its discontents.
September 22, 1998... Guest, David. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. $40.00 hc. 179 pp. Labrie, Ross. 1997. Columbia: University of Missouri Press. $39.95 hc. 306 pp. Moreland, Kim. 1996. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. $42.50 hc....

Sentenced to Death: The American Novel and Capital Punishment.(Review)
September 22, 1998... Guest, David. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. $40.00 hc. 179 pp. It is surely no secret that a self-imposed division of labor exists in contemporary literary and cultural studies. Most American departments of literature are now...

The Catholic Imagination in American Literature.(Review)
September 22, 1998... Labrie, Ross. 1997. Columbia: University of Missouri Press. $39.95 hc. 306 pp. It is surely no secret that a self-imposed division of labor exists in contemporary literary and cultural studies. Most American departments of literature are...

The Medievalist Impulse in American Literature: Twain, Adams, Fitzgerald, and Hemingway.(Review)
September 22, 1998... Moreland, Kim. 1996. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. $42.50 hc. 264 pp. It is surely no secret that a self-imposed division of labor exists in contemporary literary and cultural studies. Most American departments of...

Making the Team: The Cultural Work of Baseball Fiction.(Review)
September 22, 1998... Morris, Timothy. 1997. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. $34.95 hc. 190 pp. It is surely no secret that a self-imposed division of labor exists in contemporary literary and cultural studies. Most American departments of literature are...

Modern Poetry After Modernism.(Review)
September 22, 1998... Longenbach, James R. 1997. New York: Oxford University Press. $45.00 hc. $18.95 sc. ix + 209 pp. MICHAEL THURSTON YALE UNIVESITY Longenbach's is a dangerous book. Cogently argued, filled with close readings that are impressive for...

Artificial Mythologies: A Guide to Cultural Invention.(Review)
September 22, 1998... Saper, Craig. 1997. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. $17.95 sc. xxv+195 pp. KIRSTEN OSTHERR BROWN UNIVERSITY Artificial Mythologies attempts to redefine the style, form, and function of written academic work. Saper takes on...

Channel Surfing: Race Talk and the Destruction of Today's Youth.(Review)
September 22, 1998... Giroux, Henry A. 1997. New York: St. Martin's. $22.95 hc. 248 pp. MIKE HILL MARYMOUNT MANHATTAN COLLEGE Channel Surfing is a series of critical elucidations on some of today's most disquieting examples of popular culture, in particular...

Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature.(Review)
September 22, 1998... Thomson, Rosemarie Garland. 1997. New York: Columbia University Press. $45.00 hc. $16.50 sc. x+200 pp. JOYCE HUFF GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY In Extraordinary Bodies, Rosemarie Garland Thomson sets out to broaden the current academic...

What Else But Love? The Ordeal of Race in Faulkner and Morrison.(Review)
September 22, 1998... Weinstein, Philip M. 1996. New York: Columbia University Press. $42.00 hc. $15.50 sc. xxix + 237 pp. JOHN N. DUVALL THE UNIVERSITY OF MEMPHIS Philip Weinstein's new book doubtless will alienate a number of readers who may resist his...

Global/Local: Cultural Production and the Transnational Imaginary.(Review)
September 22, 1998... Wilson, Rob, and Wimal Dissanayake, eds. 1996. Durham: Duke University Press. $54.95 hc. $18.95 sc. vi+399 pp. LORRAINA PINNELL RHODE ISLAND SCHOOL OF DESIGN Global/Local: Cultural Production and the Transnational Imaginary is an...

The Real Thing: Testimonial Discourse and Latin America.(Review)
September 22, 1998... Gugelberger, Georg M., ed. 1996. Durham: Duke University Press. $49.95 hc. $17.95 sc. 328 pp. CHRISTOPHER WISE WESTERN WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY In recent years, few books have inspired as much feverish debate and critical scrutiny in the...