Recent work in critical theory - Bibliography

William Baker

This alphabetically arranged bibliography annotates recently published books and is based primarily on materials coming into the Northern Illinois University libraries between July 1996 and August 1997. Inclusion does not mean exclusion in a subsequent Style bibliography or review. Our remarks will simply convey the basic content of each item as objectively as possible. The publication dates for most of the items are 1996 and 1997, although some monographs have earlier imprints.

As noted in previous surveys of "Recent Work in Critical Theory," it has been difficult to arrange systematically in subject categories the wealth of recent material in the field of critical theory; some placement is ineluctably arbitrary. While only too aware of the limitations of categories, we have adopted the following rubrics: (1) General; (2) Semiotics, Narratology, Rhetoric, and Language Systems; (3) Postmodernism and Deconstruction; (4) Reader-Response and Phenomenological Criticism; (5) Feminist and Gender Studies; (6) Psychoanalytic Criticism; (7) Cultural and Historical Criticism.

(1) General

Allen, Paula Gunn. Song of the Turtle: American Indian Literature, 1974-1994. New York: Ballantine, 1996.

The sequel to Voice of the Turtle (1994), Allen's latest collection of Native American fiction explores the last 20 years of the renaissance of American Indian literature. In addition to her extensive introduction to the lives of American Indian writers, Allen's volume includes more than 30 stories by such writers as Leslie Marmon Silko, James Welch, Linda Hogan, N. Scott Momaday, Louise Erdrich, and Sherman Alexie, among others.

Andrews, William L., Frances Smith Foster, and Trudier Harris, eds. The Oxford Companion to African American Literature. New York: Oxford UP, 1997.

In this comprehensive single-volume survey of African-American literature, the editors examine more than 250 years in the life of this aspect of American heritage and culture. In addition to investigating the tradition of African-American literary history, this volume devotes attention to the lives and works of more than 400 African-American writers, including such luminaries as Gwendolyn Brooks, Jamaica Kincaid, Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, and Toni Morrison, among a host of others. This study also features essays regarding a wide range of pertinent subjects, including African-American correspondence, slave narratives, autobiographies, journalism, and Sunday school literature, among other topics.

Baker, William, and Kenneth Womack. Recent Work in Critical Theory, 1989-1995: An Annotated Bibliography. Westport: Greenwood, 1996.

Baker and Womack offer a reference guide to more than 1,800 works of criticism and literary theory. Attention is devoted to a variety of schools of criticism, including semiotics, narratology, feminist criticism, psychoanalytical criticism, postmodernism, deconstruction, historical criticism, and cultural criticism, among other topics. Baker and Womack include a general introduction to the literary criticism of the early 1990s, as well as comprehensive subject and author indexes.

Billington, Michael. The Life and Work of Harold Pinter. London: Faber and Faber, 1996.

In the first authorized biography of one of the world's most important living dramatists, Billington examines Harold Pinter's work within the context of his life. Billington studies the manner in which Pinter's plays impinge upon such issues as human experience, memory, and the unfettered poetic imagination. Billington offers close readings of many of Pinter's most significant plays, including The Caretaker, The Homecoming, and Betrayal, among others. Billington also devotes attention to Pinter's award-winning television and film scripts, as well as to the complex and private inner self that shapes his imaginative world.

Bjork, Robert E., and John D. Niles, eds. A Beowulf Handbook. Lincoln: Nebraska UP, 1997.

A valuable companion to the study of the landmark poem, this volume features a host of essays that explore Beowulf's many fascinating literary nuances. Selections include Niles's "Introduction: Beowulf, Truth, and Meaning"; Bjork and Anita Obermeier's "Date, Provenance, Author, Audiences"; R. D. Fulk's "Textual Criticism"; Robert P. Stockwell and Donka Minkova's "Prosody"; Katherine O'Brien O'Keefe's "Diction, Variation, the Formula"; Ursula Schaefer's "Rhetoric and Style"; Theodore M. Andersson's "Sources and Analogues"; Thomas A. Shippey's "Structure and Unity"; Edward B. Irving, Jr.'s "Christian and Pagan Elements"; Bjork's "Digressions and Episodes"; Niles's "Myth and History"; Alvin A. Lee's "Symbolism and Allegory"; John M. Hill's "Social Milieu"; George Clark's "The Hero and the Theme"; Catherine M. Hills's "Beowulf and Archaeology"; Alexandra Hennessey Olsen's "Gender Roles"; Seth Lerer's "Beowulf and Contemporary Critical Theory"; and Marijane Osborn's "Translations, Versions, Illustrations."

Blotner, Joseph. Robert Penn Warren: A Biography. New York: Random House, 1997.

In this comprehensive biography of the Pulitzer-Prize-winning writer, Blotner explores Robert Penn Warren's forays into a variety of spheres, including the short story, novel, biography, poetry, criticism, and drama. Blotner traces Warren's life from his early years at Vanderbilt University to the multiple honors of his last years as writer and scholar. Blotner usefully synthesizes the criticism of Warren's work through readings of texts by such critics as Leonard Casper, James J. Justus, Randolph P. Runyon, Victor Strandber, and Floyd Watkins, among others.

Bradbury, Malcolm. The Atlas of Literature. London: De Agostini, 1996.

Bradbury's volume includes more than 80 essays that explore the role of various places in literature. In addition to examining a range of literary eras from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance to contemporary times, the sections in Bradbury's volume examine such issues as Thomas Hardy's Wessex and the manner in which the unrest in Northern Ireland impacts the writings of Seamus Heaney, Brian Friel, and others. Illustrated with 450 photographs, drawings, and maps, Bradbury's volume concludes with brief biographical notes about the authors, as well as a list of sites around the world associated with famous authors and their works that can be visited by readers.

Brunsdale, Mitzi. James Herriot. New York: Twayne, 1997.

Brunsdale provides a close reading of the life and work of James Herriot, with particular attention to the role of Yorkshire in his writings. Brunsdale includes chapters that provide individual studies of such celebrated works as All Creatures Great and Small, All Things Wise and Wonderful, and All Things Bright and Beautiful, among a host of others. Brunsdale supplements her study with a useful primary and secondary bibliography of Herriot materials.

Castronovo, David, and Steven Goldleaf. Richard Yates. New York: Twayne, 1996.

Castronovo offers an overview of the life and work of Richard Yates. Castronovo explores Yates's work as a realist writer, in addition to examining his forays into experimental fiction during the 1950s. Selected chapters discuss such novels as Revolutionary Road, A Special Providence, and Liars in Love, among other works. Castronovo supplements his study with a useful primary anti secondary bibliography of Yates materials.

Cheung, King-Kok, ed. An Interethnic Companion to Asian-American Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996.

Drawing upon the texts of a wide variety of works by Asian Americans, Cheung's volume devotes attention to the lives and works of Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, South Asian, and Vietnamese Americans. In addition to discussing each group's distinctive literary history, Cheung's study investigates the salient historical events that mark each group's cultural interconnections with American life. Cheung examines a variety of racial issues, including nationalism, the politics of representation, and crises of identity, among others.

Clapp, Susannah. With Chatwin: Portrait of a Writer. New York: Knopf, 1997.

Clapp surveys the life and work of Bruce Chatwin, the celebrated British writer who died in 1989. Chatwin authored The Songlines and In Patagonia - eccentric travel books rooted in Chatwin's obsessions and personal reflections, as well as his treks through unusual landscapes. Clapp, Chatwin's friend and editor, offers a portrait of this often mysterious writer.

Copeland, Edward, and Juliet McMaster, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997.

Selections include Copeland and McMaster's preface; Deirdre Le Faye's "Chronology of Jane Austen's Life"; Jan Fergus's "The Professional Woman Writer"; Rachel M. Brownstein's "Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice"; John Wiltshire's "Mansfield Park, Emma, Persuasion"; Margaret Anne Doody's "The Short Fiction"; Carol Houlihan Flynn's "The Letters"; McMaster's "Class"; Copeland's "Money"; Gary Kelly's "Religion and Politics"; John F. Burrows's "Style"; Isobel Grundy's "Jane Austen and Literary Traditions"; Claudia L. Johnson's "Austen Cults and Cultures"; and Bruce Stovel's "Further Reading."

Dancy, John. Walter Oakeshott: A Diversity of Gifts. Norwich: Michael Russell, 1995.

Dancy offers an extensive literary biography of the life and work of Walter Oakeshott, the scholar who identified the only extant manuscript of Sir Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur. In addition to examining Oakeshott's work as a student of the great twelfth-century Winchester Bible, Dancy discusses Oakeshott's forays into the texts of the gospels, church mosaics in Rome, Renaissance maps, and Elizabethan poetry, among other topics. Dancy also explores Oakeshott's role in public affairs, particularly regarding the writer's survey of long-term unemployment in England, Writers without Work (1939).

Day, Gary. Re-Reading Leavis: "Culture" and Literary Criticism. London: Macmillan, 1996.

Day discusses the controversial life and work of F. R. Leavis. In addition to arguing that poststructuralism - despite the manner in which it defines itself in opposition to Leavis - actually appropriates many of his principal ideas, Day contends that this misreading and denial of Leavis occurs because of a failure by many to read Leavis's criticism fully, as well as a failure to come to terms with the radical dimensions of Leavis's writings. Day also demonstrates several intriguing interconnections between Leavis's critical aesthetic and the interpretive ideology of recent insights in New Historical criticism.

Diment, Galya. Pniniad: Vladimir Nabokov and Marc Szeftel. Seattle: U of Washington P, 1997.

Diment discusses the relationship between Nabokov and his Cornell colleague Marc Szeftel, often considered the prototype for the protagonist of Nabokov's Pnin. In addition to examining Nabokov's fictional process for the creation of Timofey Pnin, Diment addresses several hotly-debated questions and long-standing riddles regarding Pnin and its critical and literary history. Drawing upon previously unpublished correspondence between Nabokov and Szeftel, Diment illuminates each figure's postrevolutionary emigre experiences in Europe and the United States.

Donnell, Alison, and Sarah Lawson Welsh, eds. The Routledge Reader in Caribbean Literature. London: Routledge, 1996.

Donnell and Welsh's collection provides a survey of Caribbean literature of interest to teachers and literary critics alike. Selections include works by Tropica (Mary Adella Wolcott), Tom Redcam (Thomas Macdermot), J. E. C. McFarlane, Albinia Hutton, H. S. Bunbury, Astley Clerk, P. M. Sherlock, Eva Nicholas, Clara Maude Garrett, H. D. Carberry, Claude McKay, H. G. De Lisser, A. R. F. Webber, C. L. R. James, Leo Oakley, Una Marson, Louise Bennett, Sylvia Wynter, Derek Walcott, Grace Nichols, Jamaica Kincaid, Benjamin Zephaniah, and Jean Binta Breeze, among others.

Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996.

Originally published in 1983, Eagleton's classic study of literary theory has inspired a generation of students and teachers of critical theory. In this updated edition, Eagleton provides a new generation of scholars with a retrospective of various developments in feminist theory, poststructuralism, postmodernism, and recent insights in cultural theory. Eagleton also provides chapters on the evolution of English studies, phenomenology, reception theory, semiotics, psychoanalysis, and various forms of political criticism.

Earnshaw, Steven. The Direction of Literary Theory. London: Macmillan, 1996.

Earnshaw examines the ways in which literary theory has completely transformed the manner in which English literature has been taught and read during the previous two decades. Earnshaw speculates about the future of literary theory, while also attempting to understand the reasons for many of theory's recent ideological crises. Earnshaw devotes attention to two principal philosophies of critique - the assumption that the text itself is the generator of meaning and significance, and the assumption that meaning and significance are functions of context.

Fargnoli, A. Nicholas, and Michael B. Gillespie. James Joyce from A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Writings. New York: Facts on File, 1996.

Fargnoli and Gillespie offer a valuable reference guide to the life and work of the great modernist author. In addition to featuring some 800 alphabetical entries that encompass specific aspects of the author's work and provide insight into the criticism of his writings, Fargnoli and Gillespie's volume includes numerous photos, as well as bibliographies of biographical and critical studies, a chronology of Joyce's writings and publications, a timeline for Ulysses, and a working outline of Finnegans Wake.

Foster, R. F. W. B. Yeats: A Life. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997.

In the first authorized biography of Yeats in more than five decades, Foster discusses the poet's tremendous impact upon modernism and beyond in the twentieth century. Drawing from archives of personal correspondence and contemporary biographical materials, Foster reframes our conceptions of Yeats and his family history, personal relationships, politics, and art. Foster devotes special attention to Yeats's interest in supernatural wisdom through a detailed analysis of his occult notebooks, arguing that these spiritual forays found their roots in the insecurities of his personal life.

Frye, Northrop, and Helen Kemp. The Correspondence of Northrop Frye and Helen Kemp, 1932-1939. 2 vols. Ed. Robert D. Denham. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1996.

Edited by Robert D. Denham, this two-volume edition of the correspondence of Northrop Frye and his future wife provides a portrait of the couple's early romance and intellectual relationship. Comprising 262 letters, cards, and telegrams, Frye and Kemp's correspondence reveals the critic's early talent as a writer, as well as demonstrating Kemp's expressiveness and intelligence despite her youth. In addition to discussion of their alma mater, Victoria College, Frye and Kemp explore a variety of subjects, including fascism, art education, religion, and music.

George, Susanne K. Kate M. Cleary: A Literary Biography with Selected Works. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1997.

George traces the life and work of Kate McPhelim Cleary, with particular attention to her formative years as a writer in Nebraska. George includes useful timelines and bibliographies in her study, in addition to a variety of rare photographs and illustrations. George supplements her volume with several of Cleary's selected works, including "The Stepmother," "An Old-Fashioned Mother and Wife," and "A November Day in Nebraska," among others.

Gilyard, Keith, ed. Spirit and Flame: An Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry. Syracuse: Syracuse UP, 1997.

Gilyard's volume addresses both students and teachers of African-American literature. Gilyard features the works of a variety of poets, including Amiri Baraka, Rita Dove, Toi Derricotte, and Suliaman El-Hadi, among others. Gilyard supplements her volume with a valuable introduction, "Spirit and Flame/Birth and Name."

Glotfelty, Cheryll, and Harold Fromm, eds. The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1996.

Selections include Glotfelty's "Introduction: Literary Studies in an Age of Environmental Crisis"; Lynn White, Jr.'s "The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis"; Christopher Manes's "Nature and Silence"; Fromm's "From Transcendence to Obsolescence: A Route Map"; Frederick Turner's "Cultivating the American Garden"; Alison Byerly's "The Uses of Landscape: The Picturesque Aesthetic and the National Park System"; William Howarth's "Some Principles of Ecocriticism"; Neil Evernden's "Beyond Ecology: Self, Place, and the Pathetic Fallacy"; William Rueckert's "Literature and Ecology: An Experiment in Ecocriticism"; Suellen Campbell's "The Land and Language of Desire: Where Deep Ecology and Poststructuralism Meet"; David Mazel's "American Literary Environmentalism as Domestic Orientalism"; Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction"; Joseph W. Meeker's "The Comic Mode"; Annette Kolodny's "Unearthing Herstory: An Introduction"; Scott Russell Sanders's "Speaking a Word for Nature"; Cynthia Deitering's "The Postnatural Novel: Toxic Consciousness in Fiction of the 1980s"; Dana Phillips's "Is Nature Necessary?"; Glen A. Love's "Revaluing Nature: Toward an Ecological Criticism"; Paula Gunn Allen's "The Sacred Hoop: A Contemporary Perspective"; Leslie Marmon Silko's "Landscape, History, and the Pueblo Imagination"; Thomas J. Lyon's "A Taxonomy of Nature Writing"; Michael Branch's "Indexing American Possibilities: The Natural History Writing of Bartram, Wilson, and Audubon"; Don Scheese's "Desert Solitaire: Counter-Friction to the Machine in the Garden"; Vera L. Norwood's "Heroines of Nature: Four Women Respond to the American Landscape"; Scott Slovic's "Nature Writing and Environmental Psychology: The Interiority of Outdoor Experience"; and Michael J. McDowell's "The Bakhtinian Road to Ecological Insight." Glotfelty and Fromm's volume concludes with useful appendices of "Recommended Reading" and "Periodicals and Professional Organizations" devoted to ecocriticism.

Goldsworthy, Kerryn. Australian Writers: Helen Garner. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996.

Goldsworthy traces the life and work of Australian writer Helen Garner through an analysis of her major works, including The First Stone and True Stories, among other texts. Goldsworthy offers chapters on Gamer's reputation, the literary reception of her works, and her aesthetic. In addition to a biographical chronology, Goldsworthy includes a useful primary and secondary bibliography of works by and about Garner.

Goodman, Susan. Edith Wharton's Inner Circle. Austin: U of Texas P, 1994.

Goodman offers a new reading of the life and work of Wharton through an analysis of her inner circle - a group of literary luminaries that included Henry James, Percy Lubbock, Bernard Berenson, John Hugh Smith, Gaillard Lapsley, Robert Norton, and Howard Sturgis, among others. Using vast archives of unpublished material by and about the members of Wharton's circle, Goodman offers an intimate view of the American expatriate community and its role in Wharton's fictions. Goodman's analysis of the interconnections between Wharton and her circle provides insights into biographical, feminist, and historical criticism, among other critical pursuits.

Gordon, Lois. The World of Samuel Beckett, 1906-1946. New Haven: Yale UP, 1996.

In this new biographical study of Beckett's early years, Gordon attempts to undermine earlier impressions of the playwright as reclusive, self-absorbed, and disturbed. Gordon argues that Beckett, with great kindness and generosity, responded heroically and optimistically to the world in which he lived. Gordon affords special attention to Beckett's formative years in war-torn Dublin during the Easter Uprising and World War I, as well as to his life in Belfast and Paris in the 1920s and in London during the Great Depression.

Greetham, D. C., ed. The Margins of the Text. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1997.

Selections include Greetham's "Introduction: Out of the Text and into the Margins"; Greetham's "The Resistance to Philology"; Gerald MacLean's "What's Class Got to Do with It?"; William L. Andrews's "Editing 'Minority' Texts"; Brenda R. Silver's "Whose Room of Orlando's Own?: The Politics of Adaptation"; Ann Thompson's "Feminist Theory and the Editing of Shakespeare: The Taming of the Shrew Revisited"; Jonathan Goldberg's "Under the Covers with Caliban"; Jonathan Bate and Sonia Massai's "Adaptation as Edition"; Thomas L. Berger's "'Opening Titles Miscreate': Some Observations on the Titling of Shakespeare's 'Works'"; James McLaverty's "Questions of Entitlement: Some Eighteenth-Century Title Pages"; William W. E. Slights's "The Cosmopolitics of Reading: Navigating the Margins of John Dee's General and Rare Memorials"; Evelyn B. Tribble's "'Like a Looking-Glas in the Frame': From the Marginal Note to the Footnote"; Michael Camille's "Glossing the Flesh: Scopophilia and the Margins of the Medieval Book"; Mary Keeler and Christian Kloesel's "Communication, Semiotic Continuity, and the Margins of the Peircean Text"; and W. Speed Hill's "Commentary upon Commentary upon Commentary: Three Historicisms Annotating Richard Hooker."

Hall, Joan Lord. Henry V: A Guide to the Play. Westport: Greenwood, 1997.

Hall offers a reference companion to Shakespeare's play aimed at teachers and students of Elizabethan literature alike. Hall's guidebook to Henry V includes analysis of the play's textual history, its literary contexts, and its influences and sources. Hall also devotes attention to Henry V's themes and dramatic structure, as well as to critical approaches to the play and Henry V in performance.

Harmon, Maurice. Sean O'Faolain: A Life. London: Constable, 1994.

Harmon provides a new portrait of the life and work of O'Faolain, perhaps the most significant Irish literary figure of his generation. Harmon explores the manner in which the celebrated novelist, literary critic, and editor's life influenced the direction of his writings. Harmon devotes particular attention to the study of O'Faolain's romantic nationalism and religious hostility, arguing that these elements shaped the construction of his timeless narratives.

Harvey, Robert. Marguerite Duras: A Bio-Bibliography. Westport: Greenwood, 1997.

Harvey's reference guide to the life and work of Duras is divided into three primary sections: Biography; the Works of Marguerite Duras (Primary Sources); and Criticism on Marguerite Duras (Secondary Sources). In addition to the inclusion of a useful biographical chronology, Harvey's volume addresses her various forays into the novel, film, radio, and television. Harvey supplements his study with an introduction, "Marguerite Duras: Writing as Life."

Hatcher, John. Laurence Binyon: Poet, Scholar of East and West. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1995.

Hatcher offers a critical biography of the life and work of Laurence Binyon, one of the most celebrated scholar-artists in British cultural history. Binyon is best remembered for his 1914 Great War elegy, "For the Fallen," which is carved on countless war graves and recited annually at Remembrance Sunday services. Hatcher discusses Binyon's work as a poet, dramatist, translator, art historian, and critic, as well as his 40-year career as a scholar in the British Museum.

Hays, Michael, and Anastasia Nikolopoulou, eds. Melodrama: The Cultural Emergence of a Genre. New York: St. Martin's, 1996.

Selections include Hays and Nikolopoulou's introduction; Michael Booth's "Soldiers of the Queen: Drury Lane Imperialism"; Jim Davis's "The Empire Right or Wrong: Boer War Melodrama on the Australian Stage, 1899-1901"; Thomas Postlewait's "From Melodrama to Realism: The Suspect History of American Drama"; Kornelia Tancheva's "Melodramatic Contingencies: Tendencies in the Bulgarian Drama and Theatre of the Late Nineteenth Century"; Lothar Fietz's "On the Origins of the English Melodrama in the Tradition of Bourgeois Tragedy and Sentimental Drama: Lillo, Schroder, Kotzebue, Sheridan, Thompson, Jerrold"; Barbara T. Cooper's "The Return of Martin Guerre in an Early Nineteenth-Century French Melodrama"; Nikolopoulou's "Historical Disruptions: The Walter Scott Melodrama"; Marvin Carlson's "He Never Should Bow Down to a Domineering Frown: Class Tensions and Nautical Melodrama"; Jeffrey N. Cox's "The Ideological Task of Nautical Melodrama": Hartmut Ilsemann's "Radicalism in the Melodrama of the Early Nineteenth Century"; David Mayer's "Parlour and Platform Melodrama"; Leon Metayer's "What the Heroine Taught, 1830-1870"; and Julia Williams and Stephen Watt's "Representing a 'Great Distress': Melodrama, Gender, and the Irish Famine." The editors supplement their volume with an appendix, "The Poem" - a poem by H. G. Bell, as recited by Sir Henry Irving with musical accompaniments composed by Sir Julius Benedict.

Hilligoss, Susan. Robert Coles. New York: Twayne, 1997.

Hilligoss provides an analysis of the life and work of Robert Coles, the author of more than 50 works of nonfiction. Hilligoss offers a close reading of Children of Crisis, among other nonfictional texts. Hilligoss also examines Coles's forays into photography and children's literature, as well as his writings about spiritual experiences. In addition to the inclusion of a useful biographical chronology, the volume concludes with an annotated bibliography of writings by and about Coles.

Hines, Thomas S. William Faulkner and the Tangible Past: The Architecture of Yoknapatawpha. Berkeley: U of California P, 1996.

Hines compares the fictional architecture of Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County with the actual landscape of Oxford, Mississippi, and its environs. Hines argues in his study that architecture and the environment have been overlooked in Faulkner criticism. Hines contends that both elements are crucial to our understanding of Faulkner's fictions and offers an examination of various architectural modes, including primitive, gothic, classical, and modern architecture.

Howells, Coral Ann. Margaret Atwood. London: Macmillan, 1996.

Howells offers a close reading of Atwood's life and work, with particular attention to her forays into Gothic romance, science fiction, and the female Bildungsroman. In addition to discussing such issues as cultural identity, nationality, and gender in Atwood's writings, Howells devotes particular attention to such Atwood works as Surfacing, The Journals of Susanna Moodie, The Handmaid's Tale, and The Robber Bride, among others.

Inglis, Fred. Raymond Williams. London: Routledge, 1995.

Inglis traces the life and work of Raymond Williams, one of literary criticism's most significant voices. Inglis examines the many different lives of Williams, from his experiences as a child of the Black Mountains and inspirational adult lecturer to his renowned work as a Cambridge professor and literary critic. Inglis offers particular attention to Williams's most significant works, including Culture and Society and The Long Revolution, among others.

Jarrett, Robert L. Cormac McCarthy. New York: Twayne, 1997.

Jarrett explores the life and work of McCarthy, affording particular attention to the writer's use of style, visionary landscapes, and parables in his fictions. Jarrett offers close readings of such works as Blood Meridian, The Orchard Keeper, and Child of God, among others. In addition to a biographical chronology, Jarrett features a useful bibliography of works by and about McCarthy.

Jaskoski, Helen, ed. Early Native American Writing: New Critical Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996.

Selections include A. Lavonne Brown Ruoff's Foreword; Jaskoski's preface; Wolfgang Hochbruck and Beatrix Dudensing-Reichel's "'Honoratissimi benefactores': Native American Students and Two Seventeenth-Century Texts in the University Tradition"; Laura J. Murray's '"Pray Sir, consider a little': Rituals of Subordination and Strategies of Resistance in the Letters of Hezekiah Calvin and David Fowler to Eleazor Wheelock"; Dana D. Nelson's "'(I speak like a fool but I am constrained)': Samson Occom's Short Narratives and Economies of the Racial Self"; Anne Marie Dannenberg's "'Where, then, shall we place the hero of the wilderness?': William Apess's Eulogy on King Philip and Doctrines of Racial Destiny"; Daniel F. Littlefield, Jr.'s '"They ought to enjoy the home of their fathers': The Treaty of 1838, Seneca Intellectuals, and Literary Genesis"; John Lowe's '"I am Joaquin!': Space and Freedom in Yellow Bird's The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta, the Celebrated California Bandit"; William M. Clements's "'The voluminous unwritten book of ours': Early Native American Writers and the Oral Tradition"; Jaskoski's "'A terrible sickness among them': Smallpox and Stories of the Frontier"; Robert F. Sayre's '"A desirable citizen, a practical business man': G. W. Grayson - Creek Mixed Blood, Nationalist, and Autobiographer"; Erik Peterson's "'An Indian . . . an American': Ethnicity, Assimilation, and Balance in Charles Eastman's From the Deep Woods to Civilization"; Carol Batker's "'Overcoming all obstacles': The Assimilation Debate in Native American Women's Journalism of the Dawes Era"; Martha L. Viehmann's "'My people . . . my kind': Mourning Dove's Cogewea, The Half Blood as a Narrative of Mixed Descent"; and Birgit Hans's "'Because I understand the storytelling art': The Evolution of D'Arcy McNickle's The Surrounded."

Kemp, Sandra, Charlotte Mitchell, and David Trotter. Edwardian Fiction: An Oxford Companion. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997.

Kemp, Mitchell, and Trotter offer a valuable reference guide to the Edwardian era and the fiction of the first two decades of this century. In addition to providing entries for more than 800 English writers and their works, the compilers devote attention the genres that came into being during the Edwardian era, including spy fiction, Ruritanian romance, and detective fiction, among others. The compilers explore the lives and works of a host of Edwardian literary luminaries in this volume, including such figures as E. M. Forster, D. H. Lawrence, and John Galsworthy, and also discuss a variety of previously disenfranchised writers.

Kendall, Tim. Paul Muldoon. Chester Springs: Dufour, 1996.

Kendall offers a biographical and critical introduction to Paul Muldoon, one of contemporary literature's most challenging and innovative poets. Kendall investigates many of the topics that mark Muldoon's verse, including the poet's early life in Ulster, as well as such esoteric subjects as the discovery of America by a medieval Welsh prince and the philosophy of Spinoza. Kendall also discusses Muldoon's influences, particularly W. H. Auden's dramatic effect upon Muldoon's verse.

Kenner, Hugh. A Reader's Guide to Samuel Beckett. London: Thames and Hudson, 1996.

Originally published in 1973, this reprint of Kenner's reference guide to Beckett has been updated to include recent insights in Beckett criticism, as well as to reflect the playwright's twilight years and his death. Kenner features individual chapters for many of Beckett's most significant works, including Waiting for Godot, Watt, Endgame, and Krapp's Last Tape, among others. Kenner also includes a useful chronology, as well as attention to Beckett's forays into radio, television, and film.

Kiernan, Kevin S. Beowulf and the Beowulf Manuscript. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1996.

Published with an illuminating Foreword by Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe, Kiernan's volume, originally published in 1981, offers a thorough and detailed analysis and textual history of Beowulf. Sections include: The Poem's Eleventh-Century Provenance; the History and Construction of the Composite Codex; and the Beowulf Codex and the Making of the Poem. Kiernan concludes his study with a useful appendix, "The State of the Beowulf Manuscript, 1882-1983."

King, James. Virginia Woolf. New York: Norton, 1995.

King offers a new literary biography of the life and work of the modern novelist. King devotes special attention to Woolf's private existence and its interconnections with her novels and her public self. Drawing upon the novelist's correspondence, King examines her often troubled relationships with such figures as Vanessa Bell, Katherine Mansfield, T. S. Eliot, Roger Fry, Vita Sackville-West, and Ethel Smyth. King also discusses Woolf's unorthodox marriage to Leonard Woolf, as well as the novelist's bout with mental illness.

Kraye, Jill, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Humanism. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996.

Selections include Nicholas Mann's "The Origins of Humanism"; Michael D. Reeve's "Classical Scholarship"; Martin Davies's "Humanism in Script and Print in the Fifteenth Century"; Kristian Jensen's "The Humanist Reform of Latin and Latin Teaching"; Peter Mack's "Humanist Rhetoric and Dialectic"; Alastair Hamilton's "Humanists and the Bible"; James Hankins's "Humanism and the Origins of Modern Political Thought"; Kraye's "Philologists and Philosophers"; Charles Hope and Elizabeth McGrath's "Artists and Humanists"; Warren Boutcher's "Vernacular Humanism in the Sixteenth Century"; Anthony Grafton's "The New Science and the Traditions of Humanism"; M. L. McLaughlin's "Humanism and Italian Literature"; Clare Carroll's "Humanism and English Literature in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries"; and Joseph Lowenstein's "Humanism and Seventeenth-Century English Literature."

Krementz, Jill. The Writer's Desk. New York: Random House, 1996.

Introduced by John Updike, Krementz's volume offers an insider's view into the working lives of some of contemporary literature's most prominent authors. Krementz includes portraits of such figures as Rita Dove, William Styron, Saul Bellow, Walker Percy, Veronica Chambers, and Eugene Ionesco, among a host of others. Adorned with an extensive selection of photographs, Krementz's volume includes personal musings by each of the figures in her study.

Lee, Hermione. Virginia Woolf. New York: Knopf, 1996.

Lee's portrait of Woolf affords particular attention to the texture of the author's daily life and its impact upon her fictions. In addition to providing close readings of many of Woolf's classic novels - including To the Lighthouse, Mrs. Dalloway, and Orlando, among others - Lee discusses the novelist's relationships with members of the Bloomsbury Group. Lee also investigates Woolf's relationship with Leonard Woolf and Vita Sackville-West, as well as the writer's daily contact with her homes, family members, and servants.

Lefkovitz, Lori Hope, ed. Textual Bodies: Changing Boundaries of Literary Representation. Albany: State U of New York P, 1997.

Selections include Lefkovitz's "Introduction: Textual Bodies - Changing Boundaries of Literary Representation"; Page duBois's "Sappho's Body in Pieces"; Robert Con Davis's "Aristotle, Gynecology, and the Body Sick with Desire"; Roberta Davidson's "Cross-Dressing in Medieval Romance"; Richard Rambuss's "Devotion and Defilement: The Blessed Virgin Mary and the Corporeal Hagiographics of Chaucer's Prioress's Tale"; Sheila Delany's "The Somaticized Text: Corporeal Semiotic in a Late Medieval Female Hagiography"; Deborah Laycock's "Shape-Shifting: Fashion, Gender, and Metamorphosis in Eighteenth-Century England"; Donald Rackin's "Mind over Matter: Sexuality and Where the 'Body Happens to Be' in the Alice Books"; Gita Rajan's "Oeuvres Intertwined: Walter Pater and Antoine Watteau"; Miriam Bailin's "Florence Nightingale and the Negation of the Body"; Freddie Rokem's "Slapping Women: Ibsen's Nora, Strindberg's Julie, and Freud's Dora"; and Martina Sciolino's "The 'Mutilating Body' and the Decomposing Text: Recovery in Kathy Acker's Great Expectations."

Lodge, David. The Practice of Writing. London: Penguin, 1997.

Novelist and critic David Lodge salutes several eminent writers who have influenced his life and work and explains the processes via which they created their great works. Lodge discusses such figures as Graham Greene, James Joyce, Vladimir Nabokov, Kinglsey Amis, Anthony Burgess, and D. H. Lawrence, among a variety of others. Lodge concludes his study with excerpts from the diary he kept during the production of his play The Writing Game.

Loehlin, James N. Henry V. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1996.

Loehlin examines the remarkable changes that twentieth-century performances of Henry V have brought to Shakespeare's complex drama of war and politics. Loehlin argues that the play has become, at least in recent times, a dark and troubling analysis of the causes and costs of war. In addition to including an expansive history of the play, Loehlin provides individual chapters on memorable film versions of the play by Sir Laurence Olivier and Kenneth Branagh.

Mackay, James. Vagabond of Verse: Robert Service - A Biography. North Pomfret: Trafalgar square, 1996.

Mackay provides a study of the life and work of Robert Service, one of the most widely read poets of this century. Mackay examines Service's childhood in southwest Scotland, his time in the Yukon after the gold rush, and his wartime years as a correspondent and intelligence officer in France. Mackay also discusses the figures who inspired Service's verse, including Dangerous Dan McGrew and the Lady Known as Lou, among others.

Malcolm, Cheryl Alexander, and David Malcolm. Jean Rhys: A Study of the Short Fiction. New York: Twayne, 1996.

The Malcolms offer a detailed analysis of the short fiction of Jean Rhys, the author of such novels as Wide Sargasso Sea and Voyage in the Dark, among others. The Malcolms devote particular attention to the 30-plus stories Rhys collected in such volumes as The Left Bank and Other Stories, Tigers Are Better-Looking, and Sleep It Off, Lady. The Malcolms argue that the stories often concern Rhys's interest in the "outsider" - the silent underdog that lurks on the fringes of her short fiction.

Matza, Diane, ed. Sephardic-American Voices: Two Hundred Years of a Literary Legacy. Hanover: UP of New England, 1997.

Matza's volume addresses both teachers and scholars of English literature, collecting stories, poems, and plays by American Jews of Sephardic descent. Matza's anthology demonstrates the manner in which these writers maintained their ethnic identity despite persecution, expulsion, and cultural insularity. Selections include works by Penina Moise, Emma Lazarus, Robert G. Nathan, Lawrence Pereira Spingarn, Ruth Behar, and Leon Sciaky, among others.

McGillis, Roderick. The Nimble Reader: Literary Theory and Children's Literature. New York: Twayne, 1996.

McGillis offers an evaluation of children's literature and the ways in which literary theory usefully interprets its plots, ideologies, and cultural origins. McGillis provides close readings of Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are, E. B. White's Charlotte's Web, and Chris Van Allsburgh's The Mysteries of Harris Burdick. McGillis discusses a variety of critical modes in his study, including archetypal, psychoanalytical, political, structuralist, postructuralist, and reader response criticism.

Meanor, Patrick. Bruce Chatwin. New York: Twayne, 1997.

Meanor provides a close reading of the life and work of Bruce Chatwin, the author of such works as What Am I Doing Here? and Anatomy of Restlessness, among others. In addition to including a useful introduction to Chatwin's life in an expansive prefatory essay, "The Life of Bruce Chatwin: A Magnificent Raconteur of Scheherazadean Inexhaustibility," Meanor concludes his study with an annotated primary and secondary bibliography devoted to Chatwin.

Messent, Peter B. Mark Twain. London: Macmillan, 1997.

Messent offers an overview of Twain's work and close readings of his most important works, including chapters on The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, A Connecticut Yankee in King Author's Court, and Puddin'head Wilson, among others. Drawing upon recent insights in cultural and literary theory, Messent examines Twain's travel writing and such comic short stories as "The Stolen White Elephant." Messent affords particular attention to the elements of incongruity and constant undecideability that undergird Twain's narratives.

Moseley, Merritt. Understanding Julian Barnes. Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 1997.

Moseley offers an analysis of the life and work of one of England's most daring and experimental contemporary writers. In addition to discussing the writer's forays into the novel, short fiction, journalism, and criticism, Moseley assesses Barnes's greatest works, including Flaubert's Parrot and Before She Met Me, among others. Moseley concludes the volume with a useful bibliography of works by and about Barnes.

Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

In this revised and updated version of the popular reader's guide, Murphy provides a reference guide to the understanding of world literature. Murphy's entries discuss a variety of authors and subjects, including biographies of poets, playwrights, and novelists; plot synopses and character sketches from seminal works; historical data on literary schools, movements, and terms; and myths, legends, and prizes, among others. This updated version of the guide affords greater attention to African-American, Eastern, Middle-Eastern, African, South-American, Eastern-European, and women's literatures.

Newsome, David. The Victorian World Picture: Perceptions and Introspections in an Age of Change. London: John Murray, 1997.

Newsome offers an introduction to Victorian writers and the manner in which they came to grips with the changing world in which they lived and worked. Newsome examines the ways in which utilitarians, social reformers, religious spokesmen, novelists, and sages provided conflicting solutions amidst fears of mob violence that threatened to erupt into revolution. Newsome also discusses the remarkable disparity in value systems practiced by Victorians from a range of cultures and classes.

Nichols, Peter. Modernism: A Literary Guide. London: Macmillan, 1995.

Nichols offers an introductory guide to modernism, arguing that one of its most distinctive and surprising facets is its diversity. Nichols contends that new stylistic developments, in addition to shifting politics and changing notions of gender and authority, influenced modernism's competing philosophies. Nichols provides close analysis of such subjects as Futurism, Expressionism, Cubism, and Surrealism, and demonstrates their roles in the construction of modernism.

Nielsen, Aldon Lynn. C. L. R. James: A Critical Introduction. Jackson: UP of Mississippi P, 1997.

Nielsen provides a valuable introduction to the life and work of C. L. R. James, with particular attention to the roles of history and necessity in his work. In addition to a detailed introduction on "The Black Critic as Prisoner and Artist," Nielsen discusses James's examination of art and its relationship to modern society. Nielsen also discusses James's critiques of the literatures of Trinidad, as well as the critic's examinations of the Pan-African Revolt and the fate of humanity.

Niemi, Robert. Russell Banks. New York: Twayne, 1997.

Niemi offers one of the first detailed critical analyses of the life and work of Banks. In addition to the inclusion of a useful biographical chronology, Niemi provides a bibliography of works by and about Banks. Niemi also includes close readings of such works as The Sweet Hereafter, Searching for Survivors, and Continental Drift, among others.

Novick, Sheldon M. Henry James: The Young Master. New York: Random House, 1996.

Novick composes a fascinating portrait of James, presenting him as a figure with boldness of spirit and a profound capacity for affection. Novick takes particular issue with James's frequent biographical misrepresentation as a bloodless man with little passion or courage. In addition to devoting special attention to the novelist's experiences with illness, sexual encounters, early loves, and his journeys to Paris, London, and Rome, Novick traces the interconnections between these life experiences and the writer's greatest works, including The Portrait of a Lady, Washington square, and The Golden Bowl, among others.

Oram, William A. Edmund Spenser. New York: Twayne, 1997.

Oram provides a lucid and engaging account of the life and work of Spenser, with particular attention to his composition and publication of The Faerie Queene. Oram discusses the place of Spenser's work in the world of poststructuralist hermeneutics, while also offering a biographical chronology. Oram concludes his analysis with a bibliography of works by and about Spenser.

Parke, Catherine N. Biography: Writing Lives. New York: Twayne, 1996.

Parke surveys the shape and nature of recent developments in life writing, offering special attention to the literary impulses that inspire biographical writings. In her analysis of biography's place in Western culture, Parke discusses the works of such celebrated biographers as James Boswell, Richard Ellmann, and Gertrude Stein, among others. Parke also includes individual chapters on Samuel Johnson and Virginia Woolf in an effort to assess their dual roles as practitioners and subjects of biographies.

Parker, Hershel. Herman Melville: A Biography - Volume I, 1819-1851. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1996.

In this first volume of a projected two-volume study of Melville's life and work, Parker traces the novelist's early years through his composition of Moby-Dick. Lavishly illustrated, Parker's volume explores the writer's sea experiences and their later role in the creation of his greatest works. The volume concludes with useful appendices, including genealogical charts and other forms of biographical documentation.

Parker, William Riley. Milton: A Biography. Ed. Gordon Campbell. Oxford: Clarendon, 1996.

In this updated second edition of Parker's 1968 study, greater attention is devoted to critical and biographical advances in our understanding of the life and work of Milton. Drawing upon a vast array of documentary evidence, Parker provides a portrait of Milton's life and the composition of his landmark works of verse and nonfiction. Gordon Campbell's notes to his updated edition of Parker's biography can be found in Milton: A Biographical Commentary, published simultaneously with this edition.

Payne, Michael, ed. A Dictionary of Cultural and Critical Theory. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996.

Payne's volume includes hundreds of entries devoted to the figures, terms, journals, methods, and concepts associated with cultural and critical theory in recent years. Payne's dictionary effectively reveals the fluid nature of cultural studies and the manner in which these spheres of study continue to be reshaped by new advances in cultural and political criticism. Particular attention is given to such categories as structuralism, poststructuralism, phenomenology, feminist studies, psychoanalytical criticism, Marxism, and formalism, among other areas of pursuit.

Peach, Linden. Toni Morrison. London: Macmillan, 1995.

Peach contends that the Nobel Prize-winning fictions of Morrison find their roots in a tense interface between culture and the ways in which it forces readers to question their assumptions about the novel as an art form. In addition to exploring the manner in which the narrative strategies of Morrison's fiction are determined by the African-American content of her novels, Peach includes chapters devoted to such works as The Bluest Eye, Sula, and Beloved, among others.

Peterson, Jane T., ed. Women Playwrights of Diversity: A Bio-Bibliographical Sourcebook. Westport: Greenwood, 1997.

Peterson's volume includes biographical entries devoted to a host of women playwrights, including Lynne Alvarez, Naomi Iizuka, Theresa Chavez, and Marsha A. Jackson, among others. Peterson's study also features several critical essays, including Suzanne Bennett's "Introduction: The Challenges of Diversity"; Sydne Mahone's "The Sista Masses (1970s-1990s): African-American Women Playwrights"; Chiori Miyagawa's "Brave, Bold, and Poetic: The New Generation of Asian-American Women Playwrights"; Tiffany Ana Lopez's "Beyond the Festival Latino: (Re)Defining Latina Drama for the Mainstage"; and Jill Dolan's "Lesbian Playwrights: Diverse Interests, Identities, and Styles."

Pyle, Hilary. Yeats: Portrait of an Artistic Family. London: Merrell Holberton, 1997.

Lavishly illustrated, Pyle's volume offers a study of Yeats's family and its impact upon his life and work. Pyle, curator of the Yeats Museum, focuses on three generations of Yeatses and draws on many of the family's most important paintings and drawings housed in the National Gallery of Ireland. Pyle demonstrates the ways in which three generations of Yeatses - as opposed to merely the achievements of William Butler Yeats - shared in the creation and shaping of Ireland's nineteenth- and twentieth-century artistic and literary heritage.

Quinn, J. J., ed. Flannery O'Connor: A Memorial. Scranton: U of Scranton P, 1995.

Originally published in a 1964 edition of Esprit that memorialized the death of Flannery O'Connor, Quinn's collection of essays has been updated to reflect O'Connor's critical and literary heritage in the intervening years. Quinn's volume includes the memories of such luminaries as Saul Bellow, Cleanth Brooks, Walter Burghardt, Harold Gardiner, Thomas Merton, Walker Percy, Eudora Welty, Katherine Anne Porter, and Robert Penn Warren.

Rasmussen, R. Kent. Mark Twain A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Writings. New York: Facts on File, 1995.

Rasmussen's useful reference guide includes detailed analytical synopses of all of Twain's books and major short works, with summaries of the publishing histories and critical reception of each text. Rasmussen provides discussion of Twain's major characters, as well as identifications of the places and names of the writer's settings. Rasmussen discusses selected dramatic adaptations of Twain's novels, including attention to the various actors who portrayed the author over the years. Rasmussen supplements his study with a map showing where Twain lived and traveled throughout North America.

Reid, Panthea. Art and Affection: A Life of Virginia Woolf. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996.

Reid creates a portrait of Woolf's brilliant fictions and her profoundly tragic inner life. Drawing upon a variety of unpublished documents, Reid offers close readings of Woolf's most celebrated novels. Reid devotes special attention to the writer's relationships with her parents, grandmother, husband Leonard, friends and acquaintances, and the renowned Bloomsbury Group. Reid argues that Woolf was deeply wounded by sexual abuse in childhood, as well as by her intense rivalry with her artist-sister, Vanessa Bell - issues that led to mental illness and ultimately to suicide in the River Ouse.

Roberts, Neil. Meredith and the Novel. London: Macmillan, 1997.

Roberts discusses the ways in which writers as diverse as Oscar Wilde and Virginia Woolf have been influenced by the iconoclasm, social radicalism, and stylistic diversity of George Meredith's fictions. Roberts attempts to determine the reasons for Meredith's only occasional critical acclaim and popular neglect despite his remarkable influence upon a host of renowned writers in his time and beyond. Roberts's volume offers a portrait of Meredith that explores the writer's role as a precursor to the modernist novel.

Roudane, Matthew C. American Drama since 1960: A Critical History. New York: Twayne, 1996.

Roudane surveys the evolution of American drama during the previous three decades, arguing that contemporary playwrights have revitalized the genre through their forays into issues of identity, politics, and stylistic experimentation. Roudane devotes particular attention to works by such dramatists as Lorraine Hansberry, Alice Childress, Amiri Baraka, Marsha Norman, Wendy Wasserstein, Beth Henley, Tony Kushner, Edward Albee, David Mamet, and Sam Shepard, among a wide variety of other playwrights. Roudane's study concludes with a useful primary and secondary bibliography devoted to American drama since 1960.

Russell, Daniel. Emblematic Structures in Renaissance French Culture. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1995.

Russell explores the roles of the emblem and the device (or impresa, as it was known in Italy) in the generation and reception of discourse and art in Western Europe between the late Middle Ages and the mid-eighteenth century. In addition to demonstrating that in the history of Western symbolism the emblematic sign functioned as a bridge between late medieval allegory and the Romantic metaphor, Russell reveals the ways in which emblems influenced the production of courtly decoration, ceremony, and propaganda in the Renaissance era.

Sauerberg, Lars Ole. Versions of the Past - Visions of the Future: The Canonical in the Criticism of T. S. Eliot, F. R. Leavis, Northrop Frye, and Harold Bloom. London: Macmillan, 1997.

Sauerberg examines the notion of a literary canon and its place as one of the most prominent and contentious issues in contemporary literary criticism. Sauerberg investigates the function of the canon in the literary criticism of T. S. Eliot, F. R. Leavis, Northrop Frye, and Harold Bloom. Sauerberg focuses on the interconnections between a critic's canonical preferences and his or her desire for the improvement of cultural and aesthetic conditions.

Saunders, Max. Ford Madox Ford: A Dual Life. 2 vols. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996.

In this two-volume study of Ford's life and work, Saunders traces the novelist's life from his formative years and the composition of The Good Soldier through his departure for France in 1916 and his death in 1939. In addition to affording close attention to the composition of Ford's postwar masterpiece, Parade's End, Saunders discusses the writer's role in the founding of the influential Transatlantic Review. Saunders also examines Ford's personal relationships with Stella Bowen, Violet Hunt, Jean Rhys, and Janice Biala, among others.

Schaefer, Michael W. A Reader's Guide to the Short Stories of Stephen Crane. New York: G. K. Hall, 1996.

Schaefer's reference guide to the short works of Stephen Crane includes individual entries devoted to the writer's stories from "'And If He Wills, We Must Die'" through "The Wise Men." Each entry contains information on each story's plot, characters, design, and critical reception. Schaefer concludes his study with a useful secondary bibliography of Crane criticism.

Seymour-Smith, Martin, and Andrew C. Kimmens, eds. World Authors, 19001950. 4 vols. New York: H. W. Wilson, 1996.

Seymour-Smith and Kimmens's four-volume survey of world authors from 1900 to 1950 provides biographical and critical entries for more than 2,500 literary figures. The editors offer vital statistics, anecdotal narratives, and critical responses for each writer. Seymour-Smith and Kimmens supplement many of the entries with brief examples of each figure's writing style.

Shattuck, Roger. Forbidden Knowledge from Prometheus to Pornography. New York: St. Martin's, 1996.

Shattuck examines the moral responsibility of literature in our everyday lives, while discussing the violent world in which we live. Shattuck traces these competing issues through analyses of works by Milton, the Marquis de Sade, Mary Shelley, Herman Melville, and Emily Dickinson, among a host of others. Shattuck's volume challenges readers to think judiciously about morality and the sacred in an era of radical skepticism.

Shuter, William F. Rereading Walter Pater. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997.

Shuter investigates Walter Pater's role as a pivotal figure in nineteenth-century culture and the emergence of modernism. Shuter offers a conventional account of Pater's texts and explores various changes in his aesthetic over time. Shuter's rereading of Pater's work reveals patterns of continuity and anticipation that alter our conceptions of Pater and his work.

Sobran, Joseph. Alias Shakespeare: Solving the Greatest Literary Mystery of All Time. New York: Free P, 1997.

In addition to discussing the various threads of the controversy over the authorship of Shakespeare's plays, Sobran argues that it is improbable that William Shakespeare wrote the plays, arguing that Edward de Vere, the seventeenth Earl of Oxford, composed the works attributed to Shakespeare. Sobran also reviews the cases of other "claimants" to the authorship of Shakespeare's plays, including Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe, and Francis Bacon, among others.

Sova, Dawn B. Agatha Christie A to Z: The Essential Reference to Her Life and Writings. New York: Facts on File, 1997.

Sova provides a variety of information on the works of Agatha Christie, including an extensive biographical chronology and crime notes for each of her mysteries. Sova offers publishing and dramatization histories for every novel, play, and short story, as well as comprehensive character and cast lists. In addition to surveying various television and film productions of Christie's works, Sova provides categorical appendices of murders by poison, gunshot, stabbing, strangling, drowning, throat cutting, immolation, and suffocation.

Spikes, Michael P. Understanding Contemporary American Literary Theory. Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 1997.

Spikes provides readers with a comprehensive guide to the evolution of contemporary American literary theory. In addition to a useful primary and secondary bibliography devoted to critical theory, Spikes offers an introduction, "A Brief History of Literary Theory in the Twentieth Century." Spikes includes chapters on Paul de Man, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Elaine Showalter, Stephen Greenblatt, Edward W. Said, and Richard Rorty, and details each figure's contributions to contemporary literary theory.

Sternlicht, Sanford V. Jean Rhys. New York: Twayne, 1997.

Sternlicht's biography of the life and work of Jean Rhys includes attention to her major novels and their critical reception. In addition to chapters on Voyage in the Dark, Wide Sargasso Sea, and Good Morning, Midnight, Sternlicht includes an expansive analysis of the critical response to her works. Sternlicht concludes his volume with a summary of Rhys's literary achievement.

Storey, Mark. Robert Southey: A Life. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997.

Storey surveys the life and work of Southey, from his significant influence upon the literary scene of the 1790s through his death in 1843. In addition to exploring Southey's experiences in the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, Storey examines the writer's friendship with Coleridge and Wordsworth, among others. Storey affords particular attention to Southey's correspondence, as well as to the writer's numerous translations, biographies, and poems.

Stwertka, Eve, and Margo Viscusi, eds. Twenty-Four Ways of Looking at Mary McCarthy. Westport: Greenwood, 1996.

Selections include Thomas Flanagan's "Living and Reading"; Terry A. Cooney's "Of Academics and Intellectuals"; Morris Dickstein's "A Glint of Malice"; Beverly Gross's "Our Leading Bitch Intellectual"; Margaret Scanlan's "Terrorists, Artists, and Intellectuals"; Jill Wacker's "Knowing Concerns Me: The Female Intellectual and the Consumer Idiom"; Gregory D. Sumner's "Nicola Chiaromonte, the Politics Circle, and the Search for a Postwar 'Third Camp'"; Harvey Teres's "Reimagining Politics"; Alan Wald's "The Left Reconsidered"; Timothy F. Waples's "A Very Narrow Range of Choice: Political Dilemma in The Groves of Academe"; Stacey Lee Donohue's "Reluctant Radical: The Irish-Catholic Element"; Rhoda Nathan's "The Uses of Ambivalence: Mary McCarthy's Jewish Politics"; Petri Klass's "The Stink of Father Zossima: The Medical Fact in Mary McCarthy's Fiction"; Priscilla Perkins's "Frigid Women, Frozen Dinners: The Bio-Politics of 'Tyranny of the Orgasm'"; Katie Roiphe's "Damn My Stream of Consciousness"; Mary Ann Caws's "A Single Truth, But Tell It Sharp"; Thomas Mallon's "Mary McCarthy as a Fictional Character"; Avis Hewitt's "The Minotaur as Mentor: Edmund Wilson's Role in the Career of Mary McCarthy"; Carol Brightman's "My Secret Sharer"; Carol Gelderman's "Just the Facts, Ma'am, and Nothing but the Facts: A Biographer's Reminiscence"; Frances Kiernan's "No Stone Unturned: Contracts and Nymphets"; Frances Fitzgerald's "Taking Risks"; Maureen Howard's "Memories of Another Catholic Girlhood"; and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.'s "Remembrances of an Old Friend."

Subramanian, Jane M. Laura Ingalls Wilder: An Annotated Bibliography of Critical, Biographical, and Teaching Studies. Westport: Greenwood, 1997.

Subramanian offers a valuable reference guide to Wilder's work, with particular attention to biographies of Wilder and examinations of the critical reception of her novels. Subramanian surveys various pedagogical approaches to Wilder's works, as well as book reviews and the serial publications of her novels. Subramanian also includes a useful chapter on materials relating to Wilder's family and its significant role in her fictions.

Thwaite, Anthony. Poetry Today: A Critical Guide to British Poetry, 1960-1995. London: Longman, 1996.

Thwaite's comprehensive study of contemporary British poetry features attention to various movements and schools during the previous three decades. Particular attention is devoted to the works of W. H. Auden, Louis MacNeice, C. Day Lewis, Robert Graves, David Jones, John Betjeman, Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Stevie Smith, and Lawrence Durrell, among others.

Vendler, Helen. The Breaking of Style: Hopkins, Heaney, Graham. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1995.

Vendler examines style as the material body of lyric poetry in the works of Gerard Manley Hopkins, Seamus Heaney, and Jorie Graham. Vendler's study provides fresh perspectives on each writer's verse, in addition to discussing each writer's contributions to technical advances in style and imagery. Vendler also investigates the interplay of moral, emotional, and intellectual forces in each poet's work.

Watson, Steven. The Birth of the Beat Generation: Visionaries, Rebels, and Hipsters, 1944-1960. New York: Pantheon, 1995.

Watson chronicles the lives and times of such writers as William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac, as well as the San Francisco group that included Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Gary Snyder. Watson's volume also explores the lives of other members of the Beat generation's circle, including Neal Cassady, Gregory Corso, Herbert Huncke, and Peter Orlovsky, among others. Watson discusses the Beats and their interest in the "New Vision," which they attempted to achieve through the experiences and experimentations that became part of their legend.

Welch, Robert, ed. The Oxford Companion to Irish Literature. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996.

Welch's comprehensive volume features more than 2,000 entries devoted to the survey of the exceptional richness and diversity of Irish literature. Entries range from the "ogam" writing of the fourth century through James Joyce's use of the stream of consciousness technique in the twentieth century. In addition to illuminating each writer's historical context, the entries in Welch's volume devote attention to such figures as Roddy Doyle, Brian Friel, Seamus Heaney, Edna O'Brien, Jonathan Swift, and Maria Edgeworth, among others.

Wilson, Keith. Thomas Hardy on Stage. New York: St. Martin's, 1995.

Wilson offers one of the first detailed surveys of Thomas Hardy's involvement with the stage. In addition to discussing Hardy's own experiences with crafting scenarios and plays, as well as his participation in amateur and professional productions alike, Wilson investigates the writer's often troubling negotiations with adapters, producers, and actors.

Wilson, Mary Anne. Jean Stafford: A Study of the Short Fiction. New York: Twayne, 1996.

Wilson discusses Jean Stafford's short fiction, with particular interest in her more than 50 short stories. Wilson's volume examines the manner in which Stafford's short fiction possesses a sharp sense of place and irony, while her rootless characters unsuccessfully pursue their dreams. Wilson investigates the themes, techniques, relationships, and experiences that shaped Stafford's short fiction.

Wright, Stephen Caldwell, ed. On Gwendolyn Brooks: Reliant Contemplation. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1996.

In addition to various reviews of Gwendolyn Brooks's verse, selections include: James N. Johnson's "Blacklisting Poets"; Dan Jaffe's "Gwendolyn Brooks: An Appreciation from the White Suburbs"; Eleanor Holmes Norton's "For Sadie and Maud"; George E. Kent's "The Poetry of Gwendolyn Brooks"; Haki R. Madhubuti's "Gwendolyn Brooks: Beyond the Wordmaker - The Making of an African Poet"; Arthur P. Davis's "Gwendolyn Brooks"; William H. Hansell's "Essences, Unifyings, and Black Militancy: Major Themes in Gwendolyn Brooks's Family Pictures and Beckonings"; Houston A. Baker's "The Florescence of Nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s" [excerpt]; Harry B. Shaw's "Maud Martha"; Patricia H. Lattin and Vernon E. Lattin's "Dual Vision in Gwendolyn Brooks's Maud Martha"; R. Baxter Miller's "Define . . . the Whirlwind: Gwendolyn Brooks's Epic Sign for a Generation"; D. H. Melhem's "In the Mecca"; Joyce Ann Joyce's "Gwendolyn Brooks: Jean Toomer's November Cotton Flower"; Gertrude Reif Hughes's "Making It Really New: Hilda Doolittle, Gwendolyn Brooks, and the Feminist Potential of Modern Poetry"; Brooke Kenton Horvath's "The Satisfactions of What's Difficult in Gwendolyn Brooks's Poetry"; Brenda R. Simmons's "Gottschalk and the Grande Tarantelle"; Beverly Guy-Sheftall's "The Women of Bronzeville"; Joyce's "The Poetry of Gwendolyn Brooks: An Afrocentric Exploration"; and Henry Taylor's "Gwendolyn Brooks: An Essential Sanity."

(2) Semiotics, Narratology, Rhetoric, and Language Systems

Aitchison, Jean. The Language Web: The Power and Problem of Words. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997.

Aitchison's volume features the contents of her 1996 BBC Reith Lectures. Selections include "A Web of Worries: Anxiety about Language"; "A Web of Deceit: The Origin of Language"; "Building the Web: Acquiring Language"; A Web of Words: Remembering Words"; "A World-Wide Web: Options and Snares"; and "Afterword: Stirring Up a Hornets' Nest: Responses to the Reith Lectures."

Bailey, Richard W. Nineteenth-Century English. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1996.

Bailey examines the ways in which the English language changed over the course of the nineteenth century, devoting particular attention to such issues as writing, sounds, words, slang, grammar, and voices. Bailey explores each subject in terms of its innovation and obsolescence within a nineteenth-century linguistic context.

Bakker, Egbert J. Poetry in Speech: Orality and Homeric Discourse. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1997.

In addition to applying linguistic theory to the study of Homeric style, Bakker explores oral poetry within the wider contexts of spoken language and communication. Bakker conceives of spoken discourse as a sequence of short speech units reflecting the flow of speech through the consciousness of the speaker. Bakker also considers Homeric discourse as a speech process, as opposed to the finished product associated with written discourse, as previous theorists have argued.

Benson, Thomas W., ed. Rhetoric and Political Culture in Nineteenth-Century America. East Lansing: Michigan State UP, 1997.

Selections include James Andrews's "Foreword: Contextualizing American Rhetoric"; Thomas W. Benson's preface; Edwin Black's "The Aesthetics of Rhetoric, American Style"; James M. Farrell's "The Speech Within: Trope and Performance in Daniel Webster's Eulogy to Adams and Jefferson"; Stephen H. Browne's "Webster's Eulogy and the Tropes of Public Memory"; John Louis Lucaites's "The Irony of 'Equality' in Black Abolitionist Discourse: The Case of Frederick Douglass's 'What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?'"; James Jasinski's "Rearticulating History in Epideictic Discourse: Frederic Douglass's 'The Meaning of the Fourth of July to the Negro'"; Martha Solomon Watson's "The Dynamics of Intertextuality: Re-reading the Declaration of Independence"; David Henry's "Garrison at Philadelphia: The 'Declaration of Sentiments' as Instrumental Rhetoric"; Michael C. Leff's "Lincoln Among the Nineteenth-Century Orators"; Maurice Charland's "Anxious Oratory-Anxious Criticism: The Substance of Deferral and the Deferral of Substance"; and Robert Hariman's "Afterword: Relocating the Art of Public Address."

Bergeron, David M., ed. Reading and Writing in Shakespeare. Newark: U of Delaware P, 1996.

Selections include Bergeron's "Introduction: Reading and Writing"; Bruce R. Smith's "Prickly Characters"; Linda McJannet's "Elizabethan Speech Prefixes: Page Design, Typography, and Mimesis"; Frederick Kiefer's "'Written Troubles of the Brain': Lady Macbeth's Conscience"; Daryl W. Palmer's "Histories of Violence and the Writer's Hand: Actes and Monuments and Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus"; Karen Robertson's "A Revenging Feminine Hand in Twelfth Night"; Wendy Wall's "Reading for the Blot: Textual Desire in Early Modern English Literature"; Bergeron's "Treacherous Reading and Writing in Shakespeare's Romances"; Geraldo U. deSousa's "The Peasants' Revolt and the Writing of History in 2 Henry VI"; David E. Johnson's "Addressing the Letter"; Douglas Lanier's "Encryptions: Reading Milton Reading Jonson Reading Shakespeare"; Martin Elsky's "Shakespeare, Bacon, and the Construction of Authorship"; and Robert S. Knapp's "'There's Letters from My Mother; What th' Import Is, I Know Not Yet.'"

Blake, N. F. A History of the English Language. London: Macmillan, 1996.

In contrast with other histories of the language, Blake's volume focuses upon episodes that more accurately reflect the shifting attitudes to and developments within standard British English. In addition to exploring the historical and sociological contexts of language development, Blake discusses changes in phonology, vocabulary, and syntax. Blake's close readings of a range of texts provide students with practical demonstrations of English in all of the stages of its development.

Blank, Paula. Broken English: Dialects and the Politics of Language in Renaissance Writings. London: Routledge, 1996.

Blake investigates the manner in which early modern writers represented dialects, revealing the ways in which English itself was a Renaissance construction. In addition to arguing that Renaissance-era English conditioned the production of the earliest English dictionaries, grammars, and proposals for spelling reform, Blake uses a variety of writers as exemplars in her study, including Spenser, Shakespeare, and Jonson, among others.

Bradford, Richard. Stylistics. London: Routledge, 1997.

Bradford provides an introductory guide to modern critical ideas regarding literary style and stylistics. Bradford uses examples of poems, plays, and novels from Shakespeare through the present. Bradford's volume examines the terminology of literary form and considers the role of stylistics in twentieth-century criticism. Bradford traces the discipline of stylistics from classical rhetoric to poststruturalism, while also addressing the relationship between literary style and its historical context.

Calfree, Robert C., and Pamela Perfumo, eds. Writing Portfolios in the Classroom: Policy and Practice, Promise and Peril. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1996.

Selections include Calfree and Sarah Warshauer Freedman's "Classroom Writing Portfolios: Old, New, Borrowed, Blue"; Joan L. Herman, Maryl Gearhart, and Pamela R. Aschbacher's "Portfolios for Classroom Assessment: Design and Implementation Issues"; Calfree and Perfumo's "A National Survey of Writing Portfolios Practice: What We Learned and What It Means"; Kathleen Blake Yancey's "Dialogue, Interplay, and Discovery: Mapping the Role and the Rhetoric of Reflection in Portfolio Assessment"; Sandra Murphy and Roberta Camp's "Moving Toward Systemic Coherence: A Discussion of Conflicting Perspectives on Portfolio Assessment"; Miles Myers's "Sailing Ships: A Framework for Portfolios in Formative and Summative Systems"; Sarah L. Jordan and Alan C. Purves's "The Metaphor of the Portfolio and the Metaphors in Portfolios: The Relation of Classroom-based to Large-Scale Assessment"; James M. Wile and Robert J. Tierney's "Tensions in Assessment: The Battle Over Portfolios, Curriculum, and Control"; Perfumo's "Video Visits: A Practical Approach for Studying Portfolios"; Margaret Klimenkov and Nina LaPick's "Promoting Student Self-Assessment Through Portfolios, Student-Facilitated Conferences, and Cross-Age Interaction"; Nanette Koelsch and Elise Trumbull's "Portfolios: Bridging Cultural and Linguistic Worlds"; Mary A. Barr and Phyllis J. Hallam's "Teacher Parity in Assessment With the California Learning Record"; Susan Carey Biggam and Nancy Teitelbaum's "Profiles and Portfolios: Helping Primary-Level Teachers See the Big Picture"; Carol M. McCabe's "Restructuring Student Assessment and Living to Tell About It"; and Patricia A. Belanoff's "Portfolios: The Good, The Bad, and the Beautiful."

Carter, Ronald, and John McRae, eds. Language, Literature, and the Learner: Creative Classroom Practice. Harlow: Longman, 1996.

Selections include Carter's "Look Both Ways Before Crossing: Developments in the Language and Literature Classroom"; McRae's "Representational Language Learning: From Language Awareness to Text Awareness"; Nick Short's "Stylistics 'Upside Down': Using Stylistics Analysis in the Teaching of Language and Literature"; Alan Durant's "Designing Groupwork Activities: A Case Study"; and Michael McCarthy's "Reconstructing and Deconstructing: Drama Texts in the Classroom."

Clark, Romy, and Roz Ivanic. The Politics of Writing. London: Routledge, 1997.

Clark and Ivanic examine writing as a form of social practice, arguing that it plays a key role in the circulation of ideas in society and has a direct impact on the development of democracy. Clark and Ivanic use examples from student writing, journalism, and interviews with the playwright Trevor Griffiths. Drawing upon the insights of cultural linguistics, Clark and Ivanic discuss the social context in which writing is embedded, while also exploring various writing purposes.

Corbett, John. Language and Scottish Literature: Scottish Language and Literature. Edinburg: Edinburg UP, 1997.

Corbett provides an introduction to Scottish language and literature through an analysis of Scottish grammar and vocabulary. In addition to discussing various sounds and structures, while also addressing various Scottish metaphors, idioms, and linguistic stereotypes, Corbett supplements his study with glossaries of linguistic terms and Scottish terms. Corbett also discusses the language of older Scottish literature in his study.

Craun, Edwin D. Lies, Slander, and Obscenity in Medieval English Literature: Pastoral Rhetoric and the Deviant Speaker. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997.

Drawing upon a variety of manuscript sources, Craun examines the ways in which the medieval clergy developed the textual authority and persuasive force to govern the daily speech acts of Western Christians. Craun explores the manner in which attempts were made to portray some political, social, and private speech as deviant and destructive discourses. Craun devotes attention to the works of Chaucer, Langland, and Gower in his study.

Crowley, Tony. Language in History. London: Routledge, 1996.

Crowley provides the analytical tools for exploring the relations between language and class, as well as the ways in which language has been used to construct nationality. In addition to providing a radical rereading of the arguments of Saussure and Bakhtin, Crowley demonstrates the ways in which language has been used to construct social and cultural identity in Britain and Ireland. Crowley discusses the manner in which language is used in contemporary Ireland to articulate national and political aspirations.

Crystal, David. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997.

Crystal's volume examines a variety of issues related to the study of the English language, including its history, as well as grammar, pronunciation, and spelling. Crystal discusses spoken and written language, in addition to the range and creativity of the English vocabulary. Crystal also devotes attention to new words, jargon, and slang, as well as to regional and social variations in spoken English.

Danly, Susan, ed. Language as Object: Emily Dickinson and Contemporary Art. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1997.

Selections include Martha A. Sandweiss's "The Poet's Resonance"; Karen Sanchez-Eppler's "'Exhibiting Sheets of Place': Seeing Emily Dickinson through Contemporary Art"; Polly Longsworth's "'Whose But Her Shy - Immortal Face': The Poet's Visage in the Popular Imagination"; and Christopher Benfey's "Alcohol and Pearl: Dickinson's Imprint on American Poetry." Danly's "Poetry Portfolio" includes such works as Hart Crane's "To Emily Dickinson"; Richard Wilbur's "Altitudes"; John Berryman's "Your Birthday in Wisconsin You Are 140"; Adrienne Rich's "'I Am in Danger - Sir - '"; Amy Clampitt's "Amherst"; Sandra M. Gilbert's "Emily's Bread"; Thomas Lux's "Emily's Mom"; Mary Jo Salter's "Reading Room"; Lucie Brock-Broido's "Into Those Great Countries of the Blue Sky of Which We Don't Know Anything"; and Agha Shahid Ali's "A Nostalgist's Map of America."

Davis, Philip, ed. Real Voices on Reading. London: Macmillan, 1997.

Selections include Davis's "Introduction: Not on the Run"; George Steiner's "'Critic'/'Reader'"; George Craig's "So Little Do We Know of What Goes On When We Read"; Joseph Brodsky's "Two Essays at Human Assemblies"; Les Murray's "Trances"; Douglas Oliver's "Poetry's Subject"; Hester Jones's "Triumphant Obstination: Reading Adrienne Rich and Elizabeth Bowen"; John Bayley's "Reading About Things: Or Hannibal Goes for the Mail"; Davis's "Micro and Macro"; Gabriel Josipovici's "Thirty-three Variations on a Theme of Graham Greene"; Raymond Tallis's "Theorrhoea Contra Realism"; Michael Irwin's "Readings of Realism"; Josie Billington's "Watching a Writer Write: Manuscript Revisions in Mrs. Gaskell's Wives and Daughters and Why They Matter"; and Doris Lessing's "'Green Glass Beads.'"

DeMaria, Robert, Jr. Samuel Johnson and the Life of Reading. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1997.

DeMaria examines the life of Samuel Johnson and its interconnections with the rapid expansion of publishing in England, not only in English, but also in Latin and Greek. DeMaria discusses this growth in books, as well as reviews, journals, broadsides, pamphlets, and books about books. DeMaria demonstrates the ways in which Johnson not only influenced the reading habits of the eighteenth century, but also the habits of modern readers.

Dubrow, Heather. Echoes of Desire: English Petrarchism and Its Counterdiscourses. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1995.

Dubrow problematizes a number of new historicist and feminist premises about Tudor and Stuart literature by examining the connections between the anti-Petrarchan tradition and mainstream Petrarchan poetry. In addition to addressing the implications of contemporary critical methodologies through readings of works by John Donne, Sir Philip Sidney, Shakespeare, and Lady Mary Wroth, among others, Dubrow offers new arguments about the gendering of speech, silence, and agency, as well as about the relationship between lyric and narrative.

Eden, Kathy. Hermeneutics and the Rhetorical Tradition: Chapters in the Ancient Legacy and Its Humanist Reception. New Haven: Yale UP, 1997.

Eden challenges accepted arguments about the history and origins of hermeneutics. In addition to disputing the notion that the hermeneutical tradition is a purely modern German specialty, Eden contends that the historical origins of modern hermeneutics lie in the ancient tradition of rhetoric. Eden argues that Cicero's early rhetorical model of reading informs a continuous tradition of interpretation from Republican Rome to Reformation Europe.

Emmott, Catherine. Narrative Comprehension: A Discourse Perspective. Oxford: Clarendon, 1997.

Drawing upon recent insights from discourse analysis and artificial intelligence, Emmott presents a detailed model of how readers build, maintain, and use mental representations of fictional contexts. Emmott provides a useful summary of current issues in text-processing theory, as well as a discussion of the methodological significance of recognizing the hierarchical structure of discourse. Emmott focuses on anaphoric pronouns in narratives and assesses the accumulated knowledge required to interpret key grammatical terms.

Enos, Theresa. Gender Roles and Faculty Lives in Rhetoric and Composition. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1996.

Enos combines anecdotal evidence with hard data in this analysis of lower-division writing courses in colleges and universities, demonstrating that many of them are taught by women who receive minimal pay, little prestige, and little job security in comparison with their male counterparts. Enos argues that the rhetoric of our professional lives is connected to the negotiations of gender roles in rhetoric and composition. Enos describes and classifies narratives gathered from surveys, interviews, and campus visits in an effort to explain the gendered nature of the profession.

Erickson, Robert A. The Language of the Heart: 1600-1750. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1997.

Erickson surveys the depiction of the human heart as a vessel of meaning in the literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In addition to arguing that the emergence of the modern world coincided with the reconfiguration of gender, Erickson demonstrates the manner in which the heart is associated with language, writing, and thought, while also discussing the ways in which it is associated with sex, passion, and gender in premodern thought and discourse.

Fowler, Elizabeth, and Roland Greene, eds. The Project of Prose in Early Modern Europe and the New World. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997.

Selections include Greene and Fowler's "Introduction: The Project of Prose and Early Modern Literary Studies"; Ronald W. Sousa's "Cannibal, Cartographer, Soldier, Spy: The Peirai of Mendes Pinto's Peregrinacao"; Paula Blank's "'niu ureiting': The Prose of Language Reform in the English Renaissance"; Stephanie H. Jed's "Relations of Prose: Knights Errant in the Archives of Early Modern Italy"; David Scott Kastan's "Opening Gates and Stopping Hedges: Grafton, Stow, and the Politics of Elizabethan History Writing"; Timothy Hampton's "The Subject of America: History and Alterity in Montaigne's 'Des Coches'"; William H. Sherman's "Anatomizing the Commonwealth: Language, Politics and the Elizabethan Social Order"; Ann Rosalind Jones's "From Polemical Prose to the Red Bull: The Swetnam Controversy in Women-Voiced Pamphlets and the Public Theater"; Amy Boskey's "Bacon's New Atlantis and the Laboratory of Prose"; Rolena Adorno's "History, Law, and the Eyewitness: Protocols of Authority in Bernal Diaz del Castillo's Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva Espana"; and Greene's "Fictions of Immanence, Fictions of Embassy."

Fowler, Roger. The Language of George Orwell. London: Macmillan, 1995.

Fowler offers a detailed analysis of Orwell's language and style through close readings of his classic works, including Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, among others. In addition to discussing Orwell's documentary works, essays, and reviews, Fowler examines the author's interests in realism, naturalism, parody, and surrealism. Drawing upon recent insights in linguistics, Fowler also investigates the manner in which Orwell infused his works with an occasionally journalistic style.

Gilyard, Keith. Let's Flip the Script: An African-American Discourse on Language, Literature, and Learning. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1996.

Gilyard offers a detailed analysis of African-American discourse, with forays into language and its interconnections with politics, literature, and education. Gilyard includes chapters on social responsibility and its interrelationship with writing, while also discussing racism's linguistic origins, in addition to exploring the power relationships that language inevitably derives in social, historical, and political contexts.

Gordon, Paul. The Critical Double: Figurative Meaning in Aesthetic Discourse. Tuscaloosa: U Of Alabama P, 1995.

Gordon argues for the deconstructive analysis of aesthetic discourse, emphasizing the notion of duality as the essential means for distinguishing aesthetic from other forms of discourse. Gordon's volume offers chapters on metaphor and rhetoric, in addition to chapters on Protagorean notions of aesthetic and rhetorical theory. Gordon attempts to redefine accepted notions about deconstruction and its value to language study. Gordon's volume includes a Foreword by J. Hillis Miller.

Gross, Alan G., and William M. Keith, eds. Rhetorical Hermeneutics: Invention and Interpretation in the Age of Science. Albany: State U of New York P, 1997.

Selections include Gross and Keith's introduction; Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar's "The Idea of Rhetoric in the Rhetoric of Science"; Michael Leff's "The Idea of Rhetoric As Interpretive Practice: A Humanist's Response to Gaonkar"; Deirdre McCloskey's "Big Rhetoric, Little Rhetoric: Gaonkar on the Rhetoric of Science"; John Angus Campbell's "Strategic Reading: Rhetoric, Intention, and Interpretation"; Gross's "What If We're Not Producing Knowledge? Critical Reflections on the Rhetorical Criticism of Science"; Carolyn R. Miller's "Classical Rhetoric Without Nostalgia: A Response to Gaonkar"; Charles Arthur Willard's "Rhetoric's Lot"; James Jasinski's "Instrumentalism, Contextualism, and Interpretation in Rhetorical Criticism"; William M. Keith's Engineering Rhetoric"; David S. Kaufer's "From Tekhne to Technique: Rhetoric As a Design Art"; Steve Fuller's "'Rhetoric of Science': Double the Trouble?"; Andrew King's "The Rhetorical Critic and the Invisible Polls"; Thomas B. Farrell's "An Elliptical Postscript"; and Gaonkar's "Close Readings of the Third Kind: Reply to My Critics."

Grudin, Michaela Paasche. Chaucer and the Politics of Discourse. Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 1996.

Grudin argues that for Chaucer speech is the heart of culture, as well as the fundamental aspect of The Canterbury Tales. Grudin affords particular attention to Chaucer's fascination with communication as a reciprocal process between speaker and listener. In addition to providing new readings of Chaucer's verse, Grudin explores Chaucer's questioning of whether the social order can survive the discord of human voices in many of the Canterbury Tales.

Harris, Roy. Signs of Writing. London: Routledge, 1995.

Harris reexamines basic questions about writing, particularly the assumption that writing is merely a visual substitute for speech. Harris treats writing as an independent mode of communication in his study, demonstrating the manner in which musical, mathematical, and other forms of writing obey the same principles as verbal communication. Harris argues that these principles can be applied to all kinds of texts, from a sonnet and symphonic score to a signature on a check or a supermarket label.

Hobsbaum, Philip. Meter, Rhythm, and Verse Form. London: Routledge, 1996.

Hobsbaum argues that the principal distinction between prose and poetry is rhythm. Hobsbaum demonstrates the manner in which rhythm interconnects with meter. In addition to providing a valuable introduction to the rhetorical and linguistic study of poetry, Hobsbaum defines the differences between meter and rhythm, offering new definitions for such terms as blank verse, sprung rhythm, and free verse, among other concepts.

Honnighausen, Lothar. Faulkner: Masks and Metaphors. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1997.

Honnighausen offers a discourse study of Faulkner's fictions, arguing that previous psychoanalytic accounts of his work have neglected to account for his use of metaphors in his narratives. Honnighausen examines Faulkner's interviews and photographs, in addition to exploring the roles of social role-playing in such works as The Sound and the Fury and Light in August, among others. Honnighausen argues that a discourse analysis of Faulkner's works provides new insight into the creation and reception of images in Faulkner's writings.

Hughes, Rebecca. English in Speech and Writing. London: Routledge, 1996.

Hughes invites readers to examine the differences between spoken and written English. In addition to providing a guide to the basic methods of discourse analysis, Hughes argues for an awareness of the differences between standard and nonstandard forms of English. Hughes employs examples from a wide array of sources, including boxing commentaries, detective novels, and film scripts, among other spoken and written discourses.

Kastely, James L. Rethinking the Rhetorical Tradition: From Plato to Postmodernism. New Haven: Yale UP, 1997.

Kastely investigates the various roles of rhetoric in a civil society. In addition to exploring works by such figures as Plato, Jane Austen, and Sartre, Kastely discusses the viability of rhetorical practice and its interconnections with literary theory and hermeneutics. Kastely argues that rhetoric offers a means for considering such issues as individual responsibility and power relations, among other subjects.

Kaufman, Will. The Comedian as Confidence Man: Studies in Irony Fatigue. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1997.

Kaufman examines the humorist's internal conflict between the social critic who demands to be taken seriously and the comedian who can never be taken seriously. This disjunction forms the basis of Kaufman's "irony fatigue" theory, an argument that he establishes through readings of works by Sinclair Lewis, Garrison Keillor, and Benjamin Franklin, among others. Drawing upon the insights of such figures as John Seery, Richard Rorty, and Linda Hutcheon, Kaufman discusses the social and cultural implications of humor.

Kramer, Reinhold. Scatology and Civility in the English-Canadian Novel. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1997.

Kramer studies scatology, particularly in regard to the many and insistent references to bodily functions in postwar Canadian literature. In addition to exploring works by Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, and William Gibson, among others, Kramer argues that these writers use scatology as a means for commenting upon class, race, and gender issues in their fictions.

Ladd, D. Robert. Intonational Phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996.

Ladd offers a lucid account of the key ideas of the influential "autosegmental-metrical" theory of intonational phonology associated with the work of Janet Pierrehumbert. Ladd presents a new analysis of the cross-language comparison of intonation - including attention to melodic universals and accent/focus. Ladd's study also draws attention to problems in Pierrehumbert's version of the autosegmental-metrical theory.

Madsen, Deborah L. Allegory in America. London: Macmillan, 1996.

Madsen surveys the history of American allegorical writing, while also assessing the significance of myths, texts, and icons in American cultural history. In addition to tracing the history of American history from the Puritan era through American Romanticism and postmodernism, Madsen follows each of his theoretical chapters with analyses of specific texts that exemplify various facets of the American rhetorical tradition.

Mayer, Thomas E, and D.R. Woolf, eds. The Rhetorics of Life-Writing in Early Modern Europe: Forms of Biography from Cassandra Fedele to Louis XIV. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1995.

Selections include Mayer and Woolf's introduction; T. C. Price Zimmermann's "Paolo Giovio and the Rhetoric of Individuality"; Barbara J. Watts's "Giorgio Vasari's Vita di Michelangelo Buonarroti and the Shade of Donatello"; Robert Kolb's "Burying the Brethren: Lutheran Funeral Sermons as Life-Writing"; Timothy J. Wengert's "With Friends Like This.... : The Biography of Philip Melanchthon by Joachim Camerarius"; F. W. Conrad's "Manipulating Reputations: Sir Thomas More, Sir Thomas Elyot, and the Conclusion of William Roper's Lyfe of Sir Thomas Moore, Knighte"; James V. Mehl's "Characterizations of the 'Obscure Men' of Cologne: A Study in Pre-Reformation Collective Authorship"; Diana Robin's "Cassandra Fedele's Epistolae (1488-1521): Biography as Ef-facement"; Mayer's "A Sticking-Plaster Saint?: Autobiography and Hagiography in the Making of Reginald Pole"; Catharine Randall's "A Protestant Poetics of Process: Reformation Rhetorics of the Self in Sponde, de Beze, and d'Aubigne"; Woolf's "The Rhetoric of Martyrdom: Generic Contradiction and Narrative Strategy in John Foxe's Acts and Monuments"; William E. Engel's "Montaigne's Essais: The Literary and Literal Digesting of a Life"; Adriana McCrea's "Whose Life Is It, Anyway?: Subject and Subjection in Fulke Greville's Life of Sidney"; Sheila Folliott's "Exemplarity and Gender: Three Lives of Queen Catherine de Medici"; and Elizabeth C. Goldsmith and Abby E. Zanger's "The Politics and Poetics of the Mancini Romance: Visions and Revisions of the Life of Louis XIV."

McLuhan, Eric. The Role of Thunder in Finnegans Wake. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1997.

Drawing upon recent insights about the tradition of Menippean satire, McLuhan examines the ways in which Joyce uses language in Finnegans Wake to shock and provoke. McLuhan argues that Joyce's peculiar language and style in the novel become part of the Menippean tradition because of his use of the linguistic thunderclap. In addition to considering this nuance of Finnegans Wake within the context of classical Greek literature, McLuhan argues that the thunderclaps in Joyce's narrative each represent a transformation of human culture.

Miller, Thomas P. The Formation of College English: Rhetoric and Belles Lettres in the British Cultural Provinces. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 1997.

Miller examines a variety of aspects regarding the history and development of college English. Miller includes chapters on the teaching of English in the British cultural provinces, as well as analyses of the expansion of the reading public. Miller's study offers several intriguing arguments about the antiquarianism of the English universities, as well as about liberal education and the rhetoric of dissent in the academy.

Momma, H. The Composition of Old English Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997.

Momma discusses the relationship between syntax and meter in Old English verse. In addition to challenging the view that Old English poetry is composed in loose syntax to compensate for the strict requirements of prosody, such as meter and alliteration, Momma contends that Old English poetry has incorporated prosody into its linguistic system.

Nagele, Rainer. Echoes of Translation: Reading Between Texts. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1997.

Nagele provides a series of readings of works by Sophocles, Baudelaire, Nietzsche, and Benjamin, among others. Nagele investigates the space between texts and languages, particularly in regard to literary translations, while also arguing that this space functions upon elements of resistance and instability.

Olson, Barbara K. Authorial Divinity in the Twentieth Century: Omniscient Narration in Woolf, Hemingway, and Others. Cranbury: Associated UP, 1997.

Olson examines the relationship between God and both the writer and the omniscient narrator. In addition to exploring the manner in which modernist writers such as Hemingway and Woolf employ their own particular styles of omniscience in relation to their cultures' conceptions of God, Olson considers works by John Fowles, Flannery O'Connor, Graham Greene, and Muriel Spark, among others.

Olson, Gary A., and Todd W. Taylor, eds. Publishing in Rhetoric and Composition. Albany: State U of New York P, 1997.

Selections include J. Hillis Miller's foreword; Christina Murphy's "Breaking the Print Barrier: Entering the Professional Conversation"; Olson's "Publishing Scholarship in Rhetoric and Composition: Joining the Conversation"; Richard C. Gebhardt's "Scholarship and Teaching: Motives and Strategies for Writing Articles in Composition Studies"; Joseph Harris's "Person, Position, Style"; Theresa Enos's "Gender and Publishing Scholarship in Rhetoric and Composition"; Maureen M. Hourigan's "From Dissertation to Scholarly Monograph: Meeting Professional Expectations"; Jasper Neel's "Getting Booked: Commodity, Confinement, Conundrum"; Gail E. Hawisher and Cynthia L. Selfe's "The Edited Collection: A Scholarly Contribution and More"; Michael L. Keene and Ralph F. Voss's "Planning and Producing a Traditional Rhetoric Textbook"; Lynn Z. Bloom's "Making Essay Connections: Editing Readers for First-Year Writers"; Thomas Kent's "The Consequences of Theory for the Practice of Writing"; Linda Flower's "Observation-based Theory Building"; James L. Murphy's "Conducting Research in the History of Rhetoric: An Open Letter to a Future Historian of Rhetoric"; Taylor's "The Politics of Electronic Scholarship in Rhetoric and Composition"; Robert Boice's "Work Habits of Productive Scholarly Writers: Insights from Research in Psychology"; and Janice M. Lauer's "Graduate Students as Active Members of the Profession: Some Questions for Mentoring."

Parakrama, Arjuna. De-Hegemonizing Language Standards: Learning From (Post) Colonial Englishes about "English." London: Macmillan, 1995.

Parakrama examines the ostensibly uneducated and otherwise nonstandard usage of English in Sri Lanka, including its employment in Sri Lankan popular culture, protest writing, and speech, among other discourses. Parakrama argues that these instances of usage lead to a dehegemonizing of language standards in the post-colonial era, while also contending that this phenomenon is typical of all contemporary languages.

Peres, Phyllis. Transculturation and Resistance in Lusophone: African Narrative. Gainesville: UP of Florida, 1997.

Peres analyzes the ways in which contemporary Angolan writers depict their emerging nation in terms of the nationalism movements that were initially opposed to the Portuguese colonial regime in the early 1960s. Peres offers close readings of works by Luandino Vieira, Uanhenga Xitu, Pepetela, and Manuel Rui in this context. Peres's volume affords particular attention to the manner in which these writers attempt to use Angolan materials in their fictions, especially such materials as language, folk stories, and traditional narratives.

Prince, Michael. Philosophical Dialogue in the British Enlightenment: Theology, Aesthetics and the Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996.

Prince offers an extensive and detailed history of philosophical dialogue during the British Enlightenment era. Drawing upon works by Shaftesbury, Mandeville, Berkeley, and Hume, Prince discusses the extended and often hotly debated nature and proper management of dialogue during the eighteenth century. Using literary works by Fielding, Sterne, Johnson, and Austen, Prince investigates the empiricist tradition in the context of British literary history.

Ratcliffe, Krista. Anglo-American Feminist Challenges to the Rhetorical Traditions: Virginia Woolf, Mary Dally, and Adrienne Rich. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1996.

Ratcliffe examines the ways in which traditional theories of language neglect to consider gender differences. In addition to arguing that feminist theories of rhetoric are necessary if we are to recognize and validate gendered differences in language usage, Ratcliffe contends that rhetoric and composition scholars must construct feminist theories of rhetoric in order to recover lost or marginalized texts.

Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith. A Glance Beyond Doubt: Narration, Representation, Subjectivity. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1996.

Using texts by William Faulkner, Vladimir Nabokov, Samuel Beckett, and Toni Morrison, among others, Rimmon-Kenan demonstrates the ways in which modes of narration participate in the exploration of the problematic representation of subjectivity. Rimmon-Kenan's volume has intriguing implications for students of narrative and of twentieth-century literature, as well as for other disciplines interested in the study of narrative.

Tavormina, M. Teresa, and R.F. Yeager, eds. The Endless Knot: Essays on Old and Middle English in Honor of Marie Borroff. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1995.

Selections include Eric Stanley's "Paradise Lost of the Old English Dual"; Melissa M. Furrow's "Latin and Affect"; Ralph Hanna III's "Defining Middle English Alliterative Poetry"; Stephen A. Barney's "Langland's Prosody: The State of Study"; Traugott Lawler's "Conscience's Dinner"; J. A. Burrow's "Elvish Chaucer"; Anne Higgins's "Alceste the Washerwoman"; Warren Ginsberg's "Chaucer's Disposition"; Tavormina's "'Lo, Swilk a Complyn': Musical Topicality in the Reeve's and Miller's Tales"; H. Marshall Leicester, Jr.'s "Piety and Resistance: A Note on the Representation of Religious Feeling in the Canterbury Tales"; Elizabeth Archibald's "Contextualizing Chaucer's Constance: Romance Modes and Family Values"; Sherry L. Reames's "Artistry, Decorum, and Purpose in Three Middle English Retellings of the Cecilia Legend"; Mary J. Carruthers's "Invention, Mnemonics, and Stylistic Ornament in Psychmachia and Pearl"; Elizabeth D. Kirk's "The Anatomy of a Mourning: Reflections on the Pearl Dreamer"; Yeager's "Ben Jonson's English Grammar and John Gower's Reception in the Seventeenth Century"; and Fred C. Robinson's "Eight Letters from Elizabeth Elstob."

Trask, Robert Lawrence. A Textbook of Historical Linguistics. New York: St. Martin's, 1996.

Trask offers an expansive study of historical linguistics, with attention to such issues as language change, as well as lexical and semantic changes. In addition to exploring changes in pronunciation, Trask discusses the implications of changes in syntax and morphology, among other concepts. Trask concludes his volume with a useful appendix, "The Swadesh 200-Word List."

Wardy, Robert. The Birth of Rhetoric: Gorgias, Plato, and Their Successors. London: Routledge, 1996.

Wardy investigates Gorgias's radical alternative to the philosophical view regarding the use and abuse of language. Wardy's study also examines this issue in the context of philosophical writings by Plato, Isocrates, and Cicero, among others. Wardy includes a description of the interconnections between power relations and recent insights in feminist theory.

Weber, Jean Jacques. The Stylistics Reader: From Roman Jakobson to the Present. New York: St. Martin's, 1996.

Selections include Weber's "Towards Contextualized Stylistics: An Overview"; Roman Jakobson's "Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics"; Derek Attridge's "Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics in Retrospect"; M. A. K. Halliday's "Linguistic Function and Literary Style: An Inquiry Into the Language of William Golding's The Inheritors"; Talbot J. Taylor and Michael Toolan's "Recent Trends in Stylistics"; Stanley E. Fish's "What is Stylistics and Why Are They Saying Such Terrible Things About It?"; Toolan's "Stylistics and Its Discontents; or, Getting Off the Fish 'Hook'"; H. G. Widdowson's "Stylistics: An Approach to Stylistic Analysis"; Ronald Carter's "Study Strategies in the Teaching of Literature to Foreign Students"; Mick Short's "Discourse Analysis and the Analysis of Drama"; Mary Louise Pratt's "Ideology and Speech-Act Theory"; Roger Fowler's "Studying Literature as Language"; David Birch's "'Working Effects with Words' - Whose Words?: Stylistics and Reader Intertextuality"; Deirdre Burton's "Through Glass Darkly: Through Dark Glasses"; Sara Mills's "Knowing Your Place: A Marxist's Feminist Stylistic Analysis"; Deirdre Wilson and Dan Sperber's "On Verbal Irony"; and Donald C. Freeman's "'According to My Bond': King Lear and Re-Cognition."

Weimann, Robert. Authority and Representation in Early Modern Discourse. Ed. David Hillman. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1996.

Weimann addresses the places of authority and representation in early modern discourse. Weimann includes chapters on the Reformation, social discourse, and authority, as well as the semiotics of early modern fiction. Weimann's epilogue examines the representation of ambivalence in early modern discourse.

Willbern, David. Poetic Will: Shakespeare and the Play of Language. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1997.

Willbern investigates the expressions of Shakespeare's will within the linguistic context of his plays. In addition to affording particular attention to the depiction of sexual desire and conscious and unconscious volition in Shakespeare's dramatic works, Willbern argues for new strategies of reading that explore the limits of Shakespeare's language and its impact upon our reading experiences.

Winfield, Richard Dien. Stylistics: Rethinking the Artforms after Hegel. Albany: State U of New York P, 1996.

Winfield develops a systematic theory of the fundamental styles of art and addresses stylistics, one of the most neglected areas of aesthetics. Winfield's study critiques Hegel's analysis of symbolic, classical, and romantic art in an effort to conceive the basic modes of artistic style. Winfield also considers the metaphysical mimetic theory pioneered by Plato and Aristotle, as well as the transcendental theory of aesthetic reception pioneered by Hume and Kant.

Yee, Cordell D. K. The Word According to James Joyce: Reconstructing Representation. Cranbury: Associated UP, 1997.

Yee argues for a more conservative view of Joyce's place in the history of critical theory, suggesting that Joyce anticipates contemporary developments in critical theory, rather than superseding them. Using close readings of Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Yee argues that Joyce - in contrast with modern criticism - does not abandon representation, or the notion that language affords access to reality. Yee devotes special attention to the analysis of Aristotelian underpinnings in Joyce's writings.

(3) Postmodernism and Deconstruction

Albright, Daniel. Quantum Poetics: Yeats, Pound, Eliot, and the Science of Modernism. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997.

Albright examines modernism's appropriation of scientific metaphors as part of a general search for the origins of poetry. Using the insights of poststructuralist criticism, Albright demonstrates the ways in which modernist writers created an entirely new manner of thinking about poetry and science as two different aspects of the same quest. Albright affords particular attention to Yeats's work in A Vision, which Albright compares to previously existing models by physicists.

Battersby, James L. Reason and the Nature of Texts. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1996.

Battersby discusses the manner in which many of today's leading critics insist upon the endless deferral of textual meaning and the social construction of meaning and thought. Additionally, Battersby argues for the authorial construction of determinate meaning and insists that references are the semantic consequences of an author's deliberate writing activities. Battersby addresses the works of a number of important poststructuralist thinkers in his study, including Stanley Fish, Paul de Man, and Jacques Derrida, among others.

Bauerlein, Mark. Literary Criticism: An Autopsy. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1997.

Bauerlein argues that many contemporary scholars are unskilled in the use of sociohistorical methodologies, opting instead for the use of cliches and jargon as substitutes for facts and logic. Rather than positing any specific ideas, Bauerlein argues, scholars employ an air of decisive refutation in their critiques. Bauerlein contends that the use of illogical or inconsistent terms has caused a breakdown in disciplinary focus.

Benjamin, Walter. Selected Writings, Volume 1: 1913-1926. Ed. Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1996.

This collection of Benjamin's writings underscores his contributions to twentieth-century letters. In this first volume of a projected three-volume anthology, the editors provide readers with a sense of Benjamin and the many facets of his thought. The present volume collects essays, academic treatises, reviews, fragments, and privately circulated pronouncements regarding a variety of issues of interest to students of literature and literary theory alike.

Bernstein, J. M. Recovering Ethical Life: Jurgen Habermas and the Future of Critical Theory. London: Routledge, 1995.

Bernstein argues that Habermas's construction of a critical social theory contributes to the very problems of ethical dislocation and meaninglessness that literary theory seeks to remedy. Drawing upon the insights of a host of critical theorists such as Foucault and Adorno, Bernstein contends that literary critics must reexamine claims of ethical identity and moral reasoning. Bernstein identifies performative contradictions in Habermas's philosophy, arguing instead that readers must reconsider the ethical life of the mind in their critiques.

Best, Steven, and Douglas Kellner. The Postmodern Turn. New York: Guilford, 1997.

Best and Kellner assess the postmodern argument that contemporary societies - with their new forms of culture, technology, and experience - constitute a decisive rupture with previous ways of life. Best and Kellner describe this social transformation as the postmodern turn, arguing that we have now entered a new and largely uncharted territory between modern and postmodern schools of thought. Drawing upon the insights of such thinkers as Kierkegaard, Marx, and Nietzsche, Best and Kellner examine postmodernism's various effects upon the arts, particularly as a means of parody and pastiche.

Biesecker, Barbara A. Addressing Postmodernity: Kenneth Burke, Rhetoric, and a Theory of Social Change. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 1997.

Biesecker argues for a critical theory that is responsive to one of postmodernism's greatest challenges - the fragmentation of contemporary society. Biesecker explores the conditions of possibility that exist for transforming the direction of the social order and the role of human beings in its construction. Using the rhetorical arguments of Kenneth Burke, Biesecker contends that recent humanist critiques have altered our assumptions about subjectivity, agency, language, and structure.

Booker, M. Keith. Joyce, Bakhtin, and the Literary Tradition: Toward a Comparative Cultural Poetics. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1995.

Drawing upon the theoretical insights of Bakhtin, Booker examines the subversive multivocal energies of Menippean satire and other carnivalesque genres. Booker argues for a reading of Joyce that highlights his aesthetic's interconnection with the workaday lives of people despite what many consider to be his extensive and extraordinary engagement with the literary tradition. Booker reads Joyce's texts as the product of a modernist writer who, unlike his contemporaries, defied culturally elitist and historically detached forms of narrative.

Brannigan, John, Ruth Robbins, and Julian Wolfreys, eds. Applying: To Derrida. London: Macmillan, 1996.

Selections include the editors' introduction; Brannigan, Robbins, and Wolfreys's "X"; Geoffrey Bennington's "Expecting the Unexpected in Coetzee's Master of Petersburg and Derrida's Recent Writings"; Derek Attridge's "'And One Thing Knows the Flower': Whistler, Swinburne, Derrida"; Robbins's "Writing DeTermiNation: Reading Death in(to) Irish National Identity"; Brannigan's "A Note on a Post Card: Derrida, Deronda, Deeguy"; Wolfreys's "The Terror of the Law' Judaism and International Institutions"; Gary Banham's "Incommunication: Derrida in Translation"; Karin Littau's "Justice: the Law of the Law"; Boris Belay's "Assuming Responsibility: Or Derrida's Disclaimers"; Morag Patrick's "Derrida's Others"; J. Hillis Miller's "(Touching On) Tele-Technology"; Roger Luckhurst's "Derrida and British Film Theory"; Antony Easthope's "Derrida on Television"; and Peggy Kamuf's "'As if I were dead': An Interview with Jacques Derrida."

Callari, Antonio, and David F. Ruccio, eds. Postmodern Materialism and the Future of Marxist Theory: Essays in the Althusserian Tradition. Hanover: Wesleyan UP, 1996.

Selections include Callari and Ruccio's "Introduction: Postmodern Materialism and the Future of Marxist Theory"; Antonio Negri's "Notes on the Evolution of the Thought of the Later Althusser"; Grahame Lock's "Subject, Interpellation, and Ideology"; Warren Montag's "Beyond Force and Consent: Althusser, Spinoza, Hobbes"; Etienne Balibar's "Structural Causality, Overdetermination, and Antagonism"; Stephen Cullenberg's "Althusser and the Decentering of the Marxist Totality"; Richard Wolff's "Althusser and Hegel: Making Marxist Explanations Antiessentialist and Dialectical"; Stephen Resnick and Wolff's "The New Marxian Political Economy and the Contribution of Althusser"; Brace Roberts's "The Visible and the Measurable: Althusser and the Marxian Theory of Value"; J. K. Gibson-Graham's "Althusser and Capitalism: An Encounter in Contradiction"; Richard McIntyre's "Mode of Production, Social Formation, and Uneven Development, or Is There Capitalism in America?"; Emmanuel Terray's "An Encounter: Althusser and Machiavelli"; Jonathan Diskin's "Rethinking Socialism: What's in a Name?"; AnnMarie Wolpe's "Schooling as an ISA: Race and Gender in South Africa and Educational Reform"; Alain Lipietz's "Political Ecology and the Workers' Movement: Similarities and Differences"; and Gregory Elliott's "Analysis Terminated, Analysis Interminable."

Capozzi, Rocco, ed. Reading Eco: An Anthology. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1997.

Selections include Thomas A. Sebeok's foreword; Capozzi's "Preface: An Introduction to Umberto Eco"; Davis Seed's "The Open Work in Theory and Practice"; John Deely's "Looking Back on A Theory of Semiotics"; Lubomir Dolezel's "The Themata of Eco's Semiotics of Literature"; Susan Petrilli's "Towards Interpretation Semiotics"; Irmengard Rauch's "Openness, Eco, and the End of Another Millennium"; Victorino Tejera's "Eco, Peirce and the Necessity of Interpretation"; Hanna Buczynska-Garewicz's "Semiotics and Deconstruction"; Michael Riffaterre's "The Interpretant in Literary Semiotics"; Paul Perron and Patrick Debbeche's "On Truth and Lying: U. Eco and A. J. Greimas"; Roberta Kevelson's "Eco and Dramatology"; Anna Longoni's "Esoteric: Conspiracies and the Interpretative Strategy"; Capozzi's "Interpretation and Overinterpretation: The Rights of Texts, Readers and Implied Authors"; Teresa De Lauretis's "Gaudy Rose: Eco and Narcissism"; David H. Richter's "The Mirrored World: Form and Ideology in The Name of the Rose"; Sebeok's "Give Me Another Horse"; Peter Bondanella's "Interpretation, Overinterpretation, Paranoid Interpretation and Foucault's Pendulum"; Theresa Coletti's "Bellydancing: Gender, Silence, and the Women of Foucault's Pendulum"; Linda Hutcheon's "Irony-Clad Foucault"; Lois Parkinson Zamora's "The Swing of the 'Pendulum': Eco's Novels"; Norma Bouchard's "Whose 'Excess of Wonder' Is it Anyway? Reading Eco's Tangle of Hermetic and Pragmatic Semiosis in The Island of the Day Before"; Claudia Miranda's "'Dove' is the Dove?"; and Capozzi's "Intertextuality, Metaphors and Metafiction as Cognitive Strategies in The Island of the Day Before."

Cixous, Helene, and Mireille Calle-Gruber. Rootprints: Memory and Life Writing. Trans. Eric Prenowitz. London: Routledge, 1997.

Selections include Cixous and Calle-Gruber's "We Are Already in the Jaws of the Book: Inter Views"; Jacques Derrida and Cixous's "Appendices"; Calle-Gruber's "Portrait of the Writing"; Cixous's "Albums and Legends"; Calle-Gruber's "Chronicle"; and Eric Prenowitz's "Aftermaths." The volume concludes with a detailed bibliography of Cixous's writings.

Critchley, Simon. Very Little - Almost Nothing: Death, Philosophy, Literature. London: Routledge, 1997.

Using the works of Blanchot, Levinas, Cavell, and Beckett, Critchley explores each writer's approach to the notion of death in his fictions. In addition to discussing various interconnections between religion and philosophy, Critchley investigates the impact of the social construction of death upon contemporary literary theory. Critchley focuses upon religious disappointment in literature and the problems that it poses for theorists who attempt to locate a sense of meaning in a postmodern world.

Curtler, Hugh Mercer. Rediscovering Values: Coming to Terms with Postmodernism. Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1997.

Curtler argues for a clearer understanding of the nature of values and their role in postmodern forms of critique. In addition to contending that hermeneutics needs to find a common ground between postmodernist thinkers and contemporary educational theory, Cutler champions a new theory of interpretation that highlights the value systems inherent in ethics, literature, and art.

Danow, David K. Models of Narrative: Theory and Practice. New York: St. Martin's, 1997.

Danow discusses narrative models and their value to the study of temporal, spatial, and dialogic relations among texts. Danow clarifies common difficulties in literary conceptualization and interpretation and addresses a wide array of literary works by such figures as Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Pasternak, and Hawthorne, among others. Additionally, Danow attempts to distinguish between theory and practice, arguing for a postmodern form of critique that relies on narrative models.

de Graef, Ortwin. Titanic Light: Paul de Man's Post-Romanticism, 1960-1969. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1995.

De Graef, the scholar who discovered Paul de Man's Nazi writings in the late 1980s, offers a comprehensive survey of the deconstructionist critic's writings. De Graef devotes particular attention to de Man's increased interest during the 1960s in Romantic and post-Romantic literature and criticism. De Graef places de Man's 1960s-era essays within the context of the critical debates about structuralism, Marxism, and phenomology that abounded during that period.

de Man, Paul. Aesthetic Ideology: Paul de Man. Ed. Andrzej Warminski. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1996.

Selections include Warminski's "Introduction: Allegories of Reference"; "The Epistemology of Metaphor"; "Pascal's Allegory of Persuasion"; "Phenomenality and Materiality in Kant"; "Sign and Symbol in Hegel's Aesthetics"; "Hegel on the Sublime"; "Kant's Materialism"; "Kant and Schiller"; "The Concept of Irony"; and "Reply to Raymond Geuss."

Feder, Ellen K., Mary C. Rawlinson, and Emily Zakin, eds. Derrida and Feminism: Recasting the Question of Woman. London: Routledge, 1997.

Selections include Feder, Rawlinson, and Zakin's introduction; Jane Gallop's "'Women' in Spurs and Nineties Feminism"; Feder and Zakin's "Flirting With the Truth: Derrida's Discourse with 'Woman' and Wenches"; Kelly Oliver's "The Maternal Operation: Circumscribing the Alliance"; Rawlinson's "Levers, Signatures, and Secrets"; Tina Chanter's "On Not Reading Derrida's Texts: Mistaking Hermeneutics, Misreading Sexual Difference, and Neutralizing Narration"; Ewa Plonowska Ziarek's "From Euthanasia to the Other of Reason: Performativity and the Deconstruction of Sexual Difference"; John D. Caputo's "Dreaming of the Innumerable: Derrida, Drucilla Cornell, and the Dance of Gender"; and Drucilla Cornell's "Where Love Begins: Sexual Difference and the Limit of the Masculine Symbolic."

Grenz, Stanley. A Primer on Postmodernism. Cambridge: Eerdmans, 1996.

Grenz attempts to define the nature of such central concepts as postmodernism and ethics within the context of contemporary literary theory. Additionally, Grenz argues that the postmodern landscape functions upon the threads of popular culture that link such disciplines as art and architecture, philosophy and fiction, and literary theory and television. Grenz demonstrates the ways in which postmodernism finds its roots in the earliest years of the twentieth century, rather than during the last years of the modernist era, as many scholars contend.

Halliburton, David. The Fateful Discourse of Worldly Things. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1997.

Drawing upon the theories of Heidegger, Halliburton outlines the functions of world-making in works by Yeats, Hopkins, and Baudelaire, among others. Halliburton also examines the arguments of such writers as Hobbes, Descartes, and Vico. Halliburton investigates the tradition of possessive individualism as espoused by a variety of modern scholars.

Haverkamp, Anselm. Deconstruction Is/in America: A New Sense of the Political. New York: New York UP, 1995.

Selections include Haverkamp's "Introduction: Deconstruction Is/as Neopragmatism? - Preliminary Remarks on Deconstruction in America"; Jacques Derrida's "Keynote: The Time Is Out of Joint"; Jonathan Culler's "Deconstruction and the Lyric"; Cynthia Chase's "Reading Epitaphs"; Samuel Weber's "Upping the Ante: Deconstruction as Parodic Practice"; J. Hillis Miller's "The Disputed Ground: Deconstruction and Literary Studies"; Michel Beaujour's "Une drole de classe de philo"; Peggy Kamuf's "Going Public: The University in Deconstruction"; Rodolphe Gasche's "Possibilizations, in the Singular"; Elizabeth Weber's "Writing Resistances"; Peter Eisenman's "Presentness and the 'Being-Only-Once' of Architecture"; Judith Butler's "Burning Acts: Injurious Speech"; Barbara Vinken's "Republic, Rhetoric, and Sexual Difference"; Avital Ronell's "The Test Drive"; Derek Attridge's "Ghost Writing"; Perry Meisel's "The Form of Politics"; Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's "At the Planchette of Deconstruction Is/in America"; and David Wills's "Jaded in America."

Heise, Ursula K. Chronoschism: Time, Narrative, and Postmodernism. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997.

Heise discusses the ways in which developments in transportation, communication, and information technologies have led to the emergence of a new culture of time in Western societies. In addition to arguing that this radical transformation in our understanding and experience of time has also profoundly affected the structure of the novel, Heise offers new readings of postmodern theory and the often uneasy relationship between literature and science.

Henkel, Jacqueline M. The Language of Criticism: Linguistic Models and Literary Theory. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1996.

Henkel examines the impact of linguistics and ordinary language on literary theory during the previous four decades. Henkel demonstrates the ways in which various linguistic models - particularly those espoused by Saussure and the Prague school of linguistics - inform the language of poststructuralism, narratology, deconstruction, and reader-response criticism. Henkel argues that the inherent tensions in language are necessary factors in the growth and development of literary theory and criticism.

Hilton, Nelson. Lexis Complexes: Literary Interventions. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1995.

Hilton identifies lexis complexes as clusters based on homonymic series of words such as idol, idle and idyll. Hilton argues that these phenomena are intrinsic both to poetic language and to the artistic discovery of symbolic meaning. Using the theoretical insights of cognitive psychology, linguistics, and literary theory, Hilton discusses the place of lexis complexes in works by Mary Shelley, Samuel Johnson, Joseph Conrad, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson, among others.

Hoffman, Michael J., and Patrick D. Murphy, eds. Essentials of the Theory of Fiction. Durham: Duke UP, 1996.

Selections include Henry James's "The Art of Fiction"; Virginia Woolf's "Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown"; E. M. Forster's "Flat and Round Characters"; M. M. Bakhtin's "Epic and Novel"; Joseph Frank's "Spatial Form in Modern Literature"; Lionel Trilling's "Manners, Morals, and the Novel"; Roland Barthes's "Writing and the Novel"; Norman Friedman's "What Makes a Short Story Short?"; Wayne Booth's "Distance and Point of View: An Essay in Classification"; Georg Lukacs: Marxist Aesthetics and Literary Realism"; J. Arthur Honeywell's "Plot in the Modern Novel"; Mitchell A. Leaska's "The Concept of Point of View"; William H. Gass's "The Concept of Character in Fiction"; Gerard Genette's "Time and Narrative in A la recherche du temps perdu"; William Freedman's "The Literary Motif: A Definition and Evaluation"; Gerald Prince's "Introduction to the Study of the Narratee"; George Levine's "Realism Reconsidered"; Seymour Chatman's "Nonnarrated Stories"; Tzvetan Todorov's "Reading as Construction"; John Barth's "The Literature of Replenishment"; Suzanne C. Ferguson's "Defining the Short Story: Impressionism and Form"; Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s "The Blackness of Blackness: A Critique on the Sign and the Signifying Monkey"; Peter Brooks's "Reading for the Plot"; David Lodge's "Mimesis and Diegesis in Modern Fiction"; Rachel Blau DuPlessis's "Breaking the Sentence: Breaking the Sequence"; Barbara Foley's "The Documentary Novel and the Problem of Borders"; Patrocinio P. Schweickart's "Reading Ourselves: Toward a Feminist Theory of Reading"; Joanne S. Frye's "Politics, Literary Form, and a Feminist Poetics of the Novel"; Susan S. Lanser's "Toward a Feminist Narratology"; and Linda Hutcheon's "'The Pastime of Past Time': Fiction, History, Historiographical Metafiction."

Hogue, W. Lawrence. Race, Modernity, Postmodernity: A Look at the History and the Literatures of People of Color since the 1960s. Albany: State U of New York P, 1996.

Hogue provides readings of eight novels in terms of their literary depictions of African-American, Hispanic, Asian American, and Native American characters. In addition to discussing the dialogue between creative intellectuals of color and the ostensibly "mainstream" intellectual trends of the previous three decades, Hogue addresses the tenets of multiculturalism within the context of recent trends in postmodern theory.

Ingraffia, Brian D. Postmodern Theory and Biblical Theology: Vanquishing God's Shadow. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995.

Ingraffia explores the relationship between postmodernism and Christianity. Ingraffia argues that postmodernism regards Christianity as capable of being dismantled and demystified through an identification of its body-soul dualities. Additionally, Ingraffia demonstrates how any reconciliation between critical theory and theology is radically misguided because of the nature of the contemporary postmodern debate about the articulation of theological ideals.

Kamuf, Peggy. The Division of Literature: Or the University in Deconstruction. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1997.

In addition to examining the influence of deconstruction upon contemporary academic politics and pedagogy, Kamuf traces the history of the modern university, in addition to discussing the role of poststructuralist literary theory in the future of our postsecondary institutions. Kamuf devotes particular attention to the rhetoric of deconstruction and its interconnections with an increasingly interdisciplinary academy.

Levi-Strauss, Claude. Look, Listen, Read. New York: HarperCollins, 1997.

Livi-Strauss examines the domain of aesthetics through close readings of paintings, music, literature, and the plastic arts. Levi-Strauss devotes special attention to music and music appreciation, while also studying the nature of the "beautiful" in various aesthetic spheres. Additionally, Levi-Strauss discusses the relation between sounds and colors through an analysis of the poetry of Arthur Rimbaud.

Lowney, John. The American Avant-Garde Tradition: William Carlos Williams, Postmodern Poetry, and the Politics of Cultural Memory. Cranbury: Associated UP, 1997.

Lowney examines the American avant-garde tradition through various poststructuralist readings of works by William Carlos Williams and their impact upon postmodern poetry and thought. Lowney addresses the ways in which discourses of cultural nationalism and avant-garde theory impact the formation of American poetry canons. Lowney investigates Williams's commitment to experimentation and the destruction of traditional poetic forms in his verse.

Lucente, Gregory L. Crosspaths in Literary Theory and Criticism: Italy and the United States. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1997.

Lucente traces several of the most recent trends in Italian and American critical traditions. Lucente studies deconstruction, Marxism, and feminism, as well as the role of critical pluralism within the context of Italian and American literary theory. He also examines the works of Italian writers - especially Giambattista Vico and Gramsci - and their roles in our understanding of theoretical problems regarding the historical imagination.

Lyons, Bridget Gellert, ed. Reading in an Age of Theory. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1997.

Selections include Lyons's preface; Ross Posnock's "Reading Poirier Pragmatically"; Edward W. Said's "The Franco-American Dialogue: A Late Twentieth-Century Reassessment"; Leo Bersani's "Love Is for the Birds: Sartre and La Fontaine"; David Bromwich's "King Lear, Edmund Burke, and the French Revolution"; Barry V. Qualls's "Listening to Words: David, St. Mark, Emily Bronte, and the Exorbitancies in Narrative"; Margery Sabin's "The Morning Twilight of Intimacy: 'The Pupil' and What Maisie Knew"; Millicent Bell's "James and 'Ideas': 'Madame de Mauves'"; Thomas R. Edwards's "Persuasion and the Life of Feeling"; John Hollander's "Robert Frost and the Renewal of Birds"; Anne Ferry's "Frost's 'Obvious' Titles"; Frank Kermode's "'What Is the Matter, Trow?': A Rhetoric of Obscurity"; Robert Garis's "Making It Expressive: Ibsen's Language"; and "Horace, Ode iv.8: To Censorinus," trans. David Ferry.

Macovski, Michael, ed. Dialogue and Critical Discourse: Language, Culture, Critical Theory. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997.

Selections include Macovski's introduction, "Textual Voices, Vocative Texts: Dialogue, Linguistics, and Critical Discourse"; Timothy R. Austin's "Narrative Transmission: Shifting Gears in Shelley's 'Ozymandias'"; Rachel May's "The Power of Speech: Dialogue as History in the Russian Primary Chronicle"; John P. Farrell's "Crossroads to Community: Jude the Osbscure and the Chronotype of Wessex"; Paul Friedrich's "Dialogue in Lyric Narrative"; Don H. Bialostosky's "'Westminster Bridge' and 'Beauteous Evening'"; Deborah Tannen's "Involvement as Dialogue: Linguistic Theory and the Relation Between Conversational and Literary Discourse"; Macovski's "'The Bard I Quote From': Byron, Bakhtin, and the Appropriation of Voices"; Anne Mack and Jay Rome's "Marxism, Romanticism, and Postmodernism: An American Case History"; Shirley Brice Heath's "The Essay in English: Readers and Writers in Dialogue"; Michael Holquist's "Bakhtin and Beautiful Science: The Paradox of Cultural Relativity Revisited"; John R. Searle's "Conversation as Dialogue"; and Gary Saul Morson with Caryl Emerson's "Extracts From a Heteroglossary."

May, Todd. Reconsidering Difference: Nancy, Derrida, Levinas, and Deleuze. University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 1997.

May investigates the emergence of twentieth-century French philosophy and its tremendous impact upon contemporary literary theory and criticism. He offers close readings of the works of Jean-Luc Nancy, Jacques Derrida, Emmanuel Levinas, and Gilles Deleuze. May's study explores a variety of issues, including theories of community, linguistics, and ethics, among others.

Mihailescu, Calin-Andrei, and Walid Hamarneh, eds. Fiction Updated: Theories of Fictionality, Narratology, and Poetics. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1996.

Selections include Mihailescu and Hamarneh's "Introduction: Under the Jealous Gaze of Truth"; Ruth Ronen's "Are Fictional Worlds Possible?"; Nicholas Rescher's "Questions About the Nature of Fiction"; John Woods's "Fortress Fiction"; Peter McCormick's "Literary Fictions and Philosophical Theories: The Possible-Worlds Story"; Felix Martinez-Bonati's "On Fictional Discourse"; Pierre Ouellet's "The Perception of Fictional Worlds"; Siegfried J. Schmidt's "Beyond Reality and Fiction? The Fate of Dualism in the Age of (Mass) Media"; Cesare Segre's "Models, Madness, and the Hereafter"; Uri Margolin's "Characters and Their Versions"; Peter W. Nesselroth's "Naming Names in Telling Tales"; Francesco Lorggio's "Fictionality, Narration, and the Question of Genres"; Gerald Prince's "Narratology, Narratological Criticism, and Gender"; Eva Kushner's "The Renaissance Dialogue and Its Zero-Degree Fictionality"; Nancy Felson-Rubin's "Signposts in Oral Epic: Metapragmatic and Metasemantic Signals"; Didier Coste's "Of Worlds and Nutshells: On Casanova's Icosameron"; Peter Steiner's "Ironies of History: The Joke of Milan Kundera"; Linda Hutcheon's "The Politics of Impossible Worlds"; Umberto Eco's 'Thoughts on Aristotle's Poetics"; Michael Riffaterre's "Chronotopes in Diegesis"; Ladislav Matejka's "Deconstructing Bakhtin"; Douwe W. Fokkema's "Scratching the Bronze Mirror: Looking for Traces of Fictionality in Chinese Poetics"; Edward Mozejko's "Formalist and Structuralist Activity in Poland: Tradition and Progress"; Hans-George Ruprecht's "An Improbable Side by Side: Dolezel and Borges in Prague"; and Thomas G. Pavel's "Lubomir Dolezel's Contribution to Contemporary Literary Studies."

Mohanty, Satya P. Literary Theory and the Claims of History: Postmodernism, Objectivity, Multicultural Politics. Ithaca: Cornel UP, 1997.

Mohanty evaluates the current prominence of literary theory, particularly in regard to the postmodern consensus shared amongst progressive thinkers, activists, and students of culture. In addition to locating postmodernism's impetus in the far-reaching claim that truth and rationality are always socially and discursively constructed, Mohanty explores and develops a theoretical alternative to the notion of objectivity, a notion that is often attacked by postmodernist thinkers.

Mole, Gary D. Levinas, Blanchot, Jabes: Figures of Estrangement. Gainesville: UP of Florida, 1997.

Mole compares the ways in which Emmanuel Levinas, Edmond Jabes, and Maurice Blanchot have dealt with the issue of Jewishness in their various postmodernist critiques. Mole demonstrates that questions of writing and exile, the opposition between ethics and metaphysics, and the central tragedy of the Shoah emerge as the principal themes examined by each writer. Mole discusses the manner in which each writer borrows from, responds to, and challenges each other in a dialogic fashion.

Newman, Robert, ed. Pedagogy, Praxis, Ulysses: Using Joyce's Text to Transform the Classroom. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1996.

Selections include Newman's introduction; Michael Patrick Gillespie's "'In the buginning is the woid': Opening Lines and the Protocols of Reading"; Kevin Dettmar's "Ulysses and the Preemptive Power of Plot"; Carol Schloss's "Teaching Joyce Teaching Kristeva: Estrangement in the Modern World"; Margaret Mills Harper's "Bread and Wine, Coke and Peanuts: Teaching Sacrificial Feasts"; Margot Norris's "Theater of the Mind: 'Circe' and Avant-Garde Form"; Susan Shaw Sailer's "Women in Rooms, Women in History"; Brian Schaffer's "Teaching Freud through 'Nausicaa'"; M. Keith Booker's "Decolonizing Literature: Ulysses and the Postcolonial Novel in English"; R. Brandon Kershner's "Teaching Howards End through Ulysses through Bakhtin"; Sheldon Brivic's "Dialogic Monologue, or Divided Discourse in Ulysses and Othello"; Roy Gottfried's "Reading the Text of Ulysses, 'Reading' Other 'Texts': Representations and the Limits of Visual and Verbal Narratives"; Archie Loss's "Ulysses, Cubism, and MTV"; Newman's "Discovering Body Tropes through Ulysses"; Craig Werner's "'Cyclops,"Sirens,' and the Myths of Multicultural Modernism"; E. P. Walkiewicz's "Ulysses, Order, Myth: Classification and Modern Literature"; and Gregory Ulmer's "The Heuretics of Odyssey: Ulysses in Florida."

Nicholsen, Shierry Weber. Exact Imagination: Late Work On Adorno's Aesthetics. Cambridge: MIT P, 1997.

Nicholsen focuses on the centrality of the aesthetic dimension in the writings of Theodor Adorno, affording particular attention to Adorno's use of the term "exact imagination," which describes a form of nondiscursive rationality. Nicholsen argues that exact imagination functions in Adorno's aesthetic as a means for registering the disjunction between subjectivity and objectivity.

Rabate, Jean-Michael. Writing the Image after Roland Barthes. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1997.

Selections include Rabate's introduction; Victor Burgin's "Barthes's Discretion"; Marjorie Perloff's "'What Has Occurred Only Once': Barthes's Winter Garden/Boltanski's Archives of the Dead"; Nancy M. Schawcross's "The Filter of Culture and the Culture of Death: How Barthes and Boltanski Play the Mythologies of the Photograph"; Colin MacCabe's "Barthes and Bazin: The Ontology of the Image"; Derek Attridge's "Roland Barthes's Obtuse, Sharp Meaning and the Responsibilities of Commentary"; Jolanta Wawrzycka's "Photographeme: Mythologizing in Camera Lucinda"; Carol Shloss's "Narrative Liaisons: Roland Barthes and the Dangers of the Photo-Essay"; Liliane Weissberg's "Circulating Images: Notes on the Photographic Exchange"; Diana Knight's "Roland Barthes, or The Woman Without a Shadow"; Beryl Schlossman's "The Descent of Orpheus: On Reading Barthes and Proust"; Steven Ungar's "The Imaginary Museum of Jules Michelet"; Philippe Roger's "Barthes with Marx"; Pierre Force's "Beyond Metalanguage: Bathmology"; Antoine Compagnon's "Who Is the Real One?"; Marjorie Welish's "The Art of Being Sparse, Porous, Scattered"; Daniel Ferrer's "Genetic Criticism in the Wake of Barthes"; Dalia Kandiyoti's "Roland Barthes Abroad"; Arkady Plotnitsky's "Un-Scriptible"; and Bob Perelman's "Conclusion: A False Account of Talking with Frank O'Hara and Roland Barthes in Philadelphia."

Rickman, H. P. Philosophy in Literature. Cranbury: Associated UP, 1996.

Rickman explores the often uneasy relationship between philosophy and literary study, two disciplines marked by contradictory qualities of lucidity and ambiguity, respectively. Drawing upon the writings of a variety of philosophers and literary theorists, Rickman applies a philosophical approach to literary study in an effort to reveal the distinguishing characteristics of genres. Using works by T. S. Eliot and Jean-Paul Sartre, among others, Rickman examines the various philosophical dimensions of literary study.

Seaton, James. Cultural Conservatism, Political Liberalism: From Criticism to Cultural Studies. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1996.

Seaton offers a response to the impassioned debates regarding culture and the literary canon during the last decade. Seaton contends that the attempts of such writers as E. D. Hirsch and Allan Bloom to unite cultural conservatism and political imperialism provide inadequate critiques of higher education. Drawing upon a diversity of works by Lionel Trilling, H. L. Mencken, Irving Babbitt, Ralph Ellison, and Edmund Wilson, among others, Seaton analyzes the successes and failures of the contemporary theoretical project as a means of cultural critique.

Smith, Anna. Julia Kristeva: Readings of Exile and Estrangement. London: Macmillan, 1996.

Smith investigates Julia Kristeva's contributions to literary study through an analysis of the writer's interest in the psychoanalytic interpretation of everyday experience. Smith argues that Kristeva is drawn to states of extremity where language and the psyche are under duress. In addition to addressing the postmodern aspects of Kristeva's philosophy, Smith studies those moments in the critic's texts where exile and dissolution seem to be countered by a privileged feminine space.

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. The Spivak Reader. Ed. Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean. London: Routledge, 1996.

Selections include Landry and MacLean's "Introduction: Reading Spivak"; "Bonding in Difference, Interview with Alfred Arteaga"; "Explanation and Culture: Marginalia"; "Feminism and Critical Theory"; "Revolutions That As Yet Have No Model: Derrida's 'Limited Inc.'"; "Scattered Speculations on the Question of Value"; "More on Power/Knowledge"; "Echo"; "Subaltern Studies: Deconstructing Historiography"; "How To Teach a 'Culturally Different' Book"; "Translator's Preface and Afterword to Mahasweta Devi, Imaginary Maps"; "Subaltern Talk: Interview with the Editors"; and "Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: A Checklist of Publications."

Steinberg, Michael P., ed. Walter Benjamin and the Demands of History. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1996.

Selections include Steinberg's "Introduction: Benjamin and the Critique of Allegorical Reason"; Jacques Ranciere's "The Archaeomodern Turn"; Heinz-Dieter Kittsteiner's "The Allegory of the Philosophy of History in the Nineteenth Century"; Harry D. Harootunian's "The Benjamin Effect: Modernism, Repetition, and the Path to Different Cultural Imaginaries"; Steinberg's "The Collector as Allegorist: Goods, Gods, and the Objects of History"; Curtis M. Hinsley's "Strolling Through the Colonies"; Francoise Meltzer's "Acedia and Melancholia"; Max Pensky's "Tactics of Remembrance: Proust, Surrealism, and the Origin of the Passagenwerk"; Irving Wohlfarth's "Smashing the Kaleidoscope: Walter Benjamin's Critique of Cultural History"; Michael Lowy's "'Against the Grain': The Dialectical Conception of Culture in Walter Benjamin's Theses of 1940"; and Ackbar Abbas's "Hyphenation: The Spatial Dimensions of Hong Kong Culture."

Steele, Meili. Critical Confrontations: Literary Theories in Dialogue. Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 1997.

Steele argues that dominant paradigms of contemporary critical theory eclipse rather than make possible the analysis of gender, race, and difference. Using the insights of Hans-Georg Gadamer, Julia Kristeva, and Jacques Derrida, Steele examines variations in poststructuralism, feminism, democracy, and cultural criticism, among other disciplines. Steele also illuminates the manner in which ostensibly disparate theories interact to address the questions that face teachers and students of literature, culture studies, and philosophy.

Theall, Donald F. James Joyce's Techno-Poetics. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1997.

Theall combines the study of literature, technology, and communication in an effort to reveal Joyce's role in the creation of cyberculture. Theall examines the ways in which Joyce conceived of the artist as an engineer and the artist's works as constructions. Using Joyce's Finnegans Wake and William Gibson's Neuromancer, among other texts, Theall explores the interconnections between the processes of encoding, decoding, reading, writing, and interpreting in Joyce's and cyberculture's self-reflexive fictions.

Williams, Raymond L. The Postmodern Novel in Latin America: Politics, Culture, and the Crisis of Truth. New York: St. Martin's, 1995.

Williams explores the writings of the most significant postmodernist Latin American authors of the previous three decades. Using works by Carlos Fuentes, Mario Vargas Llosa, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Julio Cortazar, Williams reads the postmodern Latin American novel within the context of contemporary poststructuralist theory. Williams also discusses the works of a new generation of postmodern writers, including Ricardo Piglia, Severo Sarduy, and Diamela Eltit, among others.

Wolfe, Peter. A Vision of His Own: The Mind and Art of William Gaddis. Cranbury: Associated UP, 1996.

Wolfe investigates the elements of juxtaposition, reflection, and distortion inherent in the fictions of William Gaddis. Wolfe identifies a postmodern form of irony in Gaddis's narratives that manifests itself as Gaddis recoils from the traditional belief that Yankee optimism is built on abundance. Additionally, Wolfe discusses the manner in which Gaddis's splintering of traditional storytelling modes forces us to seek merit and value in society's margins.

Wolfreys, Julian. The Rhetoric of Affirmative Resistance: Dissonant Identities from Carroll to Derrida. London: Macmillan, 1997.

Wolfreys offers close readings of films, novels, and poetry in an effort to draw attention to the ways in which texts seem to resist acts of reading by performing their own idiomatic and resistant forms of identity. Drawing upon a diversity of works by such figures as Lewis Carroll, Jacques Derrida, and James Joyce, among others, Wolfreys proposes a new model for understanding dissonant forms of identity. Wolfreys challenges readers to reassess textual performances through a new rhetoric of personal identity.

Ziarek, Ewa Plonowska. The Rhetoric of Failure: Deconstruction of Skepticism, Reinvention of Modernism. Albany: State U of New York P, 1996.

Ziarek examines the intersections between deconstruction and literary modernism through detailed readings of works by Kafka, Beckett, and Gombrowicz. Drawing upon the theoretical insights of Derrida and Levinas, Ziarek offers an alternative interpretation of philosophy's impact upon literary studies. Ziarek argues that the rhetoric of failure has been unnecessarily excluded from traditional subject-centered views of philosophy.

(4) Reader-Response and Phenomenological Criticism

Alexander, Doris. Creating Literature Out of Life: The Making of Four Masterpieces. University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 1996.

Alexander attempts to define the qualities that define a literary masterpiece, arguing that the miracle of literary immortality lies in the "myriad unknowns in the great mystery of creativity." In addition to exploring the novel's historical and social contexts, Alexander discusses the creative aspects and emotional tones of such works as Death in Venice, War and Peace, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, and Treasure Island. Alexander argues that each of these works was compelled by the urgent life dilemmas of its author, whether conscious or unconscious. Alexander traces these problems through analysis of the nexus of memories that undergirds each narrative.

Alexander, Michael, and James McGonigal, eds. Sons of Ezra: British Poets and Ezra Pound. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1995.

Selections include Alexander and McGonigal's "Introduction: British Poets and Pound"; Edwin Morgan's "'Take the Whole Man, and Ravel Out the Story'"; Donal Davie's "A Son of Ezra"; Charles Tomlinson's "On First Reading Pound"; Roy Fisher's "On Ezra Pound"; Peter Russell's "Introduction to a Posthumous Collection"; Gael Turnbull's "The Rest Is Dross"; Douglas Dunn's "In Perigord"; Alexander's "'Blue, Blue Is the Grass About the River'"; Peter Davidson's "Translation and the Third Term of Reference"; McGonigal's "An XYZ of Reading: Basil Bunting in the British Tradition"; W. N. Herbert's "Pound and MacDiarmid"; Robert A. Davis's "Pound, Graves and the Search for a Live Tradition"; and Robert Crawford's "Pound and a Young Poet."

Anderson, Judith H., Donald Cheney, and David A. Richardson, eds. Spenser's Life and the Subject of Biography. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1996.

Selections include Anderson's foreword; Richard Rambuss's "Spenser's Lives, Spenser's Careers"; Jay Farness's "Disenchanted Elves: Biography in the Text of Faerie Queene V"; Vincent P. Carey and Clare L. Carroll's "Factions and Fictions: Spenser's Reflections of and on Elizabethan Politics"; Jean R. Brink's "'All his minde on honour fixed': The Preferment of Edmund Spenser"; F. J. Levy's "Spenser and Court Humanism"; Jon A. Quitslund's "Questionable Evidence in the Letters of 1580 Between Gabriel Harvey and Edmund Spenser"; Joseph Loewenstein's "Spenser's Retrography: Two Episodes in Post-Petrarchan Bibliography"; Anne Lake Prescott's "Spenser (Re)Reading du Bellay: Chronology and Literary Response"; David Lee Miller's "The Earl of Cork's Lute"; and Cheney's afterword.

Antonaccio, Maria, and William Schweiker, eds. Iris Murdoch and the Search for Human Goodness. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1996.

Selections include Antonaccio and Schweiker's introduction; Charles Taylor's "Iris Murdoch and Moral Philosophy"; Martha C. Nussbaum's "Love and Vision: Iris Murdoch on Eros and the Individual"; David Tracy's "Iris Murdoch and the Many Faces of Platonism"; Cora Diamond's "'We Are Perpetually Moralists': Iris Murdoch, Fact, and Value"; Antonaccio's "Form and Contingency in Iris Murdoch's Ethics"; Elizabeth Dipple's "The Green Knight and Other Vagaries of the Spirit; or, Tricks and Images for the Human Soul; or, The Uses of Imaginative Literature"; Franklin I. Gamwell's "On the Loss of Theism"; Stanley Hauerwas's "Murdochian Muddles: Can We Get Through Them If God Does Not Exist?"; Schweiker's "The Sovereignty of God's Goodness"; and Iris Murdoch's "Metaphysics and Ethics."

Armitage, David, Armand Himy, and Quentin Skinner, eds. Milton and Republicanism. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995.

Selections include Martin Dzelzainis's "Milton's Classical Republicanism"; Thomas N. Corns's "Milton and the Characteristics of a Free Commonwealth"; Cedric C. Brown's "Great Senates and Godly Education: Politics and Cultural Renewal in Some Pre- and Post-Revolutionary Texts of Milton"; Elizabeth Tuttle's "Biblical Reference in the Political Pamphlets of the Levellers and Milton, 1638-1654"; Victoria Kahn's "The Metaphorical Contract in Milton's Tenure of Kings and Magistrates"; Roger Lejosne's "Milton, Satan, Salmasius and Abdiel"; Himy's "Paradise Lost as a Republican 'Tractatus Theologicopoliticus'"; Nigel Smith's "Popular Republicanism in the 1650s: John Streater's 'Heroick Mechanicks'"; Blair Worden's "Milton and Marchamont Nedham"; Martin Dzelzainis's "Milton and the Protectorate in 1658"; Armitage's "John Milton: Poet Against Empire"; Nicholas yon Maltzahn's "The Whig Milton, 1667-1700"; and Tony Davies's "Borrowed Language: Milton, Jefferson, Mirabeau."

Astell, Ann W. Chaucer and the Universe of Learning. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1996.

Astell proposes that Chaucer intended the order of the Canterbury Tales that is preserved in the Ellesmere Manuscript. In addition to offering a wide array of insights into the world of medieval learning, Astell discusses the ways in which the order of the tales impacts Chaucer's expected audience and the tales' aggregate meaning. Astell defines the story blocks as topical units and demonstrates that the pilgrims' progress from London to Canterbury was a philosophical journey of the soul.

Baldo, Jonathan. The Unmasking of Drama: Contested Representation in Shakespeare's Tragedies. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1996.

Baldo examines the representative power with which viewers invest Shakespearean theater, arguing that struggles over representation constitute one of the greatest dilemmas in contemporary Shakespearean studies. Drawing upon plays from Hamlet to Coriolanus and Timon of Athens, Baldo evaluates Elizabethan theater's economical means of representation, as well as its reliance on interconnections between visual and verbal signs. Baldo reveals the flaws within the widespread assumption that Shakespeare's plays possess a limitless capacity for representation.

Balliet, Gay Louise. Henry Miller and Surrealist Metaphor: "Riding the Ovarian Trolley." New York: Lang, 1996.

Balliet's study of Miller encounters a wide range of subjects, including the history and aesthetics of surrealism, as well as surrealism's origins and its various uses of language. In addition to defining such terms as chance, the marvelous, automatism, and revolution, Balliet discusses contemporary uses of surrealism in the fictions of Henry Miller. Drawing upon such texts as Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn, Balliet examines the interrelationships between Miller's style and the image-making capacity of surrealism.

Becket, Fiona. D. H. Lawrence: The Thinker as Poet. London: Macmillan, 1997.

Becket examines Heidegger's theory that the poetic character of thinking is still veiled over. In addition to exploring metaphor within a wide range of Lawrence's discursive and nondiscursive writings, Becket discusses such works as Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious and Fantasia of the Unconscious, among others. Becket argues that Lawrence's play with the serious in language raises important questions about the manner in which subjectivity is perceived in the works of modernist novelists.

Beegel, Susan E, Susan Shillinglaw, and Wesley N. Tiffney, Jr., eds. Steinbeck and the Environment: Interdisciplinary Approaches. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 1997.

Selections include Elaine Steinbeck's foreword, Tiffney, Shillinglaw, and Beegel's introduction, James C. Kelley's "John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts: Understanding Life in the Great Tide Pool", Richard E. Hart's "Steinbeck on Man and Nature: A Philosophical Reflection"; David N. Cassuto's "Turning Wine into Water: Water as Privileged Signifier in The Grapes of Wrath"; Lorelei Cederstrom's "The 'Great Mother' in The Grapes of Wrath"; Peter Valenti's "Steinbeck's Ecological Polemic: Human Sympathy and Visual Documentary in the Intercalary Chapters of The Grapes of Wrath"; Marilyn Chandler McEntyre's "Natural Wisdom: Steinbeck's Men of Nature as Prophets and Peacemakers", Brian Railsback's "Searching for 'What Is': Charles Darwin and John Steinbeck"; Stanley Brodwin's "'The Poetry of Scientific Thinking': Steinbeck's Log From the Sea of Cortez and Scientific Travel Narrative"; Clifford Eric Gladstein and Mimi Reisel Glastein's "Revisiting the Sea of Cortez with a 'Green' Perspective"; Peter A. J. Englert's "Education of Environmental Scientists: Should We Listen to Steinbeck and Ricketts's Comments?"; Kiyoshi Nakayama's "The Pearl in the Sea of Cortez: Steinbeck's Use of Environment"; Robert DeMott's "'Working at the Impossible': Moby-Dick's Presence in East of Eden"; Nathaniel Philbrick's "At Sea in the Tide Pool: The Whaling Town and America in Steinbeck's The Winter of Our Discontent and Travels with Charley"; H. R. Stoneback's "'The Scars of Our Grasping Stupidity' and the 'Sucked Orange': John Steinbeck and the Ecological Legacy of John Burroughs"; and Robert E. Morsberger's "Steinbeck Under the Sea at the Earth's Core."

Beer, Gillian. Virginia Woolf: The Common Ground. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1996.

Beer's essays on Woolf offer close textual readings of such works as To the Lighthouse and The Waves, demonstrating how Woolf's conceptualizations of history and narrative are intimately bound up with her ways of thinking about women, writing, and social and sexual relations. By examining Woolf within the context of other scientific and literary works, Beer illuminates Woolf's writings in a variety of new and interesting ways. Beer also discusses the contemporary critical reception of Woolf's work.

Berger, Harry, Jr. Making Trifles of Terrors: Redistributing Complicities in Shakespeare. Ed. Peter Erickson. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1997.

Selections include Erickson's introduction; "Marriage and Mercifixion in The Merchant of Venice: The Casket Scene Revisited"; "Against the Sink-a-Pace: Sexual and Family Politics in Much Ado About Nothing"; "King Lear: The Lear Family Romance"; "Text Against Performance: The Gloucester Family Romance"; "The Early Scenes of Macbeth: Preface to a New Interpretation"; "Text Against Performance: The Example of Macbeth"; "Sneak's Noise, or, Rumor and Detextualization in 2 Henry IV"; "Psychoanalyzing the Shakespeare Text: The First Three Scenes of the Henriad"; "Textual Dramaturgy: Representing the Limits of Theater in Richard Il'; "Ars Moriendi in Progress, or, John of Gaunt and the Practice of Strategic Dying"; "What Did the King Know and When Did He Know It? Shakespearean Discourses and Psychoanalysis"; "Food for Words: Hotspur and the Discourse of Honor"; "Making Trifles of Terrors: Redistributing Complicities in the Ethical Discourses"; and "What Does the Duke Know and When Does He Know It?: Carrying the Torch in Measure for Measure."

Blair, Sara. Henry James and the Writing of Race and Nation. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996.

Blair uncovers a new image of Henry James as a writer who - rather than fashioning himself as an iconic figure of high culture - tests his commitments in competition with emerging, popular forms of writing. Blair argues for the importance of literary institutions to the author's writing processes in every phase of his lengthy career. In addition to examining his travel essays and reviews, Blair discusses the complexities of James's discourses on race and nationalism, contending that these gestures become central to our understanding of the writer's literary performance.

Brown, Daniel. Hopkins's Idealism: Philosophy, Physics, Poetry. Oxford: Clarendon, 1997.

Brown contests the conventional image of the young Hopkins as a conservative High-Church ritualist, arguing instead that the youthful poet was a boldly speculative, intellectual liberal. Drawing upon a selection of the poet's unpublished Oxford essays, Brown compares Hopkins's thought with the teachings of Benjamin Jowett and T. H. Green, his Oxford tutors. In this way, Brown offers radical rereadings of Hopkins's metaphysics, theology, and verse.

Burwell, Rose Marie. Hemingway: The Postwar Years and the Posthumous Novels. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996.

Burwell offers new readings of Hemingway's posthumously published novels, including A Moveable Feast, Islands in the Stream, The Garden of Eden, and an untitled work on his African travels. Burwell argues that Hemingway in fact designed the first three of his posthumous works as a trilogy, or, in Burwell's words, "his own portrait of the artist." Burwell contends that Hemingway's final four works underscore the many ways in which the author remained unable to abandon his life-long anxieties regarding gender and family.

Cheyette, Bryan, ed. Between "Race" and Culture: Representations of "the Jew" in English and American Literature. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1996.

Selections include Cheyette's "Introduction: Unanswered Questions"; William Galperin's "Romanticism and/or Antisemitism"; Sander L. Gilman's "Mark Twain and the Diseases of the Jews"; Murray Baumgarten's "Seeing Double: Jews in the Fiction of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, and George Eliot"; Jonathan Freedman's "Henry James and the Discourses of Antisemitism"; Maud Ellmann's "The Imaginary Jew: T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound"; Marilyn Reizbaum's "A Nightmare of History: Ireland's Jews and Joyce's Ulysses"; Jacqueline Rose's "Dorothy Richardson and the Jew"; Phyllis Lassner's "'The Milk of Our Mother's Kindness Has Ceased to Flow': Virginia Woolf, Stevie Smith, and the Representation of the Jew"; Andrea Freud Loewenstein's "The Protection of Masculinity: Jews as Projective Pawns in the Texts of William Gerhardi and George Orwell"; and Eric Homberger's "Some Uses for Jewish Ambivalence: Abraham Cahan and Michael Gold."

Cheyfitz, Eric. The Poetics of Imperialism: Translation and Colonization from The Tempest to Tarzan. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1997.

Originally published in 1991, this expanded edition of Cheyfitz's study charts the course of American imperialism from the arrival of Renaissance Europeans in the New World. Using works by James Fenimore Cooper, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Edgar Rice Burroughs, Cheyfitz discusses the New World's language of empire and its use of such terms as "natives," "savages," "cannibals," and "Indians." Cheyfitz argues that the poetics of American imperialism has created the conventions for translating the language of the inhabitants of the New World.

Cirasa, Robert J. The Lost Works of William Carlos Williams: The Volumes of Collected Poetry as Lyrical Sequences. Cranbury: Associated UP, 1995.

Cirasa argues that Williams's The Collected Works, 1921-1931 and The Complete Collected Poems, 1906-1938 are "lost" works of major accomplishments among the poet's verse canon. Cirasa devotes particular attention to the ways in which these two collections have been obscured by later compilations assembled during the 1950s. Cirasa argues that these two volumes are distinct and definitive works in Williams's poetic oeuvre.

Coursen, H. R. Reading Shakespeare on Stage. Cranbury: Associated UP, 1995.

Coursen offers a set of criteria for responding to the theatrical production of Shakespeare's plays. In addition to arguing that the concept of "script" - as opposed to "text" - makes possible an approach to Shakespeare's plays as dramatic works, a function to which their literary quality is often subordinate, Coursen examines recent major productions of Shakespeare in order to illustrate the value of his reading methodology.

Dash, Irene G. Women's Worlds in Shakespeare's Plays. Cranbury: Associated UP, 1997.

Focusing on five Shakespeare plays, Dash examines the complex choices and decisions that confront women characters in Elizabethan literature. In addition to critiquing various productions over the centuries, Dash explores the subtle ways in which the characters have been changed through the years. Dash affords particular attention to the manner in which contemporary attitudes often skew the works and diminish their intellectual and social depth.

DeShell, Jeffrey. The Peculiarity of Literature: An Allegorical Approach to Poe's Fiction. Cranbury: Associated UP, 1997.

DeShell argues that Poe's fiction is ultimately peculiar and remains outside the margins of adequate critical response. DeShell argues that most interpretations of Poe's fictions ignore his resistance to critique and work instead to incorporate his texts in ways that have little to do with language and writing. Additionally, DeShell suggests that Poe's fiction becomes much more influential, subversive, and meaningful when it is allowed to remain uninterpreted and without influence, communication, or meaning.

Dickie, Margaret. Stein, Bishop, and Rich: Lyrics of Love, War, and Place. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1997.

Dickie's volume features several chapters on the lives and poetry of Stein, Bishop, and Rich. Selections include "Gertrude Stein: Living Was All Loving"; "Gertrude Stein and the First War She Saw"; "G Is for Geographical"; "Half Is Enough: Elizabeth Bishop's Love Poetry"; "Bishop on Conflicts: War, Race, and Class"; "Elizabeth Bishop's What Is a Map?"; "Adrienne Rich: Whatever Happens with Us"; "Adrienne Rich and War"; and "Adrienne Rich: A Politics of Location."

Donaldson, Ian. Jonson's Magic Houses: Essays in Interpretation. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997.

Donaldson's volume compiles several of his recent essays on the life and work of Ben Jonson. Selections include "Twice a Man"; "Jonson and the Tother Youth"; "Gathering and Losing the Self: Jonson and Biography"; "Jonson's Duplicity: The Catholic Years"; "Jonson's Magic Houses"; "Clockwork Comedy: Time and The Alchemist"; "Unknown Ends: Valpone"; "Politic Picklocks: Reading Jonson Historically"; "The Story of Charis"; "Fathers and Sons: Jonson, Dryden, and MacFlecknoe"; "'Not of an Age': Jonson, Shakespeare, and the Verdicts of Posterity."

Dove, George N. The Reader and the Detective Story. Bowling Green: Bowling Green State U Popular P, 1996.

Drawing upon the theoretical insights of Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wolfgang Iser, and Hans Robert Jauss, Dove argues that the detective story requires a special method of reading. Dove identifies this reading methodology by distinguishing between the traits of English and American detective fictions. He devotes particular attention to the different plots and settings that define the genre of the detective story.

Dupuy, Edward J. Autobiography in Walker Percy: Repetition, Recovery, and Redemption. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1996.

Dupuy investigates the roles of autobiography, philosophy, and language in the works of Walker Percy. In addition to examining various autobiographical elements in Percy's novels, Dupuy surveys Percy's preoccupation with notions of character and the self in his fictions. Dupuy compares Percy's interest in time and its effect upon the fictional self with similar arguments in the works of Kierkegaard and Heidegger, among others.

Eagleton, Terry. Heathcliff and the Great Hunger: Studies in Irish Culture. London: Verso, 1995.

Eagleton offers an analysis of the Protestant Ascendancy's failure to achieve hegemony in Ireland, while also providing a study of the paradoxes of the Act of Union. Using works by George Bernard Shaw, James Joyce, Jonathan Swift, and Oscar Wilde, among others, Eagleton discusses the often tragic sociopolitical history that created Irish literature and culture. Eagleton also examines the radical culture of Ulster and the cultural politics of nineteenth-century Ireland.

Easton, Alison. The Making of the Hawthorne Subject. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1996.

Easton explores the development of Hawthorne's work over the first 25 years of his career in relation to current critical debates regarding subjectivity. Drawing on Hawthorne's novels, sketches, tales, letters, notebooks, reviews, and children's books, Easton demonstrates the manner in which Hawthorne attempted to understand the complexities of the clash between desire and circumstance.

Eddershaw, Margaret. Performing Brecht. London: Routledge, 1996.

Eddershaw discusses the often problematic relationship between Brecht and the British theatrical establishment. In addition to surveying all aspects of Brecht in performance, including discussion of his dramatic aesthetic, as well as his place in postmodernist theater, Eddershaw focuses on the productions of Brecht by a wide range of directors, including George Devine, Sam Wanamaker, William Gaskill, Howard Davies, John Dexter, and Richard Eyre, among others. Eddershaw also provides case studies of three plays, including The Good Person of Sichuan, The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui, and Mother Courage.

Ferrari, Rita. Innocence, Power, and the Novels of John Hawkes. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1996.

Ferrari discusses the subtle transformations that have successively occurred in each of Hawkes's works of fiction. Ferrari traces Hawkes's experimentation with voice and perspective, his interrogation of authority and representation, and his exploration of language, gender, and identity. Additionally, Ferrari offers close readings of many of Hawkes's novels, including The Blood Oranges and The Cannibal, among others.

Feuer, Kathryn B. Tolstoy and the Genesis of War and Peace. Ed. Robin Feuer Miller and Donna Tussing Orwin. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1996.

Selections include the editors' preface; "Tolstoy's Early Works: The Literary Matrix of War and Peace"; "Predecessors of War and Peace: 'The Distant Field' and The Decembrists"; "The Novel of 1812"; "The Transition to 1805"; "The Opening Pages of War and Peace"; "The Transition from the Early Manuscripts to Book I, Part 1"; "Tolstoy's Rejection of the Spirit of 1856"; "Napoleonism, Decembrism, and the Spirit of 1856"; "Ideological Influences on the Genesis of War and Peace"; and "Napoleon as a Symbol of Revolution in the Political Conception of War and Peace."

Flieger, Verlyn. A Question of Time: J. R. R. Tolkien's Road to Faerie. Kent: Kent State UP, 1997.

Drawing on Tolkien's unpublished writings, Flieger explores the novelist's concern with time and the wonder of traveling into other worlds. Flieger investigates Tolkien's use of dream as time-travel in his unfinished works, The Lost Road and The Notion Club Papers, as well as in The Lord of the Rings and his verse. Flieger argues that Tolkien's fiction achieves a double perspective of time that allows him to see into both the past and the present.

Frankenberg, Ruth, ed. Displacing Whiteness: Essays in Social and Cultural Criticism. Durham: Duke UP, 1997.

Selections include Frankenberg's "Introduction: Local Whitenesses, Localizing Whiteness"; Rebecca Aanerud's "Fictions of Whiteness: Speaking the Names of Whiteness in U.S. Literature"; T. Muraleedharan's "Rereading Gandhi"; Chela Sandoval's "Theorizing White Consciousness for a Post-Empire World: Barthes, Fanon, and the Rhetoric of Love"; Angie Chabram-Dernersesian's "On the Social Construction of Whiteness Within Selected Chicana/o Discourses"; bell hooks's "Representing Whiteness in the Black Imagination"; John Hartigan, Jr.'s "Locating White Detroit"; France Winddance Twice's "Brown-Skinned White Girls: Class, Culture, and the Construction of White Identity in Suburban Communities"; Phil Cohen's "Laboring Under Whiteness"; Vron Ware's "Island Racism: Gender, Place, and White Power"; and David Wellman's "Minstrel Shows, Affirmative Action Talk, and Angry White Men: Marking Racial Otherness in the 1990s."

Furman, Jan. Toni Morrison's Fiction. Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 1996.

Furman addresses the development of Morrison's creative vision and assesses its influence upon contemporary fiction. In addition to demonstrating that Morrison strongly supports the idea that the artist must engender and interpret culture, Furman examines the novelist's contribution to the expansion and redefinition of the American literary canon through her portrayal of African-American experiences. Furman also devotes attention to Morrison's childhood, her late start on her literary career, and her work as a lecturer and parent.

Garfield, Deborah M., and Rafia Zafar, eds. Harriet Jacobs and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: New Critical Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996.

Selections include Zafar's "Introduction: Over-exposed, Under-exposed: Harriet Jacobs and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl"; Jacqueline Goldsby's "'I Disguised My Hand': Writing Versions of the Truth in Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and John Jacobs's 'A True Tale of Slavery'"; Jean Fagan Yellin's "Through Her Brother's Eyes: Incidents and 'A True Tale'"; Frances Smith Foster's "Resisting Incidents"; P. Gabrielle Foreman's "Manifest in Signs: The Politics of Sex and Representation in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl"; Garfield's "Earwitness: Female Abolitionism, Sexuality, and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl"; Sandra Gunning's "Reading and Redemption in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl"; Donald B. Gibson's "Harriet Jacobs, Frederick Douglass, and the Slavery Debate: Bondage, Family, and the Discourse of Domesticity"; John Ernest's "Motherhood beyond the Gate: Jacobs's Epistemic Challenge in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl"; Mary Titus's "'This Poisonous System': Social Ills, Bodily Ills, and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl"; Anne Bradford Warner's "Carnival Laughter: Resistance in Incidents"; Anita Goldman's "Harriet Jacobs, Henry Thoreau, and the Character of Disobedience"; Stephanie A. Smith's "The Tender of Memory: Restructing Value in Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl"; and Garfield's "Conclusion: Vexed Alliances: Race and Female Collaborations in the Life of Harriet Jacobs."

Giamo, Benedict. The Homeless of Ironweed: Blossoms on the Crag. Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 1996.

Giamo examines the ways in which social conditions, cultural meanings, and literary representations of classic and contemporary homelessness in America and abroad inform William Kennedy's Ironweed. In addition to providing a close reading of the novel, Giamo attempts to locate meaning in the lives of Kennedy's characters. Giamo discusses the novel's interconnections with the real lives and experiences of the homeless who wander through the streets and shelters of the present.

Guest, David. Sentenced to Death: The American Novel and Capital Punishment. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1997.

Guest investigates America's punitive codes through analyses of five works - McTeague, An American Tragedy, Native Son, In Cold Blood, and The Executioner's Song. Guest reads these works within the context of the historical background of crime and capital punishment in America, a nation where public discourse on crime is dominated by images of electric chairs, maximum security prisons, and dangerous convicts on parole. Additionally, Guest compares literary works with journalistic accounts of capital punishment and adds a new dimension to the debate on the role of capital punishment in American culture.

Halio, Jay L., and Ben Siegel, eds. Daughters of Valor: Contemporary Jewish American Women Writers. Cranbury: Associated UP, 1997.

Selections include Siegel's "Introduction: Erasing and Embracing the Past: America and Its Jewish Writers - Men and Women"; Susanne Klingenstein's "'In Life I Am Not Free': The Writer Cynthia Ozick and Her Jewish Obligations"; Miriyam Glazer's "'Daughters of Refugees of the Ongoing-Universal-Endless-Upheaval': Anne Roiphe and the Quest for Narrative Power in Jewish American Women's Fiction"; Halio's "Anne Roiphe: Finding Her America"; Victoria Aarons's "Responding to an Old Story: Susan Fromberg Schaeffer, Leslea Newman, and Francine Prose"; Charlotte Templin's "Erica Jong: Becoming a Jewish Writer"; Sara R. Horowitz's "The 'Pin With Which to Stick Yourself': The Holocaust in Jewish American Women's Writing"; S. Lillian Kremer's "Norma Rosen: An American Literary Response to the Holocaust"; James M. Mellard's "Resisting the Melting Pot: The Jewish Back-Story in the Fiction of Lynne Sharon Schwartz"; Karen W. Klein's "Adrienne Rich: 'Stuck to Earth'"; Steven G. Kellman's "Kael and Farewell"; Stephen J. Whitfield's "Wendy Wasserstein and the Crisis of (Jewish) Identity"; Gloria L. Cronin's "Immersions in the Postmodern: The Fiction of Allegra Goodman"; and Allegra Goodman's "Writing Jewish Fiction In and Out of the Multicultural Context."

Harris, Trudier. The Power of the Porch: The Storyteller's Craft in Zora Neale Hurston, Gloria Naylor, and Randall Kenan. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1996.

Harris argues that Zora Neale Hurston, Gloria Naylor, and Randall Kenan use oral storytelling techniques as a means for defining their audiences and creating anticipation for their tales. In addition to devoting particular attention to the ways in which each writer employs the "power of the porch" in their depictions of their characters, Harris contends that through their representation of these oral transactions Hurston, Naylor, and Kenan establish and perpetuate an oral tradition that celebrates the written word.

Harris, Wendell V. Literary Meaning: Reclaiming the Study of Literature. London: Macmillan, 1996.

Harris juxtaposes contemporary debates and disagreements over authorial intent, arguing for the importance of seeking authorial meaning and discussing the limits within which such interpretation is possible. Harris contends that the single most significant distinction among competing literary theories is that between traditional hermeneutics and fashionable hermeticism, which seeks to deny the relevance of intention. Harris also examines the current modes of professionalism in literature departments.

Hawkes, Terence, ed. Alternative Shakespeares. Vol. 2. London: Routledge, 1996.

Selections include Hawkes's introduction; Steven Mullaney's "After the New Historicism"; Catherine Belsey's "Cleopatra's Seduction"; Margreta de Grazia's "Imprints: Shakespeare, Gutenburg and Descartes"; Bruce R. Smith's "L(o)cating the Sexual Subject"; Alan Sinfield's "How to Read The Merchant of Venice Without Being Heterosexist"; Keir Elam's "'In What Chapter of His Bosom?': Reading Shakespeare's Bodies"; Ania Loomba's "Shakespeare and Cultural Difference"; Dympna Callaghan's "'Othello Was a White Man': Properties of Race on Shakespeare's Stage"; Philip Armstrong's "Watching Hamlet Watching: Lacan, Shakespeare and the Mirror/Stage"; and John Drakakis's "Afterword: The Next Generation."

Henke, Robert. Pastoral Transformations: Italian Tragicomedy and Shakespeare's Late Plays. Cranbury: Associated UP, 1997.

Henke examines the theory and practice of Giraldi, Tasso, and Guarini, as well as experiments of the commedia dell'arte. Henke demonstrates the presence of parallel historical and dramaturgical developments in the Italian and Shakespearean theaters. Additionally, Henke argues that Guarini's significance lies in the dramatist's understanding of historical generic development, his linkage of dramaturgy and audience response, and his recognition that the pastoral mode was appropriate for the tragicomedy.

Hill, Lynda Marion. Social Rituals and the Verbal Art of Zora Neale Hurston. Washington, DC: Howard UP, 1996.

Hill examines Hurston's concept of "everyday-life drama" as a basis for understanding distinctive features of African-American folk expression. Hill analyzes Hurston's folklore as part of a process rather than simply as texts severed from their field-research context. Hill's use of performance as an analytical model that crosses disciplines - including folklore, anthropology, literature, theater, African-American studies, and women's studies - provides a unique window into Hurston's life and work.

Hoople, Robin P. Distinguished Discord: Discontinuity and Pattern in the Critical Tradition of The Turn of the Screw. Cranbury: Associated UP, 1997.

Hoople argues that the progressive contention of James's The Turn of the Screw challenges recent theoretical dogmas that claim that criticism does not develop and that texts only contain the random meanings assigned to them via largely indeterminate reading processes. Hoople contends that The Turn of the Screw offers a useful example for testing issues regarding progressive literary criticism because of James's own controversial approaches to the act of interpretation - particularly evidenced by his attempts to critique The Turn of the Screw.

Hurley, Kelly. The Gothic Body: Sexuality, Materialism, and Degeneration at the Fin de Siecle. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996.

Hurley attempts to account for the resurgence of the Gothic and its immense popularity in the late nineteenth century. Hurley argues that a key scenario haunts the genre - the loss of a unified and stable human identity, as well as the emergence of a chaotic and transformative "abhuman" identity in its place. Drawing upon texts by Robert Louis Stevenson and Richard Marsh, among others, Hurley demonstrates that the Gothic is a highly productive and speculative genre.

Johnson, Alexandra. The Hidden Writer: Diaries and the Creative Life. New York: Doubleday, 1997.

Johnson presents seven portraits of literary and creative lives, illuminating the secret world of writers and their diaries and showing how over generations these writers have used the diary to explore a common set of creative and existential questions. Drawing on diaries by Marjory Fleming, Sonya Tolstoy, Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf, Alice James, Anais Nin, and May Salton, Johnson examines such subjects as the conflict between love and vocation, instances of rivalry and friendship among writing equals, and the popular interest in confessional diaries. Johnson demonstrates the manner in which each writer used the diary to negotiate such issues as silence, ambition, envy, and fame.

Kaczvinsky, Donald P. Lawrence Durrell's Major Novels, or The Kingdom of the Imagination. Cranbury: Associated UP, 1997.

Kaczvinsky provides a thematic reading of all of Lawrence Durrell's major novels, in addition considering Durrell's other art forms in his fictions. Drawing upon the insights of Durrell's travel narratives, Kaczvinsky examines the artist-heroes of Durrell's fictions and their representation of a debilitating, unhealthy, and diseased culture. Kaczvinsky devotes particular attention to The Black Book, a work in which Durrell's hero rejects the material and spiritual comforts of a medieval culture and accepts the pagan world of Greece.

Kahn, Coppelia. Roman Shakespeare: Warriors, Wounds, and Women. London: Routledge, 1997.

Kahn offers new readings of several of Shakespeare's plays, including Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, and Titus Andronicus, among others. Kahn argues that the image of the wound in these plays represents a fetish of Roman masculinity. In addition to reading the Roman plays in the dual context of popular theater and Renaissance humanism, Kahn identifies new sources and reads them from a feminist-historical perspective.

Kaul, Mythili. Othello: New Essays by Black Writers. Washington, DC: Howard UP, 1996.

Selections include Kaul's "Background: Black or Tawny'? Stage Representations of Othello from 1604 to the Present"; Earle Hyman's "Othello: Or Ego in Love, Sex, and War"; Sheila Rose Bland's "How I Would Direct Othello"; James A. McPherson's "Three Great Ones of the City and One Perfect Soul: Well Met at Cyprus"; Ishmael Reed's "From Japanese by Spring"; Maryse Conde's "'Neg Pa Bon' ('Nigger No Good')"; Playthell Benjamin's "Did Shakespeare Intend Othello to Be Black? A Meditation on Blacks and the Bard"; Al Young's "Hello, Othello"; John A. Williams's "Who Is Desdemona?"; Jacquelyn Y. McLendon's "'A Round Unvarnished Tale': (Mis)Reading Othello or African American Strategies of Dissent"; Elliott Butler-Evans's "'Haply, for I Am Black': Othello and the Semiotics of Race and Otherness"; S. E. Ogude's "Literature and Racism: The Example of Othello"; Edward Washington's "'At the Door of Truth': The Hollowness of Signs in Othello"; and Lucille P. Fultz's "Devouring Discourses: Desire and Seduction in Othello."

Kawash, Samira. Dislocating the Color Line: Identity, Hybridity, and Singularity in African-American Literature. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1997.

Kawash provides an historical context for the recent resurgence of racial division through readings of works by Charles Chesnutt and Zora Neale Hurston, among others. In addition to arguing that throughout history the color line in America has not only functioned to highlight biological or cultural differences, but also to serve as a principle of division, classification, and order, Kawash contends that in this fashion the color line marks the inseparability of knowledge and power in a racially demarcated society.

Kiernan, Pauline. Shakespeare's Theory of Drama. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996.

Kiernan examines the plays of Shakespeare in order to demonstrate that far from being restricted by the limitations of drama, the playwright consciously exploits the form's capacity for temporality and change. Additionally, Kiernan discusses the influence of Ovid's artistic concerns with poetic originality and immortality, while also considering the compelling power of fiction. Kiernan explores the varied ways in which Shakespeare rejected many of the theories of his age to create an original theory of drama.

Kirby-Smith, H. T. A Philosophical Novelist: George Santayana and The Last Puritan. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1997.

In addition to offering an account of George Santayana's various literary styles, contending that the very notation that Santayana wrote philosophy as literature is significant in itself, Kirby-Smith argues that Santayana refuses to dehumanize himself and resists the presumptuousness of romantic egotists. Rather, Kirby-Smith contends, Santayana saw the rational life as a continual adjustment and accommodation of contradictory claims.

Kirschten, Robert, ed. Struggling for Wings: The Art of James Dickey. Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 1997.

Selections include Kirschten's introduction; Thom Gunn's "Things, Voices, Minds"; William C. Strange's "To Dream, to Remember: James Dickey's Buckdancer's Choice"; Lewis Turco's "The Suspect in Criticism"; Louis Untermeyer's "A Way of Seeing and Saying"; Harry Morris's "A Formal View of the Poetry of Dickey. . ."; Robert Peters's "The Phenomenon of James Dickey, Currently"; William Harmon's "Herself as the Environment"; Richard Tillinghast's "James Dickey: The Whole Motion"; Clifford Gallo's "'Sermon' Packs a Wallop of Feminist Messages"; Malcolm Jones, Jr.'s "When a Predator Is the Prey"; Kirschten's "Interview with James Dickey"; Kirschten's "Interview with John Gallogly and Bridget Hanley, director and actress for James Dickey's 'May Day Sermon'"; Janet Larsen McHughes's "From Manuscript to a Performance Script: The Evolution of a Poem"; Ronald Baughman's "James Dickey's War Poetry: A 'Saved, Shaken Life'"; Lee Bartlett and Hugh Witemeyer's "Ezra Pound and James Dickey: A Correspondence and a Kinship"; Kirschten's "The Momentum of Word-Magic in James Dickey's Eye-Beaters, Blood, Victory, Madness, Buckhead, and Mercy"; Harold Schechter's "The Eye and the Nerve: A Psychological Reading of James Dickey's Deliverance"; R. Barton Palmer's "Narration, Text, Intertext: The Two Versions of Deliverance"; Laurence Lieberman's "Erotic Pantheism in James Dickey's 'Madness'"; Monroe Spears's "James Dickey: Southern Visionary as Celestial Navigator"; Patricia Laurence's "James Dickey's Puella in Flight"; and Dave Smith's "James Dickey's Motions."

Knoper, Randall. Acting Naturally: Mark Twain in the Culture of Performance. Berkeley: U of California P, 1995.

Knoper argues that the phenomenon of performance is central to Twain's writing and persona. Knoper situates Twain's work in the culture of nineteenth-century popular performance ranging from blackface minstrelsy to the exhibitions of mesmerists and mediums. Additionally, Knoper demonstrates the manner in which Twain's work echoes and engages the social and cultural dilemmas embodied by such forms of entertainment.

Kolbrener, William. Milton's Warring Angels: A Study of Critical Engagements. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997.

In addition to arguing that the centrality of Milton to the study of English literature often obscures the intense debates that rage about his ideological allegiances, Kolbrener demonstrates that the reception and interpretation of Milton's texts consistently present him as either a Christian republican or a committed individualist. Kolbrener offers a critical account of the reception and interpretation of Milton's texts, contending that this schism in Milton criticism derives from a historiographical tradition rooted in the Enlightenment.

Kolmerten, Carol A., Stephen M. Ross, and Judith Bryant Wittenberg, eds. Unflinching Gaze: Morrison and Faulkner Re-Envisioned. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1997.

Selections include Kolmerten, Ross, and Wittenberg's "Introduction: Refusing to Look Away"; John N. Duvall's "Toni Morrison and the Anxiety of Faulknerian Influence"; Carolyn Denard's "The Long, High Gaze: The Mythical Consciousness of Toni Morrison and William Faulkner"; Andrea Dimino's "Toni Morrison and William Faulkner: Remapping Culture"; Philip M. Weinstein's "David and Solomon: Fathering in Faulkner and Morrison"; Nancy Ellen Batty's "Riff, Refrain, Reframe: Toni Morrison's Song of Absalom"; Karla F. C. Holloway's "Narrative Time/Spiritual Text: Beloved and As I Lay Dying"; and Lucinda H. MacKethan's "The Grandfather Clause: Reading the Legacy from 'The Bear' to Song of Solomon."

Kurczaba, Alex S., ed. Conrad and Poland. New York: Columbia UP, 1996.

Selections include Kurczaba's introduction; Stephen G. W. Brodsky's "Conrad's Two Polish Pasts: A History of Thirty Years of Critical Misrule"; Susan Jones's "Conrad's Women and the Polish Romantic Tradition"; Addison Bross's "The January Rising and Its Aftermath: The Missing Theme in Conrad's Political Consciousness"; Keith Carabine's "Irreconcilable Antagonisms: Reflections on Conrad, Poland, and the English Political Novel"; Noel Peacock's "The Russian Eye: Surveillance and the Scopic Regime in Under Western Eyes"; Carola M. Kaplan's "Conrad the Pole: Definitively Not 'One of Us'"; Mary Morzinski's "Polish Influence on Conrad's Style"; Laurence Davies's "Conrad and Potocki: A Speculation"; Wieslaw Krajka's "The Alien in Joseph Conrad's 'Amy Foster' and Jerzy Kosinski's The Painted Bird"; Jakob Lothe's "Andrzej Wajda's Adaptation of Conrad's The Shadow-Line"; and Kurczaba's "Heart of Darkness and the Poetry of Czeslaw Milosz."

Labrie, Ross. The Catholic Imagination in American Literature. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1997.

Labrie focuses on texts that meet three criteria - high intellectual and artistic achievement, authorship by a practicing Roman Catholic, and concern for Catholic themes. Labrie discusses the Catholic imagination and sensibility and considers the relationship between art and Catholic theology and philosophy. Labrie offers a close reading of the corpus of Catholic-American writing between 1940 and 1980, considering it parallel in substance to the body of Jewish-American fiction of the same era.

Ladd, Barbara. Nationalism and the Color Line in George W. Cable, Mark Twain, and William Faulkner. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1996.

Ladd argues that writers like Cable, Twain, and Faulkner cannot be read exclusively within the context of a nationalistically defined "American" literature. In addition to contending that these writers must also be understood in light of the cultural legacy that French and Spanish colonialism bestowed upon the Deep South and the Mississippi River Valley, Ladd examines the works of these writers for discontinuities and for moments of narrative incoherence.

Lawson, Lewis A. Still Following Percy. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1996.

Lawson devotes attention to the most significant themes in Percy's fictions, including his religious, philosophical, and cultural beliefs. Lawson argues that such conceptions of Percy find their roots in his often impersonal and abstract essays. In addition to studying the role of loss, Lawson studies Percy's canon in order to speculate about the shaping of his character and his fictional imagination.

Lee, Josephine. Performing Asian America: Race and Ethnicity on the Contemporary Stage. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1997.

Lee attempts to describe and analyze the cultural production of Asian Americans - a group that is just beginning to make their complex political and social ideologies more visible. Lee specifically considers the manner in which Asian-American playwrights depict race and ethnicity onstage. In addition to exploring the perspective that theatrical performances and dramatic texts can tell us much about contemporary cultural dynamics, Lee argues that playwrights produce different conceptions of "Asian America" in accordance with their beliefs about racism, stereotyping, and economic discrimination.

Little, Judy. The Experimental Self: Dialogic Subjectivity in Woolf, Pym, and Brooke-Rose. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1996.

Little draws upon the insights of Derrida, Foucault, Bakhtin, and Lyotard in an analysis of the place of the self in the fictions of Virginia Woolf, Barbara Pym, and Christine Brooke-Rose. Little demonstrates that the tradition of the self belongs to a long and complex discourse that identifies the self as an ongoing experiment in heteroglossia. Little also defines the notion of "experimental" in terms of subjectivity, as opposed to the more traditional discussions of the transgression of narrative levels and other typographical features of texts.

Maguire, Laurie E. Shakespearean Suspect Texts: The "Bad" Quartos and Their Contexts. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996.

Maguire examines the 41 problematic play texts that have been variously classified as "bad quartos" or "memorial reconstructions" from Shakespeare's time. In addition to deconstructing the criticism of W. W. Greg and his followers, Maguire argues that the textual criticism of these quartos has been fraught with assumption and contradiction. Maguire offers a fresh analysis of the New Bibliographers, the rise of English studies, Renaissance oral culture, and textual problems in an array of corruptive texts.

Maitino, John R., and David R. Peck, eds. Teaching American Ethnic Literatures: Nineteen Essays. Albuquerque: U of New Mexico P, 1996.

Selections include G. Thomas Couser's "Indian Preservation: Teaching Black Elk Speaks"; Helen Jaskoski's "Beauty Before Me: Notes on House Made of Dawn" (N. Scott Momaday); William W. Thackeray's "Crying for Vision in James Welch's Winter in the Blood"; Norma C. Wilson's "Ceremony: From Alienation to Reciprocity" (Leslie Marmon Silko); John Purdy's "Building Bridges: Crossing the Waters to a Love Medicine" (Louise Erdrich)"; Susan Meisenhelder's "Ethnic and Gender Identity in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God"; Yoshinobu Hakutani's "Racial Discourse and Self-Creation: Richard Wright's Black Boy"; Jeanne-Marie A. Miller's "'Measure Him Right': An Analysis of Lorraine Hansberry's Raisin in the Sun"; Linda Wagner-Martin's "'Closer to the Edge': Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon"; Daniel W. Ross's "A Fairy-Tale Life: The Making of Celie in Alice Walker's The Color Purple"; Juan Bruce-Novoa's "Learning to Read (and/in) Rudolfo Anaya's Bless Me, Ultima"; Elizabeth Ramirez's "Chicano Theatre Reaches the Professional Stage: Luis Valdez's Zoot Suit"; Julian Olivares's "Entering The House on Mango Street" (Sandra Cisneros); Antonio C. Marquez's "Richard Rodriguez's Hunger of Memory and New Perspectives on Ethnic Autobiography"; E. San Juan, Jr.'s "Searching for the Heart of 'America'" (Carlos Bulosan); Shirley Geok-lin Lim's "'Growing with Stories': Chinese American Identities, Textual Identities" (Maxine Hong Kingston); Mitsuye Yamada's "Experiental Approaches to Teaching Joy Kogawa's Obasan"; King-Kok Cheung's "Reading Between the Syllables: Hisaye Yamamoto's Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories"; and Wendy Ho's "Swan-Feather Mothers and Coca-Cola Daughters: Teaching Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club."

McCarthy, Patrick A., and Paul Tiessen, eds. Joyce/Lowry: Critical Perspectives. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 1997.

Selections include McCarthy's introduction; Sherrill Grace's "Midsummer Madness and the Day of the Dead: Joyce, Lowry, and Expressionism"; Joseph C. Voelker's "Clown Meets Cops: Comedy and Paranoia in Under the Volcano and Ulysses"; Chris Ackerley's "'Well, of course, if we knew all the things': Coincidence and Design in Ulysses and Under the Volcano"; Richard K. Cross's "Ulysses and Under the Volcano: The Difficulty of Loving"; Brian W. Shaffer's "Nationalism at the Bar: Anti-Semitism in Ulysses and Under the Volcano"; Sue Vice's "The Construction of Femininity in Ulysses and Under the Volcano: A Bakhtinian Analysis of the Late Draft Versions"; Suzanne Kim's "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ultramarine: Two Exercises in Identification"; and Martin Bock's "Syphilisation and Its Discontents: Somatic Indications of Psychological Ills in Joyce and Lowry."

McGee, Patrick. Ishmael Reed and the Ends of Race. New York: St. Martin's, 1997.

McGee analyzes the fictions of Reed from the perspective of gender and race theory. Drawing upon the arguments of Reed's feminist and political critics, McGee argues that Reed's work must be read as a critique of racial ideology. McGee examines Reed's paradoxical fictional world as a response to the contradictions of postmodern and postcolonial history.

McLendon, Jacquelyn Y. The Politics of Color in the Fiction of Jessie Fauset and Nella Larsen. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1995.

In addition to exploring the prominent roles of Fauset and Larsen in the literary phenomenon known as the Harlem Renaissance, McLendon argues that their novels raise important questions about gender and race, particularly in such works as Fauset's Plum Bun and Larsen's Quicksand. McLendon focuses on the author's works - as opposed to their lives - and attempts to develop new theoretical methodologies for examining the works of black women writers.

Meindl, Dieter. American Fiction and the Metaphysics of the Grotesque. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1996.

Drawing upon the theoretical insights of Bakhtin and Heidegger, among others, Meindl examines the grotesque aspects of works by Poe, Melville, and James. Meindl discusses the categorical discrepancies between realism and naturalism, in addition to exploring instances of the grotesque in the modernist canon. Meindl concludes his study with analysis of postmodernism's appropriation of the grotesque in various works of contemporary fiction.

Moeyes, Paul. Siegfried Sassoon: Scorched Glory - A Critical Study. London: Macmillan, 1997.

Moeyes traces Sassoon's literary development within the context of his autobiographical writings. Drawing upon the poet's edited diaries and correspondence, Moeyes explores the ways in which Sassoon's family background, Jewish inheritance, troubled sexuality, and wartime experiences shaped his creative impulses. Moeyes argues that it was in his Sherston trilogy and his autobiographical writings that Sassoon found his true poetic voice.

Murphy, Stephen. The Gift of Immortality: Myths of Power and Humanist Poetics. Cranbury: Associated UP, 1997.

Murphy considers the capacity of literary power to glorify or immortalize, focusing in particular upon the works of representative figures of Renaissance humanism. Using the theoretical insights of such figures as Ernst Cassirer, Giambattista Vico, Marcel Mauss, and Theodor Adorno, among others, Murphy argues that the world of Renaissance humanism culminates in an explosion of eloquent poetry. Murphy also examines the ideal of patronage as gift exchange in the canon of Renaissance humanism.

Nalbantian, Suzanne. Anais Nin: Literary Perspectives. London: Macmillan, 1997.

Selections include Nalbantian's preface; Nalbantian's "Aesthetic Lies"; Joaquin Nin-Culmell's "Anais Nin, My Sister, and Letters to Hugh Gullet (Hugo), from Joaquin Nin-Culmell, 26 December 1978 and 3 October 1979"; Catherine Broderick's "Cities of Her Own Invention: Urban Iconology in Cities of the Interior"; Harriet Zinnes's "Art, the Dream, and Self"; Anna Balakian's "Anais Nin, the Poet"; Marie-Rose Logan's "Renate's Illusions and Delusions"; Sharon Spencer's "Beyond Therapy: The Enduring Love of Anais Nin for Otto Rank"; Valerie Harms's "Anais and Her Analysts, Rank and Allendy: The Creative and Destructive Aspects"; Suzette Henke's "Anais Nin's Journal of Love: Father-Loss and Incestuous Desire"; Philip K. Jason's "The Men in Nin's (Characters') Lives"; Lajos Elkan's "Birth and the Linguistics of Gender: Masculine/Feminine"; Edmund Miller's "Erato Throws a Curve: Anais Nine and the Elusive Feminine"; Atsuko Miyake's "Anais Nin's Words of Power and the Japanese Sybil Tradition"; Toyoko Yamamoto's "Anais Nin's Femininity and the Banana Yoshimoto Phenomenon"; Junko Kimura's "Between Two Languages: The Translation and Reception of Anais Nin in Japan"; Lawrence Wayne Markert's "Speaking with Your Skeleton: D.H. Lawrence's Influence on Anais Nin"; Corinne Alexandre-Garner's "Black Snow in Winter: Anais Nin in Paris - The Lawrence Durrell Connection"; and Benjamin Franklin V's "The Selling of A Spy in the House of Love."

Neill, Michael. Issues of Death: Mortality and Identity in English Renaissance Tragedy. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997.

Neill explores the psychological and affective consequences of tragedy's fiercely end-driven narratives in a number of plays where a longing for narrative closure is pitched against a particularly intense dread of ending. Neill focuses on the ways in which tragedy articulates its challenge to the undifferentiating power of death through conventions and motifs borrowed from the funereal arts. Additionally, Neill offers detailed analyses of three plays, including Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, Webster's The Duchess of Malfi, and Ford's The Broken Heart.

Newton, Adam Zachary. Narrative Ethics. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1997.

Newton examines ethical questions in the wake of deconstruction, arguing that the moral quality of a character or story lies in the relation between author and reader. Newton assumes an intrinsic and necessary connection between narrative and ethics, and explores the ethical consequences of telling stories and fictionalizing character. Newton also discusses the reciprocal claims binding teller, listener, witness, and reader in the ethical interaction of texts and their audiences.

Nilsen, Don L. Humor in Irish Literature. Westport: Greenwood, 1996.

Nilsen traces the history of Irish humor from the sixteenth through the twentieth centuries. Nilsen affords particular attention to the manner in which Irish humor developed out of the oral tradition, as well as the manner in which it is spawned from pain and tragedy. In addition to discussing the role of wordplay in Irish humor, Nilsen includes a useful appendix of "Important Irish Journals and Organizations."

Nussbaum, Martha C. Poetic Justice: The Literary Imagination and Public Life. Boston: Beacon, 1995.

Nussbaum discusses the ways in which public discourse has become increasingly vitriolic and punitive toward those individuals who don't fit into mainstream America. Nussbaum explores the ways in which literature can contribute to a more just society. Drawing upon such works as Dickens's Hard Times and Wright's Native Son, Nussbaum demonstrates the ways in which novels and reading develop a fully humanistic conception of public reasoning. Nussbaum argues that the literary imagination is not opposed to public rationality, but is an essential ingredient of public discourse and a democratic society.

Oppenheim, Lois, and Marius Buning, eds. Beckett On and On. Cranbury: Associated UP, 1996.

Selections include Oppenheim's introduction; Leslie Hill's "'Fuck Life': Rockaby, Sex, and the Body"; Andreas Bjornerud's "Beckett's Model of Masculinity: Male Hysteria in Not I"; Mary Bryden's "Gender in Beckett's Music Machine"; Johanneke van Slooten's "Beckett's Irish Rhythm Embodied in His Polyphony"; John Pilling's "A Short Statement with Long Shadows: Watt's Arsene and His Kind(s)"; Frank Matton's "Beckett's Trilogy and the Limits of Autobiography"; Angela Moorjani's "Mourning, Schopenhauer, and Beckett's Art of Shadows"; Wanda Balzano's "Re-Mythologizing Beckett: The Metaphors of Metafiction in How It Is"; Elizabeth Klaver's "Entering Beckett's Postmodern Space"; Carla Locatelli's "'My Life Natural Order More or Less in the Present More or Less': Textual Immanence as the Textual Impossible in Beckett's Works"; Gerry McCarthy's "Rehearsals for the End of Time: Indeterminacy and Performance in Beckett"; Robert Scanlan's "The Proper Handling of Beckett's Plays"; David J. Gordon's "Au Contraire: The Question of Beckett's Bilingual Text"; Harry Vandervlist's "'A Voice from Elsewhere': Impossible Survivals and the Annihilating Power of Language in Beckett's Fiction"; Dorothee Ostmeier's "Dramatizing Silence: Beckett's Shorter Plays"; Li-Ling Tseng's "Undoing and Doing: Allegories of Writing in The Trilogy"; Kirill O. Thompson's "Beckett's Dramatic Vision and Classical Taoism"; Mariko Hori Tanaka's "Special Features of Beckett Performances in Japan"; and Hersh Zeifman's "The Syntax of Closure: Beckett's Late Drama."

Primeau, Ronald. Romance of the Road: The Literature of the American Highway. Bowling Green: Bowling Green State U Popular P, 1997.

Primeau examines America's love affair with roads, cars, travel, speed, and the lure of open spaces. Drawing upon works by a variety of twentieth-century authors, Primeau discusses the manner in which the literature of the American highway explores our diverse and often conflicted cultural values. Primeau addresses the ways in which road narratives create dialogues between travelers, authors, and readers.

Rice, Thomas Jackson. Joyce, Chaos, and Complexity. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1997.

In addition to discussing Joyce's intersections with postmodernism and superstition, arguing that the writer often functions as a "scientific realist," Rice explores a wide range of subjects, including the elements of geometry in Dubliners, as well as the arbitrary constructions of reality in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Rice examines elements of chaos and complexity in Ulysses, while also addressing the complexity of artificial life in Finnegans Wake. Rice supplements his study with two appendices: "Joyce, Mathematics, and Science" and "Modern Physics."

Richardson, Brian. Unlikely Stories: Causality and the Nature of Modern Narrative. Cranbury: Associated UP, 1997.

Richardson focuses on causality as a foundational element of all narratives and as a distinguishing feature of many works of modern fiction and drama. Richardson brings together a number of critical issues, including the causal laws that attempt to govern fictional worlds, as well as the reader's implication in the causal dilemmas that confront protagonists. Richardson discusses a wide range of texts in his study, including Conrad's Nostromo, Faulkner's Light in August, and Ellison's Invisible Man.

Rivero, Albert J., ed. Augustan Subjects: Essays in Honor of Martin C. Battestin. Cranbury: Associated UP, 1997.

Selections include John Richetti's "Love Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister: Aphra Behn and Amatory Fiction"; Douglas Lane Patey's "Anne Finch, John Dyer, and the Georgic Syntax of Nature"; Frans de Bruyn's "From Virgilian Georgic to Agricultural Science: An Instance in the Transvaluation of Literature in Eighteenth-Century Britain"; Lawrence Lipking's "The Gods of Poetry: Mythology and the Eighteenth-Century Tradition"; Roger D. Lund's "A Tale of a Tub, Swift's Apology, and the Trammels of Christian Wit"; Maximillian E. Novak's "Friday: or the Power of Naming"; Clive T. Probyn's "'Among the Herd of Dunces': A Newly Recovered Swift Holography and Its Dublin Context"; Calhoun Winton's "John Gay's Beggar's Opera, and Vaclav Havel's"; Howard D. Weinbrot's "Fine Ladies, Saints in Heaven, and Pope's Rape of the Lock: Genealogy, Catholicism, and the Irenic Muse"; Patricia Meyer Spacks's "Acts of Love and Knowledge: Pope's Narratives of Self'; Bertrand A. Goldgar's "'The Learned English Dog': Fielding's Mock Scholarship"; Rivero's "Pamela/Shamela/Joseph Andrews: Henry Fielding and the Duplicities of Representation"; Jerry C. Beasley's "Amiable Apparitions: Smollett's Fictional Heroines"; Eric Rothstein's "Woman, Women, and The Female Quixote"; and J. Paul Hunter's "Serious Reflections on Farther Adventures: Resistance to Closure in Eighteenth-Century English Novels."

-----, ed. New Essays on Samuel Richardson. New York: St. Martin's, 1996.

Selections include Peter Sabor's "'Such Extraordinary Tokens': Samuel Richardson's Correspondence with Johannes Stinstra"; Kevin L. Cope's "Richardson the Advisor"; Jerry C. Beasley's "Richardson's Girls: The Daughters of Patriarchy in Pamela, Clarissa, and Sir Charles Grandison"; Florian Stuber's "Pamela II: 'Written in Imitation of the Manner of Cervantes'"; Michael F. Suarez, S.J.'s "Asserting the Negative: 'Child' Clarissa and the Problem of the 'Determined Girl'"; John Allen Stevenson's "'Alien Spirits': The Unity of Lovelace and Clarissa"; Jocelyn Harris's "Grotesque, Classical and Pornographic Bodies in Clarissa"; Howard D. Weinbrot's "Clarissa, Elias Brand and Death by Parentheses"; Tom Keymer's "Jane Collier, Reader of Richardson, and the Fire Scene in Clarissa"; Joseph F. Bartolomeo's "Female Quixotism v. 'Feminine' Tragedy: Lennox's Comic Revision of Clarissa"; John A. Dussinger's "Anna Meades, Samuel Richardson and Thomas Hull: The Making of The History of Sir William Harrington"; Lois A. Chaber's "Sir Charles Grandison and the Human Prospect"; and Rivero's "Representing Clementia: 'Unnatural' Romance and the Ending of Sir Charles Grandison."

Robillard, Douglas. Melville and the Visual Arts: Ionian Form, Venetian Tint. Kent: Kent State UP, 1997.

Robillard examines the manner in which throughout his life Melville displayed a keen interest in the visual arts, in addition to the ways in which the author made substantial use of ekphrasis in his fictions. Robillard devotes particular attention to Melville's central characters - specially Wellingorough Redburn, Ishmael, Pierre Glendinning, and Clarel - who were sensitive to the arts and capable of viewing the world in artistic terms. Additionally, Robillard offers detailed readings of Melville's Piazza Tales and verse in order to understand the writer's decidedly visual approach to the creative process.

Rosenberg, Marvin. The Adventures of a Shakespeare Scholar: To Discover Shakespeare's Art. Cranbury: Associated UP, 1997.

Selections include "A Metaphor for the Identity of Tragic Heroes"; "The Two Kinds of Hamlet"; "The Universal Hamlets"; "Hamlet's Subversive Gravedigger"; "Hamlet's Spiritual Crisis"; "In Defense of Iago"; "Shakespeare's Fantastic Trick: Measure for Measure"; "Poor Richard III"; "Characterizations of King Lear"; "Lady Macbeth's Indispensable Child"; "The German Lady Macbeth and Two Hamlets"; "Visualizing Complex Character"; "Experimental Studies of King Lear"; "King Lear and His Fool"; "The Languages of Drama"; "Lear's Theater Poetry"; "Sign Theory and Shakespeare"; "Shakespeare's Visual Compositions"; "Subtext in Shakespeare"; "Shakespeare's Tragic World of If'; "Substructures in Shakespeare's Language"; "Paul Scofield's Macbeth: Macbeth in Rehearsal - A Journal"; "The Lear Myth"; "The 'Refinement' of Othello in the Eighteenth-Century Theater"; "Shame on You, David Garrick - or, What the Victorian Theater Did to Shakespeare's Tragedies"; "Translations of Erotic Nuances in Hamlet"; "Elizabethan Actors: Men or Marionettes?"; "A Metaphor for Dramatic Form"; "Drama Is Arousal"; and "The Mind of the Critic."

Ross, Stephen M. Reading Faulkner: The Sound and the Fury. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1996.

Ross's volume provides a glossary to the study of Faulkner's classic novel, including information about the place names in The Sound and the Fury. In addition to its inclusion of useful etymologies regarding Faulkner's narrative, Ross's reference guide offers a commentary on the novel's characters and multivocal plots. Drawing upon such diverse sources as tapes of Faulkner's readings and interviews at the University of Virginia, Ross offers a volume that should become indispensable to the study of The Sound and the Fury.

Schulze, Robin G. The Web of Friendship: Marianne Moore and Wallace Stevens. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1995.

Schulze offers an account of the little-known friendship between Moore and Stevens, two modernist poets who carefully studied each other's poetry, reviewed each other's volumes, and edited each other's verse. Drawing upon a wealth of unpublished and previously untapped archival materials, Schulze

traces Moore and Stevens's shifting poetic conversation from the years immediately following World War I through Stevens's death in 1955. Schulze's study provides new ways of understanding poetic influence through the auspices of an historically and biographically contextualized conversation.

Siemerling, Winfried, and Katrin Schwenk, eds. Cultural Difference and the Literary Text: Pluralism and the Limits of Authenticity in North American Literatures. Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 1996.

Selections include Schwenk's "Introduction: Thinking About 'Pure Pluralism'"; Linda Hutcheon's "Multicultural Furor: The Reception of Other Solitudes"; Wolfgan Hochbruck's "Cultural Authenticity and the Construction of Pan-Indian Metanarrative"; Gerald Vizenor's "Postindian Autoinscriptions: The Origins of Essentialism and Pluralism in Descriptive Tribal Names"; Siemerling's "Democratic Blues: Houston Baker and the Representation of Culture"; Kathryne V. Lindberg's "Raising Cane on the Theoretical Plane: Jean Toomer's Racial Personae"; John Lowe's "Humor and Identity in Ethnic Autobiography: Zora Neale Hurston and Jerre Mangione"; Monica Kaup's "Crossing Borders: An Aesthetic Practice in Writings by Gloria Anzaldua"; Ernst Rudin's "New Mestizos: Traces of Quincentenary Miracle in Old World Spanish and New World English"; Michael Wachholz's "Marginality and William Faulkner's Light in August"; Gert Buelens's "The Multi-Voiced Basis of Henry Roth's Literary Success in Call It Sleep"; and Werner Sollors's "Comments."

Skerl, Jennie, ed. A Tawdry Place of Salvation: The Art of Jane Bowles. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1997.

Selections include Skerl's "Sallies into the Outside World: A Literary History of Jane Bowles"; Carolyn J. Allen's "The Narrative Erotics of Two Serious Ladies"; Stephen Benz's "'The Americans Stick Pretty Much in Their Own Quarter': Jane Bowles and Central America"; Peter G. Christensen's "Family Dynamics in Jane Bowles's In the Summer House"; Charlette Goodman's "Mommy Dearest: Mothers and Daughters in Jane Bowles's In the Summer House and Other Plays by Contemporary Women Writers"; Regina Weinreich's "Sister Act: A Reading of Jane Bowles's Puppet Play"; John Maier's "Jane Bowles and the Semi-Oriental Woman"; Carol Shloss's "Jane Bowles in Uninhabitable Places: Writing on Cultural Boundaries"; Robert E. Lougy's "'Some Fun in the Mud': Decrepitude and Salvation in the World of Jane Bowles"; Gena Dagel Caponi's "The Unfinished Jane Bowles"; and Allen E. Hibbard's "Toward a Postmodern Aesthetic: Indeterminacy, Instability, and Inconclusiveness in Out in the World."

Skinner, John. Constructions of Smollet: A Study of Genre and Gender. Cranbury: Associated UP, 1996.

In addition to devoting particular attention to the prose narratives of Tobias George Smollett and their place in the development of the novel as a genre, Skinner attributes much of the contemporary critical indifference to Smollett to misguided attempts to judge his fiction by the standards of the classically defined realist novel. Skinner analyzes Smollett's prose narratives with reference to other literary modes, especially satire and romance.

Smith, Robert McClure. The Seductions of Emily Dickinson. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 1996.

Smith explores the place of seduction as a metaphor in the verse of Emily Dickinson. In addition to an introductory chapter, "The Bee and the Flower," Smith challenges readers to examine the poetics of seduction in a wide array of Dickinson poems. Smith examines such subjects as the "milieu of seduction" and "seduction and the male reader" in his study.

Soderholm, James. Fantasy, Forgery, and the Byron Legend. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 1996.

Using the poet's celebrated nineteenth-century verse, Soderholm examines Byron's relationships with five women - Elizabeth Pigot, Caroline Lamb, Annabella Milbanke, Teresa Guiccioli, and Marguerite Blessington. Soderholm explores the ways in which these women participated in Byron's life and literary career, as well as in the manipulation of images that became the Byron legend. Soderholm argues against the sentimental depictions of biographers who attempt to preserve Byron's romantic aura by diminishing the contributions of these women to Byron's sexual, social, and literary identity.

-----, ed. Beauty and the Critic: Aesthetics in an Age of Cultural Studies. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 1997.

Selections include Soderholm's introduction; Jacques Barzun's "Criticism: An Art or a Craft?"; Charles Bernstein's "What's Art Got to Do with It? The Status of the Subject of the Humanities in an Age of Cultural Studies"; Jerome McGann's "The Alice Fallacy; or, Only God Can Make a Tree: A Dialogue of Pleasure and Instruction"; Paul A. Cantor's "Oscar Wilde: The Man of Soul Under Socialism"; Christopher Beach's "Recuperating the Aesthetic: Contemporary Approaches and the Case of Adorno"; Charles Altieri's "On the Sublime of Self-disgust; or, How to Save the Sublime from Narcissistic Sublimation"; Joan Heiges Blythe's "Aesthetics of the Dust; or, In the Beginning Was the Land"; David Hill Radcliffe's "The Poetry Professors: Literary Imitation, Untutored Genius, and Cultural Identity"; Ihab Hassan's "Let the Fresh Air In: Graduate Studies in the Humanities"; and Richard Rorty's "Tales of Two Disciplines."

Spears, Monroe K. One Writer's Reality. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1996.

Drawing upon works by W. H. Auden, James Dickey, and Reynolds Price, Spears examines the kinds of reality that writers often confront in their texts. Spears defines the economic reality of writing, while also exploring the history of the University of the South and the founding of the Sewanee Review. Spears also discusses the expression of emotion in music and poetry using examples from the works of Schubert and Keats, respectively.

Svoboda, Frederic J., and Joseph J. Waldmeir, eds. Hemingway: Up in Michigan Perspectives. East Lansing: Michigan State UP, 1995.

Selections include Svoboda's "Introduction: Walking into the Country"; Waring Jones's "A Moveable Michigan: A Talk Given in a Room on the Petoskey Harbor Overlooking Lake Michigan"; Svoboda's "False Wilderness: Northern Michigan as Created in the Nick Adams Stories"; Jack Jobst's "Hemingway Bids Goodbye to Youth: Childhood's End in Seney"; Paul Strong's "The First Nick Adams Stories"; William Braasch Watson's "The Doctor and the Doctor's Son: Immortalities in 'Indian Camp'"; Larry E. Grimes's "William James and 'The Doctor and the Doctor's Wife'"; H. R. Stoneback's "'Nothing Was Ever Lost': Another Look at 'That Marge Business'"; Frank Scafella's "'Nothing' in 'Big Two-Hearted River"; Eric Nakjavani's "The Fantasies of Omnipotence and Powerlessness: Commemoration in Hemingway's 'Fathers and Sons'"; "Hemingway and the Limits of Biography: An Exchange on the 'Jimmy Breen' Manuscript Between Michael Reynolds and Linda Wagner-Martin, with Audience Comment"; James Nagel's "Narrational Values and Robert Cohn in The Sun Also Rises"; Wolfgang E. H. Rudat's "Anti-Semitism in The Sun Also Rises: Traumas, Jealousies, and the Genesis of Cohn"; Linda Wagner-Martin's "The Secrecies of the Public Hemingway"; Robert W. Lewis's "Manners and Morals in A Farewell to Arms"; Robert A. Martin's "Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms: The World Beyond Oak Park and Idealism"; Bickford Sylvester's "The Sexual Impasse to Romantic Order in Hemingway's Fiction: A Farewell to Arms, Othello, 'Orphen,' and the Hemingway Canon"; Mark Spilka's "Nina Baym's Benevolent Reading of the Macomber Story: An Epistolary Response"; Warren Bennett's "Hemingway's 'Today is Friday' as a Ballad of the Goodly Fete"; Paul Smith's "Love and Death in Hemingway's Spanish Novel"; Allen Josephs's "Love in For Whom the Bell Tolls: Hemingway's Undiscovered Country"; Linda Patterson Miller's "Something in It for You: Role Models in For Whom the Bell Tolls"; Thomas Gould's "'Anti-War Correspondence': Reshaping Death in the For Whom the Bell Tolls Manuscript"; Michael Seefeldt's "Reconsidering the Travesty of Himself: Another Look at Across the River and Into the Trees"; Robert E. Gajdusek's "The Suspended Woman in the Work of Ernest Hemingway"; and Kelli A. Larson's "Stepping into the Labyrinth: Fifteen Years of Hemingway Scholarship."

Tadie, Andrew A., and Michael H. Macdonald, eds. Permanent Things. Grand Rapids: Ferdmans, 1995.

Selections include Ian Crowther's introduction; Russell Kirk's "The Great Mysterious Incorporation of the Human Race"; John Peterson's "Father Brown's War on the Impermanent Things"; David Whalen's "Chesterton's Dickens and the Literary Critics: The Thing and the Theory"; David Dooley's "Waugh's Road to Affirmation"; Gregory Wolfe's "'Little Systems of Order': Evelyn Waugh's Comic Irony"; George Musacchio's "C. S. Lewis Celebrates 'Patches of Godlight'"; Kent R. Hill's "Chesterton, Democracy and the Permanent Things"; William F. Campbell's "G. K. Chesterton and the Science of Economics"; John G. West, Jr.'s "Finding the Permanent in the Political: C. S. Lewis as a Political Thinker"; Barbara Reynolds's "What Dorothy L. Sayers Found Permanent in Dante"; Thomas T. Howard's "Perplexity in the Edgeware Road: Four Quartets Revisited Yet Again"; Aidan Mackey's "G. K. Chesterton among the Permanent Poets"; Peter Kreeft's "Darkness at Noon: The Eclipse of the Permanent Things"; John A. Sims's "In Defense of Permanent Truth and Value"; Evan K. Gibson's '"There Are No 'Trees' . . . Only This Elm': C. S. Lewis on the Scientific Method"; Alzina Stone Dale's "Some Ideas on a Christian Core Curriculum from the Writings of G. K. Chesterton, T. S. Eliot, and Dorothy L. Sayers"; William J. Abraham's "C. S. Lewis and the Conversion of the West"; and Marion Montgomery's "The Recovery of the Permanent Things: Eliot circa 1930."

Teskey, Gordon. Allegory and Violence. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1996.

Drawing upon a wide range of literary, visual, and critical works in the European tradition, Teskey offers a literary history of allegory, as well as a theoretical account of the genre that confronts fundamental questions about the violence inherent in cultural forms. Teskey argues that the desire to raise temporal experience to higher levels of abstraction only succeeds in creating a rift that allegory attempts to conceal. Teskey surveys the place of violence in works by Yeats, Machiavelli, and Eliot, among others.

Tonkovich, Nicole. Domesticity with a Difference: The Nonfiction of Catharine Beecher, Sarah J. Hale, Fanny Fern, and Margaret Fuller. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1997.

Tonkovich examines the conflicts that develop between the textual and biographical lives of Beecher, Hale, Fern, and Fuller. Drawing upon a broad selection of their nonfictional works, Tonkovich discusses their comparable home, school, and community backgrounds. In addition to exploring each writer's interest in such issues as class, race, age, and geography, Tonkovich demonstrates the ways in which their writings contributed to the alteration of women's traditional roles in the home, school, and community.

Weisenburger, Steven. Fables of Subversion: Satire and the American Novel. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1995.

Using a vast array of novels by 19 writers from 1930 to 1980, Weisenburger focuses on the rise of a radically subversive mode of satire in the twentieth century. Weisenburger argues that this postmodern form of satire exists in crucial opposition to corrective and normative versions of satire, which uses ridicule as a means for lauding various value systems. Weisenburger provides analyses of various theories of satire while also exploring early subversions of satiric conventions by such writers as Nathaniel West, Flannery O'Connor, and John Hawkes, among others.

Wenke, John. Melville's Muse: Literary Creation and the Forms of Philosophical Fiction. Kent: Kent State UP, 1995.

Wenke examines the combination of philosophy and aesthetics that undergirds Melville's fictions. In addition to detailing Melville's ontological debts to such figures as Plato, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas Carlyle, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, among others, Wenke discusses the implications of the writer's philosophical speculations. Wenke argues that Melville's aesthetic philosophy led the writer to create texts that were both derivative and revolutionary.

Wilcox, Helen, and Richard Todd, eds. George Herbert: Sacred and Profane. Amsterdam: Vu UP, 1995.

Selections include Todd's "Introduction: Historicisms and George Herbert"; Mario A. di Cesare's "Sacred Rhythms & Sacred Contradictions: Prolegomena to a Study of Herbert's Liturgical Consciousness"; Elizabeth Clarke's "Sacred Singer/Profane Poet: Herbert's Split Poetic Persona"; Diane Kelsey McColley's "'How All Try Lights Combine': Herbert and King's"; John Ottenhoff's "From Venus to Virtue: Sacred Parody and George Herbert"; Robert Cummings's "George Herbert's Language of Canaan"; Judith Dundas's "George Herbert and Divine Paronomasia"; R. V. Young, Jr.'s "Herbert and Analogy"; Mathias Bauer's "'A Title Strange, Yet True': Toward an Explanation of Herbert's Titles"; Heather Ross's "Meating God: Herbert's Poetry and the Discourse of Appetite"; Wilcox's "'All Things Are Big with Jest': Irony in Herbert's Temple"; Ted-Larry Pebworth's "George Herbert's Apocalypticism: Secular and Sacred"; Bart Westerweel's "'The Sweet Cement . . . Is Love': George Herbert and the Emblem Books"; Kay Gilliland Stevenson's "Emblematic and Incremental Imagery: Rabelais, Spenser, Milton, Herbert, Cats"; Robert Wilcher's "'The Present Times Are Not/To Snudge In': Henry Vaughan, The Temple, and the Pressure of History"; and Cedric Brown's "Mystery, Imitation, Craft: From George Herbert to Sylvia Plath."

Willett, Ralph. The Naked City: Urban Crime Fiction in the USA. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1996.

In addition to investigating the dangerous realms of urban American detective fiction and considering the reasons that it continues to capture the popular imagination, Willett explores the American city as both an urban jungle and an exotic space in crime fiction by such writers as Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and Sara Paretsky, among others. Willett discusses the imaginative geography of the American city and its contradictory elements of murder and opportunity in the annals of detective fiction.

Wirth-Nesher, Hana, ed. New Essays on Henry Roth's Call It Sleep. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996.

Selections include Wirth-Nesher's introduction; Leslie Fiedler's "The Many Myths of Henry Roth"; Mario Materassi's "Shifting Urbanscape: Roth's 'Private' New York"; Ruth Wisse's "The Classic of Disinheritance"; Brian McHale's "Henry Roth in Nighttown, or, Containing Ulysses"; Karen R. Lawrence's "Roth's Call It Sleep: Modernism on the Lower East Side"; and Werner Sollors's "'A world somewhere, somewhere else': Language, Nostalgic Mournfulness, and Urban Immigrant Family Romance in Call It Sleep."

(5) Feminist and Gender Studies

Armstrong, Isobel, and Joseph Bristow, eds. Nineteenth-Century Women Poets. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996.

Armstrong and Bristow's volume offers a wide ranging anthology of verse by nineteenth-century women poets. In addition to featuring the poetry of such stalwarts as Felicia Hemans, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Christina Rossetti, Armstrong and Bristow include the verse of Maria Jane Jewsbury, Augusta Webster, and Michael Field, among others.

Aughterson, Kate, ed. Renaissance Woman: A Sourcebook: Constructions of Femininity in England. London: Routledge, 1995.

Aughterson assembles extracts of significant accounts of women and femininity in early modern England. Aughterson provides representative and accessible readings of the discourses of gender construction during this period, while also encouraging students to analyze the rhetorical strategies of literary texts as they operate within a broader historical context. The subdivisions of Aughterson's sourcebook address a host of issues, including theology, physiology, conduct, sexuality and motherhood, politics and law, education, work, writing and speaking, and proto-feminisms. Aughterson draws upon sources ranging from medical documents and political pamphlets to sermons and the Bible, as well as literary texts.

Backscheider, Paula R., and John J. Richetti. Popular Fiction by Women, 1660-1730: An Anthology. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996.

Selections include Aphra Behn's The History of the Nun; Delariviere Manley's The Secret of Queen and the Zarazians; Jane Barker's Love Intrigues; Penelope Aubin's The Strange Adventures of the Count de Vineril and His Family; Eliza Haywood's The British Recluse and Fatomina; Mary Davys's The Reformed Coquet; and Elizabeth Singer Rowe's Friendship in Death.

Barash, Carol. English Women's Poetry, 1649-1714: Politics, Community, and Linguistic Authority. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996.

Barash reconstructs the political origins of women's poetry between the execution of Charles I and the death of Queen Anne. Barash demonstrates that between Katherine Philips (1632-1664) and Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea (1661-1720) an English women's poetic tradition developed as part of the larger political shifts during that era, particularly regarding the fascination of women writers with the figure of the female monarch. Barash explores a wide range of writers, including Philips, Finch, Aphra Behn, Anne Killigrew, and Jane Barker.

Belsey, Catherine, and Jane Moore, eds. The Feminist Reader: Essays in Gender and the Politics of Literary Criticism. 2nd ed. London: Macmillan, 1997.

Selections include Belsey and Moore's "Introduction: The Story So Far"; Dale Spender's "Women and Literary History"; Rosalind Coward's "The True Story of How I Became My Own Person"; Toni Morrison's "Disturbing Nurses and the Kindness of Sharks"; Line Pouchard's "Queer Desire in The Well of Loneliness"; Mary Jacobus's "The Difference of View"; Gillian Beer's "Representing Women: Re-presenting the Past"; Helene Cixous's "Sorties: Out and Out: Attacks/Ways Out/Forays"; Toril Moi's "Feminist, Female, Feminine"; Shoshana Felman's "Women and Madness: The Critical Phallacy"; Moore's "Promises, Promises: The Fictional Philosophy in Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindiction of the Rights of Woman"; Goyatri Chakravorty Spivak's "Three Women's Texts and a Critique of Imperialism"; Marjorie Garber's "Cross-dressing, Gender and Representation: Elvis Presley"; Diane Elam's "Feminism and the Postmodern: Theory's Romance"; Julia Kristeva's "Women's Time" and Luce Irigaray's "The Looking Glass, from the Other Side."

Bowlby, Rachel. Feminist Destinations and Further Essays on Virginia Woolf. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1997.

Selections include "'We're Getting There': Woolf, Trains and the Destinations of Feminist Criticism"; "The Trained Mind"; "Orlando's Vacillation"; "Getting to Q: Sexual Lines in To the Lighthouse"; "Thinking Forward through Mrs. Dalloway's Daughter"; "Jacob's Type"; "Things"; "Orlando's Undoing"; "Partings"; "The Dotted Line"; "Orlando: An Introduction"; "Virginia Woolf's 'In Love'"; "Walking, Women and Writing"; "'A More than Maternal Tie': Woolf as a Woman Essayist"; and "'The Crowded Dance of Modern Life.'

Buckley, J. F. Desire, The Self, The Social Critic: The Rise of Queer Performance within the Demise of Transcendentalism. Cranbury: Associated UP, 1997.

Buckley examines the ways in which four transcendentalists develop the use of the "antisocial" desire into a transcendental critique of nineteenth-century American culture. Drawing upon the works of Margaret Fuller, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, and Emily Dickinson, Buckley argues that these writers' texts represent the individual's inherent divinity and inherent ability to transcend the sensate world in terms that might seem to be homosexual, bisexual, or "pansexual." Buckley contends that these four transcendentalists embody the antisocial self and make it present for the larger society in which they live and work.

Burroughs, Catherine B. Closet Stages: Joanna Baillie and the Theater Theory of British Romantic Women Writers. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1997.

Burroughs examines theater theory produced between 1790 and 1840 by middle- and upper-class British women - including playwrights, actresses, and spectators. Burroughs demonstrates their concern with the performative aspects of daily life and the movement between the public and private spheres. Using works by Sarah Siddons, Elizabeth Inchbald, and Hannah More, among others, Burroughs examines the strategies that these women used to represent their performance of gender in public and private contexts. Burroughs devotes particular attention to the work of Joanna Baillie, the most important woman playwright and dramatic theorist of her time.

Byles, Joan Montgomery. War, Women, and Poetry, 1914-1945: British and German Writers and Activists. Cranbury: Associated UP, 1995.

Byles examines the experience of European women, especially British and German women, in World Wars I and II and the literature they wrote in reaction to those wars. Byles explores the impact of war upon women's lives, focusing on the ways in which women writers of both poetry and prose represented these wars in their writings. Additionally, Byles attempts to interweave the historical circumstances of these wars with women's and men's literary responses to these conflicts, in addition to investigating the manner in which the social-historical situation of war manifests itself in artistic expression.

Campbell, Donna M. Resisting Regionalism: Gender and Naturalism in American Fiction, 1885-1915. Athens: Ohio UP, 1997.

Campbell explores the effect that the cultural dominance of women's local color fiction during the 1890s had on young male naturalist writers who rebelled against the local color writers and their "teacup tragedies." In addition to discussing the genre's immense popularity during the 1880s, as evidenced in the pages of such literary journals as Harper's Monthly, Scribner's, Atlantic Monthly, and Century, among others, Campbell devotes particular attention to the role of gender in these naturalistic fictions, arguing that the genre emerged as a dissenting response to the era's concerns about the dominance of feminine influence in American literature.

Champagne, Rosaria. The Politics of Survivorship: Incest, Women's Literature, and Feminist Theory. New York: New York UP, 1996.

Champagne traverses the difficult subject of incest through an analysis of such disparate entities as Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's writings and the Oprah Winfrey Show. Champagne devotes particular attention to the ways in which victims learn to voice their protest against the social order that allows incest to occur. Champagne also problematizes the recent spate of television talk shows and antifeminist backlashes regarding incest survivors and their therapists.

Chedgzoy, Kate. Shakespeare's Queer Children: Sexual Politics and Contemporary Culture. Manchester: Manchester, 1995.

Chedgzoy explores the influence of Renaissance-era sexual value systems upon the composition and social construction of Shakespeare's plays. In addition to readings of The Tempest, the sonnets, and works by Oscar Wilde, Chedgzoy examines such issues as homosexuality, shame, and the family in Shakespeare's works. Chedgzoy also considers the narrative representation of women in the Elizabethan theater, particularly emphasizing the place of female characters in the works of Shakespeare and Marlowe, among others.

Chedgzoy, Kate, Melanie Hansen, and Suzanne Trill, eds. Voicing Women: Gender and Sexuality in Early Modern Writing. Pittsburgh: Duquesne UP, 1997.

Selections include Chedgzoy's "Introduction: 'Voice that Is Mine'"; Hansen's "The Word and the Throne: John Knox's The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women"; Trill's "Engendering Penitence: Nicholas Breton and 'the Countesse of Penbrooke'"; Jacqueline Pearson's "Women Writers and Women Readers: The Case of Aemilia Lanier"; Stephanie Wright's "The Canonization of Elizabeth Cary"; Katherine Hodgkin's "Dionys Fitzherbert and the Anatomy of Madness"; Helen Hackett's "The Torture of Limena: Sex and Violence in Lady Mary Wroth's Urania"; Danielle Clarke's "The Iconography of the Blush: Marian Literature of the 1630s"; Bronwen Price's "Playing the 'Masculine Part': Finding a Difference within Behn's Poetry"; Susan Wiseman's "Read Within: Gender, Cultural Difference, and Quaker Women's Travel Narratives"; Tamsin Spargo's "Contra-dictions: Women as Figures of Exclusion and Resistance in John Bunyan and Agnes Beaumont's Narratives"; and Maureen Bell's "Seditious Sisterhood: Women Publishers of Opposition Literature at the Restoration."

Clarke, Bruce. Dora Marsden and Early Modernism: Gender, Individualism, Science. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1996.

Clarke offers a new study of Marsden, who from 1911 to 1919 was founder and editor of influential periodicals such as the Freewoman, the New Freewoman, and the Egoist. Clarke provides a fresh perspective on early modernism and its relationship to the cultural radicalism of the period, arguing that Marsden's contributions have been neglected and often misunderstood. Clarke addresses Marsden's substantial influence upon a range of modernist writers, including D. H. Lawrence, Ezra Pound, and William Carlos Williams. Additionally, Clarke discusses Marsden's significant literary friendships with such figures as Richard Aldington, Edward Carpenter, H.D., T. S. Eliot, Ford Madox Ford, James Joyce, Wyndham Lewis, Amy Lowell, Marianne Moore, Dorothy Richardson, May Sinclair, H. G. Wells, and Rebecca West.

Cohen, Michele. Fashioning Masculinity: National Identity and Language in the Eighteenth Century. London: Routledge, 1996.

Cohen discusses the social construction of masculinity and its interconnections with national identity in the eighteenth century. Cohen argues that the fashioning of English gentlemen during this era was modelled on French practices of sociability and conversation, while the English constructed their cultural relations with the French as relations of seduction and desire. Additionally, Cohen demonstrates the manner in which visible evidence of girls' verbal and language-learning skills served only to construe the female mind as inferior during the eighteenth century.

Cohen, Sarah Blacher, ed. Making a Scene: The Contemporary Drama of Jewish-American Women. Syracuse: Syracuse UP, 1997.

Selections include Cohen's introduction; Wendy Wasserstein's "Isn't It Romantic"; Barbara Lebow's "A Shayna Maidel"; Cohen's "The Ladies Locker Room"; Lois Roisman's "Nobody's Gilgul"; Barbara Kahn's "Whither Thou Goest"; Hindi Brooks's "The Night the War Came Home"; and Merle Feld's "Across the Jordan."

Cousineau, Diane. Letters and Labyrinths: Women Writing/Cultural Codes. Cranbury: Associated UP, 1997.

Drawing upon letters, towels, mirrors, and photographs, Cousineau examines the ways in which cultural artifacts function both as concrete presences and metaphorical configurations in literary texts. Cousineau concentrates on a wide variety of women writers in her survey, including Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, Marguerite Duras, Leslie Marmon Silko, Jamaica Kincaid, and Vivian Gornick. Cousineau argues that their usage of cultural artifacts in their fictions draws together a number of issues, including the formulation of the female subject, the regime of the visual, and the perils and pleasures of interpersonal exchange.

Donoghue, Emma, ed. Poems Between Women: Four Centuries of Love, Romantic Friendship, and Desire. New York: Columbia UP, 1997.

Donoghue assembles the work of more than 100 female poets - primarily of British and American descent - since the seventeenth century. Donoghue's useful introduction demonstrates a coherent tradition between the poetry of pre-twentieth-century romantic friendships and explicit contemporary lesbian poetry. Donoghue includes work by well-known writers such as Aphra Behn, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Adrienne Rich, and Audre Lorde, while also introducing the work of lesser-known historical writers. Donoghue concludes her volume with a brief biography of each writer included in this anthology.

Druxes, Helga. Resisting Bodies: The Negotiation of Female Agency in Twentieth-Century Women's Fiction. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1996.

In addition to combining anthropology with recent literary theory, Druxes discusses the place of the female body in contemporary society. Using novels by Jean Rhys, Marguerite Duras, Margaret Drabble, and Monika Maron, Druxes traces the progression of the female body as it ages, falls ill, is healed, is tortured, gives birth, and dies. Druxes illuminates the significance of the body as the shape of our identity in society because of social norms and personal experiences.

Dufault, Roseanna Lewis, ed. Women by Women: The Treatment of Female Characters by Women Writers of Fiction in Quebec since 1980. Cranbury: Associated UP, 1997.

Selections include Dufault's introduction; Jane Moss's "Dramatizing the Discourse of Female Desire"; Susan Ireland's "The Figure of the Mother in the Novels of Monique LaRue"; Benedicte Mauguiere's "Memory, Identity, and Otherness in Contemporary Women's Writing in Quebec"; Holly Leclair's "'Chacun peut inventer sa vie': The Problem of the Female Speaking Subject in France Theoret's L'Homme qui peignait Staline"; Karin Egloff's "Michele Mailhot's Le Passe compose: The Search for an Authentic Self"; Michele E. Anderson's "Puritanism as Mask of Violence in Les Fous de Bassan"; Kelley A. Wacker's "Fin de Siecle Anxiety, Melancholy, and Durer's Angel in Marie-Claire Blais's Angle of Solitude"; Annabelle M. Rea's "Eve Fragmented into a Thousand Faces: Women's Roles in Le Premier jardin"; Celita Lamar's "Resetting the Margins: Abla Farhoud's Dramatization of the Female Immigrant Experience in Quebec"; Milena Santoro's "Feminist Translation: Writing and Transmission among Women in Nicole Brossard's Le Desert mauve and Madeleine Gagnon's Lueur"; Lucie Lequin's "Anne-Marie Alonzo: Archaeologist and Cartographer"; Dufault's "Acting Mothers: The Maternal Role in Recent Novels by Marie-Claire Blais and Anne Hebert"; Lori Saint-Martin's "'Les Deux femmes, le petite et la grande': Love and Murder in the Mother-Daughter Relationship"; Betty McLane-Iles's "Memory and Exile in the Writings of Ying Chen"; Janine Ricouart's "Jovette Marchessault's Matriarchy in Her Autobiographical Triptych"; Karen Gould's "Madeleine Monette, 'Otherness,' and Quebec Cultural Criticism"; and Katharine Conley's "Rediscovering the Lost Familiar in Francine Noel's Nous avons tous decouvert l'Amerique."

Eagleton, Mary, ed. Feminist Literary Theory: A Reader. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996.

This updated edition of Eagleton's volume offers a useful introductory guide to the study and application of feminist literary theory. Eagleton includes chapters on "Finding a Female Tradition"; "Women and Literary Production"; "Gender and Genre"; "Towards Definitions of Feminist Writing"; "Writing, Reading and Difference"; and Locating the Subject."

Evans, Robert C., and Anne C. Little, eds. "The Muses Females Are:" Martha Moulsworth and Other Women Writers of the English Renaissance. West Cornwall: Locust Hill, 1995.

Selections include Little's introduction; Evans's "'Moulsworth or Molesworth?: A Note on Names, Spellings, and Editorial Principles"; Germaine Greer's "'Backward Springs': The Self-Invention of Martha Moulsworth"; Isobel Grundy's "Identity and Numbers in Martha Moulsworth's 'Memorandum'"; Evans's "The Life and Times of Martha Moulsworth"; Anthony Low's "Martha Moulsworth and the Uses of Rhetoric: Love, Mourning, and Reciprocity"; Anne Lake Prescott's "Marginally Funny: Martha Moulsworth's Puns"; Mary Ellen Lamb's "The Poem as a Clock: Marth Moulsworth Tells Time Three Ways"; Matthew Steggle's "'The Memorandum,' Sacraments, and Ewelme Church"; Little's "'By Him I Was Brought Vpp': Evoking the Father in Moulsworth's 'Memorandum'"; Susie Paul's "Martha Moulsworth's 'Memorandum': Crossing the Climacteric"; Evans and Neil P. Probst's "Biblical Resonance in Moulsworth's 'Memorandum'"; Josephine A. Roberts's "'My Inward House': Women's Autobiographical Poetry in the Early Seventeenth Century"; Curtis Perry's "'My Muse is a Tell Clocke': The Paradox of Ritual Autobiography in Martha Moulsworth's 'Memorandum'"; Karen Worley Pirnie's "Research Sources on Seventeenth-Century Women's Autobiography"; John T. Shawcross's "'The Muses Females Are': Renaissance Women and Education"; Frances Teague's "Early Modern Women and 'The Muses ffemall'"; Jean R. Brink's "Educating Women and the Lower Orders"; and Esther S. Cope's "'The Widdowes Silvar': Widowhood in Early Modern England."

Falco, Maria J., ed. Feminist Interpretations of Mary Wollstonecraft. University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 1996.

Selections include Nancy Tuana's foreword; Falco's preface; Falco's "Introduction: Who Was Mary Wollstonecraft?"; Penny A. Weiss's "Wollstonecraft and Rousseau: The Gendered Fate of Political Theorists"; Virginia Sapiro's "Wollstonecraft, Feminism, and Democracy: 'Being Bastilled'"; Virginia L. Muller's "What Can Liberals Learn from Mary Wollstonecraft?"; Wendy Gunther-Canada's "Mary Wollstonecraft's 'Wild Wish': Confounding Sex in the Discourse on Political Rights"; Carol H. Poston's "Mary Wollstonecraft and 'The Body Politic'"; Miriam Brody's "The Vindication of the Writes of Women: Mary Wollstonecraft and Enlightenment Rhetoric"; Moira Ferguson's "Mary Wollstonecraft and the Problematic of Slavery"; Louise Byer Miller's "Wollstonecraft, Gender Equality, and the Supreme Court"; Dorothy McBride Stetson's "Women's Rights and Human Rights: Intersection and Conflict"; Virginia Sapiro and Penny A. Weiss's "Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Mary Wollstonecraft: Restoring the Conversation"; and Gunther-Canada's "'The Same Subject Continued': Two Hundred Years of Wollstonecraft Scholarship."

Feldman, Paula R., ed. British Women Poets of the Romantic Era: An Anthology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1997.

Feldman's anthology collects the verse of a wide range of Romantic-era women poets, including Joanna Baillie, Anna Letitia Barbauld, Felicia Hemans, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Mary Robinson, Anna Seward, Charlotte Smith, and Mary Tighe, among a host of others. Feldman includes representations of a vast range of poetic forms as well, including sonnets, odes, elegies, satires, songs, pastorals, anti-pastorals, love lyrics, epistles, long narrative poems, ballads, riddles, and a portion of an epic poem. Feldman features detailed introductions to each of the 62 poets in her study.

Findon, Joanne. A Woman's Words: Emer and Female Speech in the Ulster Cycle. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1997.

Findon offers an in-depth analysis of Middle Irish literature from a feminist stance, in addition to providing a reading of the representation of female speech in medieval Irish literature. In addition to considering Emer - the wife of the great Irish hero Cu Chulainn - as a literary figure rather than a mythic archetype or a reflection of a pre-Christian Celtic goddess, Findon places Emer within the wider context of medieval literature as an example of a heroic secular woman, married and fully integrated into her aristocratic society and yet capable of speaking out against its abuses.

Fitzmaurice, James, ed. Major Women Writers of Seventeenth-Century England. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1997.

Selections include Fitzmaurice's "Feminist Criticism and Seventeenth-Century Women Writers"; Aemilia Lanyer's Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum and "The Description of Cookham"; Elizabeth Cary's The Tragedy of Mariam and The Fair Queen of Jewry; Lady Mary Wroth's sonnets from Pamphilia to Amphilanthus and The Countess of Montgomery's Urania; Margaret Cavendish's CCXI Sociable Letters; Katherine Philips's selected poems; Aphra Behn's The Rover, Or the Banished Cavaliers; Anne Finch's selected poems; Rachel Specht's A Muzzle for Melastomus; and Ester Sowernam's Esther Hath Hang'd Haman.

Freeman, Barbara Claire. The Feminine Sublime: Gender and Excess in Women's Fiction. Berkeley: U of California P, 1995.

Freeman argues that traditional theorizations of the sublime depend on unexamined assumptions about femininity and sexual difference, and that the sublime could not exist without misogynistic constructions of "the feminine." Freeman contends that the "other sublime" that comes into view from this new perspective not only offers a crucial way to approach representations of excess in women's fiction, but allows us to envision other modes of writing the sublime. Using the works of Chopin, Morrison, Rhys, Shelley, and Wharton, Freeman argues that the theoretical discourses that have seemed merely to explain the sublime also function to evaluate, domesticate, and ultimately exclude a feminine otherness.

Gallagher, Catherine. Nobody's Story: The Vanishing Acts of Women Writers in the Marketplace 1670-1820. Berkeley: U of California P, 1995.

Gallagher explores the careers of five influential women writers of the Restoration and eighteenth century. Using the works of Aphra Behn, Charlotte Lennox, Frances Burney, and Maria Edgeworth, Gallagher examines each writer's depictions of such subjects as economic relations and authorial persona, as well as such concepts as "woman," "author," "marketplace," and "fiction." Gallagher argues that these writers articulated and exploited the "disembodiment" of narrative at the core of authorship.

Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar, eds. The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women: The Traditions in English. 2nd ed. New York: Norton, 1996.

In this updated version of their celebrated 1985 anthology, Gilbert and Gubar assemble the works of women writers from the middle ages through the present. Gilbert and Gubar supplement their selections with useful biographical headnotes for each figure, as well as with essays that delineate the various literary periods explored in their anthology.

Gold, Barbara K., Paul Allen Miller, and Charles Platter, eds. Sex and Gender in Medieval and Renaissance Texts: The Latin Tradition. Albany: State U of New York P, 1997.

Selections include Gold, Miller, and Platter's introduction; Nancy A. Jones's "By Woman's Tears Redeemed: Female Lament in St. Augustine's Confessions and the Correspondence of Abelard and Heloise"; Gold's "Hrotswitha Writes Herself: Clamor Validus Gandeshemensis"; Phyllis Culham's "Gender and Negotiating Discourse: Mediated Autobiography and Female Mystics of Medieval Italy"; St. John E. Flynn's "The Saint of the Womanly Body: Raimon de Cornet's Fourteenth-Century Male Poetics"; Donald Gilman's "Petrarch's Sophonisba: Seduction, Sacrifice, and Patriarchal Politics"; Miller's "Laurel as the Sign of Sin: Laura's Textual Body in Petrarch's Secretum"; Diana Robin's "Woman, Space, and Renaissance Discourse"; Diane S. Wood's "In Praise of Woman's Superiority: Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa's De nobilitate"; Platter's "The Artificial Whore: George Buchanan's Apologia pro Lena"; Elizabeth Richmond-Garza's "'She Never Recovered Her Senses': Roxana and Dramatic Representations of Women at Oxbridge in the Elizabethan Age"; and Holt Parker's "Latin and Greek Poetry by Five Renaissance Italian Women Humanists."

Gray, Janet, ed. She Wields a Pen: American Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. London: Dent, 1997.

Gray's volume assembles the work of more than 60 poets, from Eliza Lee Follen and Jane Johnston Schoolcraft through Margaret Fuller and Emily Dickinson, among a wide range of others. The anthology features a useful chronology of the lives and works of the poets represented, as well as an extensive introduction about the place of American women poets in the nineteenth-century literary canon.

Hammond, Paul. Love between Men in English Literature. London: Macmillan, 1996.

Hammond provides an account of how emotional and sexual relationships between men have been depicted in English literature from the Renaissance to the modern period. Hammond reveals the literary resources which writers used to express love between men in the face of legal and social constraints, exploring their strategies for contemplating male beauty, and even the significant silences through which forbidden desires were implied. Using works by Marlowe, Shakespeare, Tennyson, Wilde, Forster, and Lawrence, Hammond discusses the homoerotic element in the English literary tradition.

Harrison, Suzan. Eudora Welty and Virginia Woolf: Gender, Genre, and Influence. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1997.

Harrison examines Welty's "devouring" of the works of Virginia Woolf and the ways in which Welty assimilates and transforms in each of her major novels the concerns she inherited from Woolf. Drawing on Bakhtin's theories of the novel and his concept of dialogism, Harrison investigates Woolf's influence on Welty as a creative, awakening force that led to her own development as an artist. In each chapter, Harrison considers a pair of novels, one by Woolf and one by Welty, exploring the dialogues between the two works and illustrating a particular strategy used by these authors to appropriate and revise traditional masculine discourse.

Hewitt, Andrew. Political Inversions: Homosexuality, Fascism, and the Modernist Imaginary. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1996.

Hewitt discusses the theoretical and cultural forces at work in various conflations of homosexuality and fascism. Drawing upon Adorno's assertion that "totalitarianism and homosexuality belong together," Hewitt investigates the ways in which aberrant political and sexual economies have been equated through readings of a variety of literary, visual, and theoretical discourses. Using the works of the German homosexual anarchist John Henry Mackay, for example, Hewitt demonstrates the ways in which masculinism was capable of questioning the social and sexual terms of contemporary queer aesthetics.

Higonnet, Margaret Randolph, ed. British Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. London: Penguin, 1996.

Higonnet's anthology surveys the poetry of a wide range of nineteenth-century British women poets, including Anna Dodsworth, Anna Letitia Barbauld, Helen Maria Williams, and Joanna Baillie, among a host of others. In addition to providing useful biographical and critical information about each of the figures in her study, Higonnet offers a detailed introduction regarding the place of British women's poetry in the nineteenth-century literary canon.

Howes, Marjorie. Yeats's Nations: Gender, Class, and Irishness. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996.

Drawing upon recent insights in postcolonial theory, Howes examines Yeats's enduring search for political origins and cultural traditions. Howes demonstrates the complex and often contradictory ways that Yeats's political ideologies permeate his writings. Howes argues that Yeats's enthusiastic Irish nationalism frequently clashed with his distaste for the dominant and exclusive forms of Irish identity that surrounded him.

Hubbard, Dolan, ed. Recovered Writers/Recovered Texts: Race, Class, and Gender in Black Women's Literature. Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 1997.

Selections include Hubbard's "Introduction: Can I Get a Witness?"; Emma Waters Dawson's "Witnesses and Practitioners: Attitudes toward Miscegenation in Barbara Chase-Riboud's Sally Hemings"; Helena Woodard's "The Two Marys (Prince and Shelley) on the Textual Meeting Ground of Race, Gender, and Genre"; Debra Walker King's "Harriet Wilson's Our Nig: The Demystification of Sentiment"; Frances Smith Foster's "Gender, Genre, and Vulgar Secularism: The Case of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper and the AME Press"; David W. H. Pellow's "Anna J. Cooper: The International Dimensions"; Erica L. Griffin's "The 'Invisible Woman' Abroad: Jessie Fauset's New Horizon"; Sandra Y. Govan's "A Blend of Voices: Composite Narrative Strategies in Biographical Reconstruction"; Trudier Harris's "Before the Stigma of Race: Authority and Witchcraft in Ann Petry's Tituba of Salem Village"; Joyce Pettis's "Reading Ann Petry's The Narrows into Black Literary Tradition"; and Caroll Mills Young's "The Unmasking of Virginia Brindis de Salas: Minority Discourse of Afro-Uruguay."

Inness, Sherrie A. The Lesbian Menace: Ideology, Identity, and the Representation of Lesbian Life. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1997.

Inness examines the ways in which images in the popular media perpetuate cultural stereotypes about lesbians, and to what extent lesbians have been able to subvert and revise these images. Inness discusses the representation of lesbianism in American popular culture in the twentieth century and how conflicting ideologies have shaped lesbian experiences and identity. Chapters include such issues as "The Lesbian in the United States Popular Imagination of the 1920s"; "The Lesbian Menace in Popular Women's College Fiction"; "Popular Reading Strategies for the Lesbian Reader"; "Children's Books and Lesbian Images"; "Queer Geography and the Politics of Location"; and "Recontextualizing the Meaning of Butch in Twentieth-Century Lesbian Culture."

Jameson, Elizabeth, and Susan Armitage, eds. Writing the Range: Race, Class, and Culture in the Women's West. Norman: U of Oklahoma P, 1997.

Selections include Jameson and Armitage's introduction; Marian Perales's "Empowering 'The Welder': A Historical Survey of Women of Color in the West"; Ramona Ford's "Native American Women: Changing Statuses, Changing Interpretations"; Peggy Pascoe's "Race, Gender, and Intercultural Relations: The Case of Interracial Marriage"; Yolanda Chavez Leyva's "'A Poor Widow Burdened with Children': Widows and Land in Colonial New Mexico"; James F. Brooks's "'This Evil Extends Especially to the Feminine Sex': Captivity and Identity in New Mexico, 1700-1846"; Albert L. Hurtado's "When Strangers Met: Sex and Gender on Three Frontiers"; Darlis A. Miller's "The Women of Lincoln County, 1860-1900"; Coll-Peter Thrush and Robert H. Keller, Jr.'s "'I See What I Have Done': The Life and Murder Trial of Xwelas, a S'Klallam Woman"; Genaro Padilla's "'Yo Sola Aprendi': Mexican Women's Personal Narratives from Nineteenth-Century California"; and Wendy L. Wall's "Gender and the 'Citizen Indian.'"

Joeres, Ruth-Ellen B., and Barbara Laslett, eds. The Second Signs Reader: Feminist Scholarship, 1983-1996. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1996.

Selections include Laslett and Joeres's introduction; Evelyn Brooks's "African-American Women's History and the Metalanguage of Race"; Evelyn Nakano Glenn's "From Servitude to Service Work: Historical Continuities in the Racial Division of Paid Reproductive Labor"; Ann duCille's "The Occult of True Black Womanhood: Critical Demeanor and Black Feminist Studies"; Susan Stanford's "Beyond White and Others: Relationality and Narratives of Race in Feminist Discourse"; Iris Marion Young's "Gender as Seriality: Thinking About Women as a Social Collective"; Gayle Greene's "Feminist Fiction and the Uses of Memory"; Nancy J. Chodorow's "Gender as a Personal and Cultural Construction"; Maureen A. Mahoney's "The Construction of Subjectivity and the Paradox of Resistance: Reintegrating Feminist Anthropology and Psychology"; Maria Lugones's "Purity, Impurity, and Separation"; Trisha Franzen's "Differences and Identities: Feminism and the Albuquerque Lesbian Community"; Marily Frye's "Getting It Right"; Lisa Disch and Mary Jo Kane's "When a Looker Becomes a Bitch: Lisa Olson, Sport, and the Heterosexual Matrix"; and Wendy Luttrell's "'The Teachers, They All Had Their Pets': Concepts of Gender, Knowledge, and Power."

Keiser, Elizabeth B. Courtly Desire and Medieval Homophobia: The Legitimation of Sexual Pleasure in Cleanness and its Contexts. New Haven: Yale UP, 1997.

Keiser offers a comprehensive study of Cleanness and its medieval contexts, while also demonstrating the ways in which this fourteenth-century religious poem legitimates erotic pleasure as natural apart from procreation. Keiser argues that Cleanness sacralizes heterosexual erotic play while condemning male homosexual love as profaning the Creator's workmanship and his nature. In addition to situating the poem in the context of medieval homophobic constructions of nature as the basis of sexual norms, Keiser compares Cleanness's concepts of sexual desire and deviance with those of its literary and theological precursors, including Thomas Aquinas's discourse on temperance and Alain de Lille's Complaint of Nature, among other works.

Knapp, Bettina L. Women in Myth. New York: State U of New York P, 1997.

Knapp discusses the role played by women in ancient societies through analysis of specific myths from nine different lands. Drawing upon such mythological figures as Isis, Tiamat, Dido, Camilia, Deborah, Iphigenia, Salome, Sita, Amaterasu, and Nu-Kwa, among others, Knapp examines their abilities and whether their views were gender-oriented or androgynous. Knapp explores whether or not these women had done battle, led armies, founded states, ruled lands, or experienced identity crises. Knapp draws parallels between the lives of ancient and contemporary women.

Laity, Cassandra. H.D. and the Victorian Fin de Siecle: Gender, Modernism, Decadence. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996.

Laity argues that H.D. shaped an alternative poetic modernism of female desire - images and forms of Decadent Romanticism that male modernists such as Eliot, Pound, and Yeats denounced as "effeminate." Laity demonstrates the impact of the Decadents and their fluid poetics of androgyny, homoeroticism, and role reversal on the poetics of a modernist woman writer. Laity also devotes attention to such subjects as feminine abjection and the femme fatale in the poetry of H.D.

Lee, Valerie. Granny Midwives and Black Women Writers: Double-Dutched Readings. London: Routledge, 1996.

Drawing on works by Toni Morrison, among a host of others, Lee explores the various texts and contexts of African-American women's fiction. Lee discusses the role of grandmothers in the literature of black women writers, affording attention to such issues as religion and cultural iconography. Lee examines the ways in which grannies employ Western science, folk medicine, and magic in these fictions.

Loughlin, Marie H. Hymeneutics: Interpreting Virginity on the Early Modern Stage. Cranbury: Associated UP, 1997.

Loughlin investigates the socio-medical and anatomical construction of the virginal female body in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century texts. By creating an historically and culturally specific understanding of virginity and chastity in early modern England, Loughlin offers a reevaluation of plays by John Fletcher and Shakespeare, among others. Loughlin draws upon contemporary medical discourse in her study, and examines the social, political, and cultural implications of virginity in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century drama.

Masten, Jeffrey. Textual Intercourse: Collaboration, Authorship, and Sexualities in Renaissance Drama. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997.

Drawing on literary criticism, theatrical history, and gender studies, Masten demonstrates the manner in which the writing of Renaissance drama was conceptualized in the languages of sex, gender, and eroticism. By examining the ways in which plays were originally printed, Masten argues that the plays of Shakespeare and other dramatists illustrate a shift from a model of collaboration to one of singular authorship. Using methods devoted to the study of sexuality and gender, Masten discusses questions of authorship and intellectual property in his study of Renaissance drama.

McCash, June Hall, ed. The Cultural Patronage of Medieval Women. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1996.

Selections include Stephen G. Nichols's foreword; McCash's "The Cultural Patronage of Medieval Women: An Overview"; Anne L. McClanan's "The Empress Theodora and the Tradition of Women's Patronage in the Early Byzantine Empire"; Joan M. Ferrante's "Women's Role in Latin Letters From the Fourth to the Early Twelfth Century"; Madeline H. Caviness's "Anchoress, Abbess, and Queen: Donors and Patrons or Intercessors and Matrons?"; Lois L. Hunecutt's "'Proclaiming her dignity abroad': The Literary and Artistic Network of Matilda of Scotland, Queen of England 1100-1118"; John Carmi Parsons's "Of Queens, Courts, and Books: Reflections on the Literary Patronage of Thirteenth-Century Plantagenet Queens"; Miriam Shadis's "Piety, Politics, and Power: The Patronage of Leonor of England and Her Daughters Berenguela of Leon and Blanche of Castile"; Karen K. Jambeck's "Patterns of Women's Literary Patronage: England, 1200-ca. 1475"; Frances A. Underhill's "Elizabeth de Burgh: Connoisseur and Patron"; Ralph Hanna III's "Some Norfolk Women and Their Books, ca. 1390-1440"; and Charity Cannon Willard's "The Patronage of Isabel of Portugal."

McCormick, Ian, ed. Secret Sexualities: A Sourcebook of Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Writings. London: Routledge, 1997.

McCormick provides readers with a host of primary texts, many of which are published here together for the first time. McCormick's introduction offers a theoretical framework for the study of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century writing. McCormick includes many texts that explore secrecy and sexuality in terms of anatomy and medicine, as well as rare texts that discuss the construction of eunuchs and hermaphrodites, among other subjects.

McRuer, Robert. The Queer Renaissance: Contemporary American Literature and the Reinvention of Lesbian and Gay Identities. New York: New York UP, 1997.

McRuer often a wide-ranging study of queer theory and its meaningful application to the literature of the Renaissance. In addition to a detailed introductory chapter - "Reading the Queer Renaissance" - McRuer affords attention to such issues as "coming out" and identity in readings of selected Renaissance-era texts. McRuer also features an intriguing epilogue - "Post-Queer?" - that explores the future of queer theory and its interpretive applications beyond the Renaissance.

Mell, Donald C., ed. Pope, Swift, and Women Writers. Cranbury: Associated UP, 1996.

Selections include Mell's introduction; Caryn Chaden's "Mentored from the Page: Mary Leapor's Relationship with Alexander Pope"; Valerie Rumbold's "The Poetic Career of Judith Cowper: An Exemplary Failure?"; Linda Veronika Troost's "Geography and Gender: Mary Chandler and Alexander Pope"; Peter Staffel's "Recovering Thalestris: Intragender Conflict in The Rape of the Lock"; Barbara McGoverns's "Finch, Pope, and Swift: The Bond of Displacement"; Melinda Alliker Rabb's "The Manl(e)y Style: Delariviere Manley and Jonathan Swift"; Carole Fabricant's "The Shared Worlds of Manley and Swift"; Claude Rawson's "Rage and Raillery and Swift: The Case of Cadenus and Vanessa"; David F. Venturo's "Concurring Opponents: Mary Wollstonecraft and Jonathan Swift on Women's Education and the Sexless Nature of Virtue"; Ellen Pollak's "Premium Swift: Dorothy Parker's Iron Mask of Femininity"; and Nora F. Crow's "Swift and the Woman Scholar."

Mezei, Kathy, ed. Ambiguous Discourse: Feminist Narratology and British Women Writers. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1996.

Selections include Mezei's "Introduction: Contextualizing Feminist Narratology"; Robyn Warhol's "The Look, the Body, and the Heroine of Persuasion: A FeministNarratological View of Jane Austen"; Christine Roulston's "Discourse, Gender, and Gossip: Some Reflections on Bakhtin and Emma"; Mezei's "Who Is Speaking Here?: Free Indirect Discourse, Gender, and Authority in Emma, Howards End, and Mrs. Dalloway"; Denise Delorey's "Parsing the Female Sentence: The Paradox of Containment in Virginia Woolf's Narratives"; Susan Stanford Friedman's "Spatialization, Narrative Theory, and Virginia Woolf's The Voyage Out"; Melba Cuddy-Keane's "The Rhetoric of Feminist Conversation: Virginia Woolf and the Trope of the Twist"; Patricia Matson's "The Terror and the Ecstasy: The Textual Politics of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway"; Rachel Blau DuPlessis's "Seismic Orgasm: Sexual Intercourse and Narrative Meaning in Mina Loy"; Janet Giitrow's "Ironies of Politeness in Anita Brookher's Hotel du Lac"; Alison Lee's "Angela Carter's New Eve(lyn): De/En-Gendering Narrative"; Susan S. Lanser's "Queering Narratology"; Linda Hutcheon's "Coda. Incredulity toward Metanarrative: Negotiating Postmodernism and Feminisms"; and Mezei's "Select Bibliography on Feminist Narratology."

Mitchell, Lee Clark. Westerns: Making the Man in Fiction and Film. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1996.

Mitchell explores representations of masculinity in Westerns, a genre that finds its appeal in the ways in which it addresses the fears and obsessions of its audience. Drawing upon the novels of Louis L'Amour and James Fenimore Cooper, Mitchell discusses the qualities of masculinity that these fictions celebrate. Using such films as Stagecoach and A Fistful of Dollars, Mitchell demonstrates the manner in which Westerns intersect such issues as nationalism, suffragetism, liberal social policy, and the white slave trade, among other topics.

Nnaemeka, Obioma, ed. The Politics of (M)Othering: Womanhood, Identity, and Resistance in African Literature. London: Routledge, 1997.

Selections include Nnaemeka's "Introduction: Imag(in)ing Knowledge, Power, and Subversion in the Margins"; Trinh T. Minh-ha's "Mother's Talk"; Charles Sugnet's "Nervous Conditions: Dangarembga's Feminist Reinvention of Fanon"; Ousseynou B. Traore's "Why the Snake-Lizard Killed His Mother: Inscribing and Decentering 'Nneka' in Things Fall Apart"; Peter Hitchcock's "The Eye and the Other: The Gaze and the Look in Egyptian Feminist Fiction"; Uzo Esonwanne's "Enlightenment Epistemology and 'Aesthetic Cognition': Mariama Ba's So Long a Letter"; Juliana Makuchi Nfah-Abbenyi's "Calix the Beyala's 'Femme-Fillette': Womanhood and the Politics of (MOthering)"; Cynthia Ward's "Bound to Matter: The Father's Pen and Mother Tongues"; Celeste Fraser Delgado's "Mother Tongues and Childless Women: The Construction of 'Kenyan"Womanhood'"; Huma Ibrahim's "Ontological Victimhood: 'Other' Bodies in Madness and Exile - Toward a Third World Feminist Epistemology"; Nnaemeka's "Urban Spaces, Women's Places: Polygamy as Sign in Mariama Ba's Novels"; Renee Larrier's "Reconstructing Motherhood: Francophone African Women Autobiographers"; and Francoise Lionnet's "Geographies of Pain: Captive Bodies and Violent Acts in the Fictions of Gayl Jones, Bessie Head, and Myriam Warner-Vieyra."

O'Connell, Mary. Updike and the Patriarchal Dilemma: Masculinity in the Rabbit Novels. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1996.

O'Connell demonstrates the ways in which many of John Updike's observations on gender are consistent with recent findings in the fields of gender theory and psychology. O'Connell examines the role of socially constructed masculinity in Updike's Rabbit tetralogy, arguing that the four novels offer one of the most comprehensive representations of masculinity in American literary history. Additionally, O'Connell finds substantial evidence in Updike's fictions to demonstrate psychological and physical abuse toward women, particularly evidenced by the many literally or metaphorically dead women in his narratives.

Parker, Alan Michael, and Mark Willhardt, eds. The Routledge Anthology of Cross-Gendered Verse. London: Routledge, 1996.

Selections include Ezra Pound's "The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter"; H.D.'s "Hippolytus Temporizes"; Fenton Johnson's "The Scarlet Woman"; Claude Mckay's "The Wild Goat"; Edna St. Vincent Millay's "Menses (He speaks, but to himself, being aware how it is with her)"; Louise Bogan's "The Crossed Apple"; Langston Hughes's "Madam and Her Madam"; W.H. Auden's "Miranda (excerpted from 'The Sea and the Mirror')"; Theodore Roethke's "Her Reticence"; Elizabeth Bishop's "Crusoe in England"; Muriel Rukeyser's "George Robinson: Blues"; Gwendolyn Brooks's "'Negro' Hero"; May Swenson's "First Walk on the Moon"; Mona van Duyn's "The Gardener to His God"; John Ashberry's "On The Empress's Mind"; Anne Sexton's "Jesus Dies"; Richard Howard's "1915: A PreRaphaelite Ending, London"; Adrienne Rich's "The Loser"; Ted Hughes's "Cleopatra to the Asp"; Lucille Clifton's "Powell (officer charged with the beating of Rodney King)"; Alicia Ostriker's "A Minor Van Gogh (He Speaks):"; Frank Bidart's "Ellen West"; Seamus Heaney's "Bog Queen"; Michael Longley's "Sulpicia"; Sunitti Namjoshi's "Caliban's Journal"; Michael Heffeman's "The Message"; AI's "The Good Shepherd: Atlanta, 1981"; Yusef Komunyakaa's "The Thom Merchant's Mistress"; Heather McHugh's "Note Delivered by Female Impersonator"; David St. John's "Quote Me Wrong Again and I'll Slit the Throat of Your Pet Iguana"; Rita Dove's "Genie's Prayer Under the Kitchen Sink"; and Archie Weller's "Ngungalari."

Pascoe, Judith. Romantic Theatricality: Gender, Poetry, and Spectatorship. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1997.

Pascoe examines the ways in which English literary culture in the 1790s came to be shaped by the theater and the public's fascination with it. In addition to discussing the manner in which writers relied on theatrical modes of representations, Pascoe focuses on several historical events in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Pascoe investigates the representation of gender in the works of the Della Cruscan poets, while also exploring depictions of Marie Antoinette in women's poetry of the era.

Pickering, Jean, and Suzanne Kehde, eds. Narratives of Nostalgia, Gender and Nationalism. London: Macmillan, 1997.

Selections include Jonathan Steinwand's "The Future of Nostalgia in Friedrich Schlegel's Gender Theory: Casting German Aesthetics Beyond Ancient Greece and Modern Europe"; Janet Sorensen's "Writing Historically, Speaking Nostalgically: The Competing Languages of Nation in Scott's The Bride of Lammermoor"; Walter Sondey's "From Nation of Virtue to Virtual Nation: Washington Irving and American Nationalism"; JoAnn Menezes's "The Birthing of the American Flag and the Invention of an American Founding Mother in the Image of Betsy Ross"; Sabina Sawhney's "Mother India Through the Ages: The Dilemma of Conflicting Subjectivities"; John N. Swift's "Willa Cather's My Antonia and the Politics of Modernist Classicism"; Hema Chari's "Scripting Woman into the Discourse of Nostalgia: Gender and the Nation State"; and Loretta Stec's "Female Sacrifice: Gender and Nostalgic Nationalism in Rebecca West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon."

Quinsey, Katherine M., ed. Broken Boundaries: Women and Feminism in Restoration Drama. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 1996.

Selections include Jacqueline Pearson's "'Blacker Than Hell Creates': Pix Rewrites Othello"; Rebecca Merrens's "'Unmanned with Thy Words': Regendering Tragedy in Manley and Trotter"; Dagny Boebel's "In the Carnival World of Adam's Garden: Roving and Rape in Behn's Rover"; Peggy Thompson's "Closure and Subversion in Behn's Comedies"; and Robert A. Erickson's "Lady Fulbank and the Poet's Dream in Behn's Lucky Chance."

Ratcliffe, Krista. Anglo-American Feminist Challenges to the Rhetorical Traditions: Virginia Woolf, Mary Daly, and Adrienne Rich. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1996.

Ratcliffe discusses the ways in which Woolf, Daly, and Rich challenged dominant masculine discourses in their respective eras through the use of feminist rhetoric. In addition to examining various Anglo-American feminist theories of rhetoric, Ratcliffe investigates the manner in which each writer attempted to demystify the parlance of feminism and equality. Ratcliffe concludes with a useful chapter that details the pedagogical possibilities of Anglo-American feminist theories of rhetoric.

Rosario, Vernon A. The Erotic Imagination: French Histories of Perversity. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997.

Drawing upon the writings of such literary figures as Diderot, Rousseau, Zola, Flaubert, and Huysmans, Rosario surveys instances of perversity in French literature. Using the medical and psychological insights of Tardieu, Binet, and Charcot, among others, Rosario argues that the modern idea of the perverse first emerged in late eighteenth-century France and was shaped largely by the intersection of medical writings, patient confessions, and literary narratives. Rosario also discusses such topics as masturbation, masochism, and nymphomania in his study.

Ruff, Shawn Stewart, ed. "Go the Way Your Blood Beats": An Anthology of Lesbian and Gay Fiction by African-American Writers. New York: Holt, 1996.

Selections include E. Lynn Harris's foreword; Ruff's introduction; Gayl Jones's "The Women"; James Baldwin's "The Outing"; Ruff's "Meredith's Lie"; Jacqueline Woodson's "What Has Been Done to Me"; Charles W. Harvey's "To Taste Fire Once More"; Becky Birtha's "Ice Castle"; Bruce Morrow's "Near the End of the World"; Amiri Baraka's "The Alternative"; Bennett Capers's "The Truth of the Matter"; Randall Kenan's "Run, Mourner, Run"; Sapphire's "There's a Window"; Richard Bruce Nugent's "Smoke, Lilies and Jade"; John Edgar Wideman's "The Statue of Liberty"; Samuel R. Delany's "The Place of Excrement"; Maude Irwin Owens's "Bathesda of Sinners Run"; Richard Wright's "Man of All Work"; Alice Walker's "The Temple of My Familiar"; Brooke M. Stephens's "Just Friends"; Cary Alan Johnson's "Obi's Story"; Carl Hancock Rux's "Asphalt"; Wallace Thurman's "Infants of the Spring"; Orian Hyde Weeks's "Dissimulations"; and Gloria Naylor's "The Two."

Salas, Teresa Cajiao, and Margarita Vargas, eds. Women Writing Women: An Anthology of Spanish-American Theater of the 1980s. Albany: State U of New York P, 1997.

Selections include Vargas's introduction; Isidora Aguirre's "Altarpiece of Yumbel"; Sabina Berman's "Yankee"; Myrna Casas's "The Great USkrainian Circus"; Teresa Marichal Lugo's "Evening Walk"; Diana Raznovich's "Dial-a-Mom"; Mariela Romero's "Waiting for the Italian"; Beatriz Seibel's "Seven Times Eve"; and Maruxa Vilalta's "A Woman, Two Men, and a Gunshot" (trans. Kirsten Nigro).

Schehr, Lawrence R. Parts of an Andrology: On Representations of Men's Bodies. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1997.

Schehr discusses the white male body as a counterpoint in gender studies to the many readings of the representation of the female body. Schehr surveys a group of works that are representative of the discontinuity in the intermittent representation of the male body. Drawing upon works by Edgar Allan Poe and Guy de Maupassant, Schehr examines the ways in which the male body is depicted in terms of pleasure, pain, aesthetics, and human vulnerability.

Schleiner, Louise. Cultural Semiotics, Spenser, and the Captive Woman. Cranbury: Associated UP, 1997.

Drawing upon A. J. Greimas's discourse theories, Schleiner analyzes The Shepheardes Calender as a form of discourse, as well as a definitive text for the Elizabethan "political unconscious." Schleiner demonstrates various sociolinguistic patterns at work in Elizabethan ideological contexts. Schleiner argues that the gender hierarchy of maleness-femaleness is a characteristic component of political ideology.

Schneider, Karen. Loving Arms: British Women Writing the Second World War. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 1997.

Schneider discusses the writings of Stevie Smith, Katharine Burdekin, Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Bowen, and Doris Lessing in terms of their depictions of World War II. Schneider devotes particular attention to the ways in which their works explore the connections between gender and war. Additionally, Schneider observes that many of the war stories written by women insist that war is not merely the condition of men but also of humanity, beginning with the relations between the sexes.

Schriber, Mary Suzanne. Writing Home: American Women Abroad, 18301920. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1997.

Schriber surveys a wide range of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century examples of American travel writing by women. Using the works of such figures as Abby Morrell, Sophia Hawthorne, Martha Coston, Mary Hannah Krout, Kate Field, Nellie Bly, and Edith Wharton, among others, Schriber discusses such issues as gender, genre, and difference. Schriber examines women's autobiography and its interrelations with travel writing, while also exploring the roles of politics and public discourse in women's travel narratives.

Shinn, Thelma J. Women Shapeshifters: Transforming the Contemporary Novel. Westport: Greenwood, 1996.

Shinn discusses the schism between fiction and reality as depicted in the contemporary fictions of such writers as Eudora Welty, Gloria Naylor, Margaret Atwood, and Doris Lessing, among others. In addition to examining such concepts as magic realism and romance in works by Isabel Allende and A. S. Byatt, Shinn includes chapters on "Re-Visioning the Romance" and "Reinventing the World."

Showalter, Elaine, ed. Scribbling Women: Short Stories by Nineteenth-Century American Women. London: Dent, 1997.

Selections include Catherine Sedgwick's "Cacoethes Scribendi"; Elizabeth Stuart Phelps's "The Angel Over The Right Shoulder"; Frances Harper's "The Two Offers"; Harriet Prescott Spofford's "Circumstance"; Rebecca Harding Davis's "Life in the Iron Mills" and "Marcia"; Louisa May Alcott's "My Contraband" and "Behind a Mask; or, A Woman's Power"; Mary E. Wilkins Freeman's "A New England Nun," "A Poetess," "Old Woman Magoun," and "Sister Liddy"; and Constance Fenimore Woolson's "Miss Grief" and "At the Chateau of Corrine," among a host of other works. Showalter introduces her study with a useful chronology of the lives and works of the writers in her anthology.

Sielke, Sabine. Fashioning the Female Subject: The Intertextual Networking of Dickinson, Moore, and Rich. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1997.

Sielke examines the concept of female subjectivity through a critical analysis of the poetry of Emily Dickinson, Marianne Moore, and Adrienne Rich. Using the feminist theories of Kristeva, Irigaray, and Cixous, Sielke develops a model of female subjectivity as an intertextual network with three historically distinct levels of subjectivity. Sielke discusses the semantics of the female body as the most contested battleground of female subject constitution.

Stewart, Alan. Close Readers: Humanism and Sodomy in Early Modern England. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1997.

Stewart discusses the ways in which humanism - in both its rhetoric and its practice - attempts to transform the relationships between men that make up the fabric of early modern society. Stewart demonstrates the ways in which humanism provides a means of social mobility for the lower classes in various works of Renaissance art and literature. Drawing on a wide array of materials that includes schoolboys' grammar books and political tracts, Stewart identifies the interconnections between humanism and sodomy.

Summers, Claude J., and Ted-Larry Pebworth, eds. Representing Women in Renaissance England. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1997.

Selections include Summers and Pebworth's introduction; Helen Wilcox's "'My soule in silence'?: Devotional Representations of Renaissance Englishwomen"; Janel Mueller's "Complications of Intertextuality: John Fisher, Katherine Parr, and 'The Book of the Crucifix"'; Pamela Joseph Benson's "Translating Italian Thought about Women in Elizabethan England: Harington's Orlando Furioso"; Gareth Roberts's "Women and Magic in English Renaissance Love Poetry"; Ilona Bell's "Women in the Lyric Dialogue of Courtship: Whitney's Admonitio 'superscript n' to al yong Gentilwomen and Donne's 'The Legacie'"; Cecilia Infante's "Donne's Incarnate Muse and His Claim to Poetic Control in 'Sapho to Philaenis'"; Lawrence Normand's "Witches, King James, and The Masque of Queens"; Judith Scherer Herz's "Aemilia Lanyer and the Pathos of Literary History"; Barbara K. Lewalski's "Female Text, Male Reader Response: Contemporary Marginalia in Rachel Speght's A Mouzell for Melastomus"; Roberts's "Deciphering Women's Pastoral: Coded Language in Wroth's Love's Victory"; Robert C. Evans's "Deference and Defiance: The 'Memorandum' of Martha Moulsworth"; Paul A. Parrish's "Richard Crashaw, Mary Collet, and the 'Arminian Nunnery' of Little Gidding"; Roger B. Rollin's "Robert Herrick's Housekeeper: Representing Ordinary Women in Renaissance Poetry"; Sidney Gottlieb's "Ann Collins and the Experience of Defeat"; and Stella P. Revard's "Katherine Philips, Aphra Behn, and the Female Pindaric."

Threadgold, Terry. Feminist Poetics: Poiesis, Performance, Histories. London: Routledge, 1997.

Threadgold examines the influence of poststructuralism and feminism on poetics, arguing that these movements have changed poetics into a study of the making or performing of textual forms. Threadgold employs the infamous Australian "government murders" of 1900 as a case study for discussing issues of sexuality and race in a wide range of works from several different genres. Drawing upon the insights of such theorists as Foucault, Habermas, and Bourdieu, Threadgold attempts to reconnect the study of grammatical forms to our historical and contemporary understandings of the body.

Traub, Valerie, M. Lindsay Kaplan, and Dympna Callaghan, eds. Feminist Readings of Early Modern Culture: Emerging Subjects. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996.

Selections include Traub, Kaplan, and Callaghan's introduction; Denise Albanese's "Making It New: Humanism, Colonialism, and the Gendered Body in Early Modern Culture"; Traub's "Gendering Mortality in Early Modern Anatomies"; Cynthia Marshall's "Wound-man: Coriolanus, Gender, and the Theatrical Constriction of Interiority"; Rosemary Kegl's "'The world I have made': Margaret Cavendish, Feminism, and the Blazing-World"; Frances E. Dolan's "Reading, Writing, and Other Crimes"; Kim F. Hall's "Culinary Spaces, Colonial Spaces: The Gendering of Sugar in the Seventeenth Century"; Jyotsna G. Singh's "Caliban versus Miranda: Race and Gender Conflicts in Postcolonial Rewritings of The Tempest"; Laura Levine's "Rape, Repetition, and the Politics of Closure in A Midsummer Night's Dream"; Kaplan's "Subjection and Subjectivity: Jewish Law and Female Autonomy in Reformation English Marriage"; Theodora A. Jankowski's "'Where there can be no cause of affection': Redefining Virgins, Their Desires, and Their Pleasures in John Lyly's Gallathea"; and Callaghan's "The Terms of Gender: 'Gay' and 'Feminist' Edward II."

Trites, Roberta Seelinger. Waking Sleeping Beauty: Feminist Voices in Children's Novels. Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 1997.

Trites discusses the many ways that Sleeping Beauty's voice serves as an equalizing mechanism in the canon of children's literature. Using such works as Harriet the Spy, Trites examines the roles of feminism and multiculturalism in narratives for children. Trites devotes particular attention to the pedagogic appropriation of feminist readings of children's literature.

Wade-Gayles, Gloria. No Crystal Stair: Visions of Race and Gender in Black Women's Fiction. Cleveland: Pilgrim, 1997.

Originally published in 1984, this updated version of Wade-Gayles's volume reasserts her study's place as one of the central critical texts in the canon of black feminist criticism. Using more than a dozen works published between 1946 and 1976, Wade-Gayles examines the effects of racism, sexism, and capitalism on black women in America. In addition to highlighting the interconnections between history and sociology in her study, Wade-Gayles discusses the complex depictions of motherhood and the consequences of black women appropriating traditionally white gender roles.

Wilcox, Helen, ed. Women and Literature in Britain, 1500-1700. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996.

Selections include Wilcox's introduction; Hilda L. Smith's "Humanist Education and the Renaissance Concept of Woman"; Suzanne Trill's "Religion and the Construction of Femininity"; Valerie Wayne's "Advice for Women From Mothers and Patriarchs"; Jacqueline Pearson's "Women Reading, Reading Women"; Ann Thompson's "Women/'women' and the Stage"; Bronwen Price's "Feminine Modes of Knowing and Scientific Enquiry: Margaret Cavendish's Poetry as Case Study"; Margaret W. Ferguson's "Renaissance Concepts of the 'Woman Writer'"; Helen Hackett's "Courtly Writing by Women"; Elizabeth H. Hageman's "Women's Poetry in Early Modern Britain"; Elspeth Graham's "Women's Writing and the Self"; Betty S. Travitsky's "The Possibilities of Prose"; and Ros Ballaster's "The First Female Dramatists."

Williams, Gordon. A Glossary of Shakespeare's Sexual Language. London: Athlone, 1997.

Williams provides a useful guide to Shakespeare's use of sexual language in his poetry and plays. Subdivisions include Williams's "Method, Scope, and Conventions of the Glossary," as well as useful introduction to Shakespeare's use of erotic language.

Wynne-Davies, Marion. Women and Arthurian Literature: Seizing the Sword. London: Macmillan, 1996.

Wynne-Davies explores the roles of women in Arthurian literature, from the medieval period and the Renaissance through the Victorian era and contemporary fiction. Drawing upon works by Chaucer, Malory, Spenser, and Tennyson, among others, Wynne-Davies discusses the relationships between men and women in Arthurian literature. Wynne-Davies argues that female identity was often circumscribed by Arthurian romances.

Zahava, Irene, ed. Feminism(3): The Third Generation in Fiction. Boulder: Westview, 1996.

Selections include Sarah Schulman's introduction; Dorothy Allison's "Steal Away"; Karen E. Bender's "Talk to Me Jenny"; Julie Blackwomon's "The Long Way Home"; Amy Bloom's "When the Year Grows Old"; Marusya Bociurkiw's "Here Nor There"; Rebecca Brown's "The Death of Napoleon: Its Influence on History"; Sandra Cisneros's "My Name"; Edwidge Danticat's "The Missing Peace"; Lisa Harris's "Where the River Meets the Rain"; Susan Hawthorne's "Such a Tomboy"; Pam Houston's "Selway"; Gish Jen's "What Means Switch"; Pagan Kennedy's "Shrinks"; Binnie Kirshenbaum's "For Widgit Stands"; Cris Mazza's "Is It Sexual Harrassment Yet?"; Ameena Meer's "From Bombay Talkie"; Leslea Newman's "Women's Rites"; Fae Myenna Ng's "From Bone"; Beth Nugent's "Locusts"; Sigrid Nunez's "From A Feather on the Breath of God"; Achy Obejas's "From We Came All the Way from Cuba So You Could Dress Like This?"; Esmeralda Santiago's "From When I Was Puerto Rican"; Sarah Schulman's "The Penis Story"; Ellen Shea's "The Dangerous Beauty of the Open Road"; Charlotte Watson Sherman's "BigWater"; April Sinclair's "From Coffee Will Make You Black"; Rebecca Wells's "The Elf and the Fairy"; S. L. Wisenberg's "The Sweetheart Is In"; Banana Yoshimoto's "From Kitchen"; and Shay Youngblood's "Blood Oranges."

Ziegler, Georgianna, Frances E. Dolan, and Jeanne Addison Roberts. Shakespeare's Unruly Women. Seattle: U of Washington P, 1997.

Ziegler, Dolan, and Roberts examine the roles of women as "unruly women," "outlaws," "the female Wild," and "the Other" in recent feminist criticism of Shakespeare. Additionally, Ziegler, Dolan, and Roberts offer a new understanding of the manner in which Shakespeare's heroines came to embody, reflect, and refract the values and assumptions of nineteenth-century English society. Ziegler, Dolan, and Roberts argue that during the Victorian era Shakespeare's heroines were transformed into docile figures of domesticity, gentility, and deference.

Zonitch, Barbara. Familiar Violence: Gender and Social Upheaval in the Novels of Frances Burney. Cranbury: Associated UP, 1997.

Zonitch argues that Burney's preoccupation with violence originates in her fear that the demise of aristocratic social domination - although it frees women from its systematic abuses - nevertheless exposes them to the violence of modern life. In addition to offering close readings of Burney's text in order to identify instances of sexual harassment, suicidal activity, and emotional abuse, Zonitch contends that Burney's novels function in dialogue with one another and comprise a series whose aim is to examine various modern social replacements for aristocratic protection.

(6) Psychoanalytic Criticism

Alkana, Joseph. The Social Self: Hawthorne, Howells, William James, and Nineteenth-Century Psychology. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 1997.

Alkana explores the literary representation of selfhood in selected works of nineteenth-century literature by Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Dean Howells, and others. Alkana uses the insights of evolutionary psychologists and demonstrates that nineteenth-century notions of selfhood originated during an era when American society felt threatened by regional conflicts, industrial development, and changes in immigration patterns. In his readings of works by Hawthorne and Howells, Alkana employs William James's concept of consciousness as a means for discussing images of the nineteenth-century self.

Appiah, Kwame Anthony, and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., eds. Identities. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1995.

Selections include Gates and Appiah's introduction, "Multiplying Identities"; Gananath Obeyesekere's "British Cannibals: Contemplation of an Event in the Death and Resurrection of James Cook, Explorer"; Walter Benn Michaels's "Race into Culture: A Critical Genealogy of Cultural Identity"; Xiaomei Chen's "Occidentalism as Counterdiscourse: 'He Shang' in Post-Mao China"; Diana Fuss's "Fashion and the Homospectatorial Look"; Hazel V. Carby's "Policing the Black Women's Body in an Urban Context"; Sara Suleri's "Woman Skin Deep: Feminism and the Postcolonial Condition"; Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's "Acting Bits/Identity Talk"; Saree S. Makdisi's "The Empire Renarrated: Season of Migration to the North and the Reinvention of the Present"; Akeel Bilgrami's "What Is a Muslim?: Fundamental Commitment and Cultural Identity"; Phillip Brian Harper's "Nationalism and Social Division in Black Arts Poetry of the 1960s"; Elizabeth Abel's "Black Writing, White Reading: Race and the Politics of Feminist Interpretation"; Cheryl Herr's "The Erotics of Irishness"; Daniel Boyarin and Jonathan Boyarin's "Diaspora: Generation and the Ground of Jewish Identity"; Katie Trumpener's "The Time of the Gypsies: A 'People without History' in the Narratives of the West"; Avery Gordon and Christopher Newfield's "White Philosophy"; Walter Benn Michaels's "The No-Drop Rule"; Molly Anne Rothenberg and Joseph Valente's "Fashionable Theory and Fashionable Women: Returning Fuss's Homospectatorial Look"; Diana Fuss's "Look Who's Talking, or If Looks Could Kill"; Michael Gorra's "Response to Identities"; and Judith Butler's "Collected and Fractured: Response to Identities."

Boker, Pamela A. The Grief Taboo in American Literature: Loss and Prolonged Adolescence in Twain, Melville, and Hemingway. New York: New York UP, 1996.

Boker discusses the depiction of prolonged adolescence in the American male canon, with particular attention to the works of Twain, Melville, and Hemingway. Drawing upon recent insights in psychoanalytic criticism, Baker argues that failing to mourn over less and the repression of one's true emotions do not demonstrate a heroic capacity, but a damaging inability to deal with psychological wounds. Boker identifies such stereotypes in the fiction of Twain, Melville, and Hemingway as suicidal orphans and guilt-ridden figures who live in worlds of perpetual adolescence.

Brennan, Teresa. History after Lacan. London: Routledge, 1993.

Brennan attempts to recover Lacan's neglected theory of history through an extended analysis of psychoanalysis, political economy, and feminism. Brennan argues that the psychological fantasies examined by Lacan, Freud, and Melanie Klein are microcosms of the macrocosmic process at work in the ego's era. Brennan's study merges these different psychoanalytic theories together in her concept of the "foundational fantasy."

Camfield, Gregg. Necessary Madness: The Humor of Domesticity in Nineteenth-Century American Literature. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997.

Camfield discusses the role of madness as the characteristic that undergirds nineteenth-century conceptions of humor in works by Washington Irving, Fanny Fern, Mark Twain, Marietta Holley, George Washington Harris, and Mary Wilkins Freeman, among others. Drawing upon various psychoanalytic theories, Camfield explores humor from the perspectives of gender and domestic ideologies. Camfield argues that humor originates in an aggressive rage that finds its basis in hostility, negation, and other displaced energies.

Dennis, Ian. Nationalism and Desire in Early Historical Fiction. London: Macmillan, 1997.

Drawing upon recent theories in psychoanalysis, Dennis examines narratives of nationalism in various works written in Ireland, Scotland, or the newly founded United States. Dennis devotes particular attention to works by Jane Porter, Sydney Owenson, Sir Walter Scott, and James Fenimore Cooper, among others. Dennis argues that England functions in these fictions as a powerful and inevitable model for nationhood.

Engel, William E. Mapping Morality: The Persistence of Memory and Melancholy in Early Modern England. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1996.

Using various theoretical insights by Benjamin, Heidegger, Derrida, and Baudrillard, Engel explores the manner in which men and women in early modern England dealt with melancholy and mourning in their lives. Engel examines a variety of genres, including poetry, prose, painting, statuary, social practices, and religious rites, among others. Engel argues that early modern metaphors were essentially mnemonic and emblematic in nature.

Fowler, Doreen. Faulkner: The Return of the Repressed. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1997.

Fowler employs psychoanalysis in a reading of Faulkner's symbolic usage of race and gender in such novels as The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Go Down, Moses, Light in August, and Absalom, Absalom! Focusing on Faulkner's depiction of African-American and female characters, Fowler demonstrates the manner in which these figures represent psychic doubles for Faulkner's male protagonists. Fowler also finds similarities between the writings of Lacan and Faulkner, arguing that both writers concern themselves with such issues as subjectivity and death, among other subjects.

Heywood, Leslie. Dedication to Hunger: The Anorexic Aesthetic in Modern Culture. Berkeley: U of California P, 1996.

Heywood explores the logic of anorexia and its privileging of mind over body, masculine over feminine, control over emotion, and individual over collective. Using a host of clinical studies of anorexia, Heywood discusses the manner in which millions of young American women employ the logic of anorexia to devastating effect. Using works by Kafka, Pound, Eliot, and Conrad, Heywood discusses the literature of anorexia as embodied in modernism.

Hogan, Patrick Colin. On Interpretation: Meaning and Inference in Law, Psychoanalysis, and Literature. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1996.

Hogan challenges recent assumptions about being and knowing, arguing that the basis of interpretive method is ordinary inferential reasoning and that there is no methodological difference between interpretation in the humanities and theory construction in the physical sciences. In addition to offering a new theory of interpretation within the context of the practices and goals of law, psychoanalysis, and literary criticism, Hogan argues that there are many different kinds of interpretation and many kinds of meaning. According to Hogan, the interpreter is free to stipulate one of these interpretive methodologies in the context of inquiry.

Holbrook, David. Tolstoy, Woman, and Death: A Study of War and Peace and Anna Karenina. Cranbury: Associated UP, 1997.

Holbrook examines Tolstoy's enmity towards women and its representation in War and Peace and Anna Karenina. Holbrook argues that Tolstoy's hatred for women results from his mother's lack of attention to him as a baby, her death, his psychopathological behavior toward his own wife, and the deeply disturbed attitudes that he exhibited throughout his life. Holbrook also studies the remarkable ways in which Tolstoy was able to identify with his heroines and with the female consciousness despite his own intense disdain for women.

Horn, Jason Gary. Mark Twain and William James: Crafting a Free Self. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1996.

Horn offers a thorough investigation of the relationship between Mark Twain and William James, with particular interest in their shared conceptions regarding the American cultural construction of the self. In addition to exploring Twain's early and late speculations about the nature of the divided self, Horn discusses James's own illuminating philosophical and psychological observations. Horn argues that Twain's conception of the self - having passed through James's cultural mirror of the self - leads to a new vision of personal freedom in such works as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Mysterious Stranger.

Ingersoll, Earl G. Engendered Trope in Joyce's Dubliners. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1996.

Drawing upon the theoretical insights of Lacan, Ingersoll examines the role of language in Joyce's celebrated collection of short fiction. Ingersoll rejects traditional psychoanalytic readings of Dubliners, arguing instead for a new form of psychoanalytic criticism that embraces Shoshana Felman's view that psychoanalysis is not a body of troths to be applied to literature. Using this framework, Ingersoll argues that literature should be read intertextually within a Lacanian system of interpretation, rather than merely in a psychoanalytic vacuum.

Kimball, Jean. Odyssey of the Psyche: Jungian Patterns in Joyce's Ulysses. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1997.

In Kimball's Jungian reading of Ulysses, Joyce's artist-hero Stephen Dedalus confronts in Leopold Bloom a hitherto unconscious aspect of his personality. Kimball argues that the result of this confrontation is the gradual development of a relationship between the two protagonists that mirrors Jung's descriptions of the encounter between the Ego and the Shadow during the individuation process. Kimball provides similar readings of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Finnegans Wake in a Jungian context.

Kristeva, Julia. New Maladies of the Soul. Trans. Ross Guberman. New York: Columbia UP, 1995.

Drawing upon recent insights in psychoanalysis, Kristeva explores life in an age of political upheaval and in an era of mass-mediated culture. Kristeva problematizes the stability of our traditional psychic spaces and the dramatic overhaul of our familial and sexual value systems. Kristeva contends that the psychoanalytic models of Freud and Lacan need to be reconsidered in light of our contemporary moral crisis of values that results from a loss of ideology and a deteriorating sense of belief.

Lechte, John, ed. Writing and Psychoanalysis: A Reader. London: Arnold, 1996.

Selections include Gilles Deleuze's "Repetition for Itself"; Jeffrey Mehlman's "How to Read Freud on Jokes: The Critic as Schadchen"; Jacques Derrida's "My Chances/Mes Chances: A Rendezvous with Some Epicurean Stereophonies"; Michel Foucault's "On Madness in Rambeau's Nephew"; Michel Foucault's "Madness, Absence of an Oeuvre"; Julia Kristeva's "Name of Death or of Life"; Sigmund Freud's "Psychopathic Characters on the Stage"; Sigmund Freud's "Dostoevsky and Parricide"; Jacques Lacan's "Homage to Marguerite Duras"; Leslie Hill's "Lacan with Duras"; Jacqueline Rose's "She"; and Julia Kristeva's "Is Sensation a Language?"

Lupack, Barbara Tepa. Insanity as Redemption in Contemporary American Fiction: Inmates Running the Asylum. Gainesville: UP of Florida, 1995.

Lupack examines the manner in which contemporary American writers employ madness as a theme in their works. In addition to discussing texts by Joseph Heller, Ken Kesey, Kurt Vonnegut, Jerzy Kosinski, and William Styron, among others, Lupack argues that each novel is grounded in political reality and that each portrays a protagonist who is tinged by madness because of social, political, or cultural nonconformity.

Pinch, Adela. Strange Fits of Passion: Epistemologies of Emotion, Hume to Austen. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1996.

Pinch argues that when late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century writers sought to explain the origins of emotions, they discovered that their feelings may not have been their own. Using texts by Wordsworth and Austen, among others, Pinch explores the paradoxes of representing feelings in philosophy, aesthetic theory, gender ideology, and popular sentimentality, among other subjects. Pinch contends that the era's obsession with sentimentality resulted from attempts to locate the origins of feelings in experience.

Porter, Roy, and Marie Mulvey Roberts, eds. Pleasure in the Eighteenth Century. New York: New York UP, 1996.

Selections include Roberts's preface; Porter's "Enlightenment and Pleasure"; Porter's "Material Pleasures in the Consumer Society"; Simon Varey's "The Pleasures of the Table"; Roberts's "Pleasures Engendered by Gender: Homosociality and the Club"; Carolyn D. Williams's "'The Luxury of Doing Good': Benevolence, Sensibility, and the Royal Humane Society"; Vivien Jones's "The Seductions of Conduct: Pleasure and Conduct Literature"; Derek Alsop's "'Strains of New Beauty': Handel and the Pleasures of Italian Opera, 1711-28"; E. J. Clery's "The Pleasure of Terror: Paradox in Edmund Burke's Theory of the Sublime"; and Susan Manning's "Bums and Wordsworth: Art and 'The Pleasure Which There Is in Life Itself.'"

Pratt, William. Singing the Chaos: Madness and Wisdom in Modern Poetry. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1996.

Pratt argues that modern poets have endowed a disintegrating civilization with humane wisdom by writing about chaos in their verse. Pratt uses works by Baudelaire, Pound, Yeats, Rilke, and Eliot, among others. Pratt explores a variety of themes, including modernism as an age of irony, poets as both madmen and geniuses, modern poets as tragic heroes, the dominance of religious troths over social and political issues, and radical experimentation in poetic form.

Salecl, Renata, and Slavoj, Zizek, eds. Gaze and Voice as Love Objects. Durham: Duke UP, 1996.

Selections include Mladen Dolar's "The Object Voice"; Alenka Zupancic's "Philosopher's Blind Man's Buff"; Elisabeth Bronfen's "Killing Gazes, Killing in the Gaze: On Michael Powell's Peeping Tom"; Zizek's "I Hear You with My Eyes; or, The Invisible Master"; Mladen Dolar's "At First Sight"; Fredric Jameson's "On the Sexual Production of Western Subjectivity; or, Saint Augustine as a Social Democrat"; Salecl's "I Can't Love You Unless I Give You Up"; and Zizek's "There Is No Sexual Relationship."

Spence, Sarah. Texts and the Self in the Twelfth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996.

Spence examines central twelfth-century Latin and vernacular texts that articulate a subjective and often autobiographical position. Spence argues that the self of medieval literature came into existence because of the gap between Latinity and the vernacular, as well as a shift towards a visual and spatial orientation in twelfth-century literature. Drawing upon the insights of object-relations theory, Spence contends that the medieval literary self inhabits a middle ground - a "space of agency" - in twelfth-century literary aesthetics.

Spilka, Mark. Eight Lessons in Love: A Domestic Reader. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1997.

Spilka investigates the place of domestic violence in works by Joyce, Lawrence, Eliot, Hemingway, Steinbeck, and Cheever, among others. Drawing upon his recent experience as a volunteer group counselor of male batterers, Spilka argues that fictional attempts to cope with domestic violence inform our professional understandings of this social dilemma. Spilka supplements his study with the actual texts in order to provide case studies for his arguments about domestic violence.

Whigham, Frank. Seizures of the Will in Early Modern English Drama. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996.

Whigham combines an analysis of English Renaissance plays with an enriched sense of their social contexts. Whigham traces the violent gestures of social self-construction in such plays, as well as the ways in which drama interacts with the conflict-ridden discourses of social rank, gender, kinship, and service relationships. Additionally, Whigham devotes attention to such works as The Spanish Tragedy, A Yorkshire Tragedy, and The Duchess of Malfi, among others.

(7) Cultural and Historical Criticism

Barbour, James, and Tom Quirk, eds. Biographies of Books: The Compositional Histories of Notable American Writings. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1996.

Selections include Quirk's introduction; Albert von Frank's 'The Composition of Nature: Writing and the Self in the Launching of a Career"; Howard G. Baetzhold's "'Well, My Book Is Written - Let It Go': The Making of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court"; John W. Crowley's "The Unsmiling Aspects of Life: A Hazard of New Fortunes"; Richard A. Hocks's "'Quite the Best, All Round, of All My Productions': The Multiple Versions of the Jamesian Germ for The Ambassadors"; Richard W. Dowell's "'There Was Something Mystic about It': The Composition of Sister Carrie by Dreiser et al."; Candace Waid's "Building The House of Mirth"; Robert DeMott's "'A Truly American Book': Pressing The Grapes of Wrath"; Albert J. Devlin's "The Making of Delta Wedding, or Doing 'Something Diarmuid Thought I Could Do'"; James Nagel's "The Early Composition History of Catch-22"; and Stephen L. Tanner's "The Western American Context of One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest."

Begam, Richard. Samuel Beckett and the End of Modernity. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1996.

Begam explores the relation between Beckett's five major novels - Murphy, Watt, Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable - and the end of the modernist era. In addition to demonstrating the ways in which these works written between 1935 and 1950 anticipate many of the themes and theories of Barthes, Foucault, and Derrida, Begam discusses such issues as madness, "the death of the author," differance, and unnameability in terms of Beckett's aesthetic.

Bell, Michael. Literature, Modernism and Myth: Belief and Responsibility in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997.

Bell demonstrates the ways in which modernist literature attempted to discover through myth an underlying value system in an increasingly fragmented world. Bell discusses the relationship among myth, modernism, and postmodernism and illustrates the ways in which modernists used myth to emphasize the contingency of all value systems. Using works by Eliot, Pound, and Pynchon, Bell explores the manner in which postmodern political and social concerns find their roots in modernism.

Bishop, T. G. Shakespeare and the Theatre of Wonder. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996.

Bishop discusses the ways in which playwrights throughout history have used the emotions of wonder to examine the interconnections between feeling and knowing in the theater. Using close readings of Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors, Pericles, and The Winter's Tale, Bishop argues that wonder provides a space for questioning the nature and value of knowing in Renaissance texts. Bishop contends that Shakespeare used wonder as a key component in his dialectic between affirmation and critique.

Blakemore, Steven. Crisis in Representation: Thomas Paine, Mary Wollstonecraft, Helen Maria Williams, and the Rewriting of the French Revolution. Cranbury: Associated UP, 1997.

Blakemore examines the ways that Paine, Wollstonecraft, and Williams altered their views of the French Revolution after the Terror of 1793-1794. Drawing upon their works in an effort to illustrate the crisis in representation confronting writers who had previously committed themselves to the Revolution of 1789, Blakemore explores the way that all three writers responded to the Terror by reconceiving the Revolution through strategies and themes of repetition.

-----. Intertextual War: Edmund Burke and the French Revolution in the Writings of Mary Wollstonecraft, Thomas Paine, and James Mackintosh. Cranbury: Associated UP, 1997.

Blakemore investigates the manner in which the works of Wollstonecraft, Paine, and Mackintosh established the "anti-Burke paradigms" that continue to echo in Anglo-American criticism and in the historiography of the French Revolution. Additionally, Blakemore argues that because Wollstonecraft, Paine, and Mackintosh were inscribing other texts in opposition to Burke there was a tremendous intertextual war reverberating in their writings. Blakemore redresses this scholarly imbalance by examining thematic and paradoxical similarities between Burke's arguments and the commentaries of his detractors.

Bloch, R. Howard, and Stephen G. Nichols, eds. Medievalism and the Modernist Temper. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1996.

Selections include Bloch and Nichols's introduction; Nichols's "Modernism and the Politics of Medieval Studies"; John M. Graham's "National Identity and the Politics of Publishing the Troubadours"; Laura Kendrick's "The Science of Imposture and the Professionalization of Medieval Occitan Literary Studies"; Jeffrey M. Peck's "'In the Beginning Was the Word': Germany and the Origins of German Studies"; John M. Ganim's "The Myth of Medieval Romance"; Bloch's "'Du bon et du bon marche': The Abbe Migne's Fabulous Industrialization of the Church Fathers"; David F. Hult's "Gaston Paris and the Invention of Courtly Love"; E. Jane Burns, Sarah Kay, Roberta L. Krueger, and Helen Solterer's "Feminism and the Discipline of Old French Studies: Une Bele Disjointure"; Alain Corbellari's "Joseph Bedier, Philologist and Writer"; Per Nykrog's "A Warrior Scholar at the College de France: Joseph Bedier"; Seth Lerer's "Making Mimesis: Erich Auerbach and the Institutions of Medieval Studies"; Carl Landauer's "Ernst Robert Curtius and the Topos of the Literary Critic"; Alain Boureau's "Kantorowicz, or the Middle Ages as Refuge"; Michael Camille's "Philological Iconoclasm: Edition and Image in the Vie de Saint Alexis"; Suzanne Fleischman's "Methodologies and Ideologies in Historical Grammar: A Case Study from Old French"; Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht's "A Sad and Weary History: The Grundriss der romanischen Literaturen des Mittelalters"; and Jeffrey T. Schnapp's "Preface to Kinder - und Hausmarchen gesammelt durch die Bruder Grimm (1819); trans. and ed. by Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht and Jeffrey T. Schapp."

Boesky, Amy. Founding Fictions: Utopias in Early Modern England. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1996.

In addition to providing a colonial history of utopian writing in early modern England, Boesky traces the development of the genre from the publication of More's Utopia through Behn's Oroonoko. Boesky argues that utopian fiction helped shape the social institutions of the modern English nation. Boesky contends that utopian fiction explicitly advocates a reorganization of human activity, while also demonstrating the ways in which early modern utopias provided challenges for the possibility of improvement in early modern England.

Boireau, Nicole, ed. Drama on Drama: Dimensions of Theatricality on the Contemporary British Stage. London: Macmillan, 1997.

Selections include Boireau's preface; Nicole Vigouroux-Frey's "Greeks in Drama: Four Contemporary Issues"; Elisabeth Angel-Perez's "The Revival of Medieval Forms in Recent Political Drama"; Klaus Peter Muller's "Cultural Transformations of Subversive Jacobean Drama: Contemporary Sub-Versions of Tragedy, Comedy, and Tragicomedy"; Michel Morel's "Women Beware Women by Howard Barker (with Thomas Middleton): The 'Terrible Consistency'"; Monique Prunet's "Japanese Theatrical Forms in Edward Bond's The Bundle and Jackets"; Ruby Cohn's "Now Converging, Now Diverging: Beckett's Metatheatre"; Maria Ghilardi-Santacatterina and Aleks Sierz's "Pinter and the Pinteresque: An Author Trapped by His Own Image?"; Christine Dymkowski's "'The Play's the Thing':

The Metatheatre of Timberlake Wertenbaker"; Boireau's "Tom Stoppard's Metadrama: The Haunting Repetition"; Ann Wilson's "Hauntings: Ghosts and the Limits of Realism in Cloud Nine and Fen by Caryl Churchill"; Jean-Pierre Simard's "Watching for Dolphins by John McGrath: The Single Voicing of a Multiple-Voice Performance"; Anne Fuchs's "Devising Drama on Drama: The Community and Theatre Traditions"; Lizbeth Goodman's "Representing Gender/Representing Self: A Reflection on Role-Playing in Performance Theory and Practice"; Albert-Reiner Glaap's "Translating, Adapting, Re-writing: Three Facets of Christopher Hampton's Work as a Playwright"; and John Elsom's "Les Enfants de Parodie: The Enlightened Incest of Anglo-American Musicals."

Booker, M. Keith. Colonial Power, Colonial Texts: India in the Modern British Novel. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1997.

Drawing upon the fictions of E. M. Forster, Rudyard Kipling, George Orwell, Paul Scott, and J. G. Farrell, Booker examines the manner in which English writers depicted colonial role in India during the first half of the twentieth century. Booker discusses the representations of India in both English and American popular culture, especially in film. Booker focuses in particular upon the treatment of British colonial power in these fictions, contending that this treatment underscores the manner in which colonialism participated in the larger historical process of modernization.

Booth, Allyson. Postcards from the Trenches: Negotiating the Space between Modernism and the First World War. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996.

Booth traces the relationship between the British culture of the First World War and modern literature and architecture. Drawing upon a wide range of historical materials, Booth reveals the ways in which modernism is deeply embedded in a larger Great War culture. Booth argues that soldiers experienced the Great War in terms of modernism, while, ironically, modernism itself is haunted by images of the First World War.

Bower, Anne. Epistolary Responses: The Letter in Twentieth-Century American Fiction and Criticism. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 1997.

Bower devotes attention to contemporary manifestations of the epistolary novel. Using texts by Ana Castillo, Upton Sinclair, John Updike, Jean Webster, Alice Walker, Lee Smith, and John Barth, Bower discusses the effect of letters upon the act of writing. Bower examines the several aspects of letters, including their encoded desire for reply, their incompleteness as units of narrative information, their play on ideas of absence and presence, their apparently personal and private nature, and their foregrounding of the writer's agency and authority.

Brandist, Craig. Carnival Culture and the Soviet Modernist Novel. London: Macmillan, 1996.

Brandist examines the subversive side of carnival culture and its influence on the modern novel. Using the theoretical insights of Bakhtin, Brandist explores the modern novel's relationship with changes in the institutional framework of society.

Drawing upon works by such Soviet writers as Olesha, Platonov, Kharms, Bulgakov, and Vaginov, Brandist demonstrates the manner in which the carnivalesque was employed by these writers as a means for resisting the increasingly official and dogmatic culture of the 1930s.

Breight, Curtis C. Surveillance, Militarism and Drama in the Elizabethan Era. London: Macmillan, 1996.

Breight contends that the Elizabethan state was controlled by a Machiavellian faction founded by Sir William Cecil, whose power lay in focusing English energies in global conflict between Protestant England and international Catholicism. Breight demonstrates the ways in which knowledge gained through surveillance facilitated massive military and maritime operations that resulted in numerous casualties, while also discussing the manner in which these instances of national and international conflict influenced the dramatic works of Marlowe and Shakespeare.

Brown, Homer Obed. Institutions of the English Novel: From Defoe to Scott. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1997.

Brown explores general genre issues associated with the origins of the eighteenthand nineteenth-century English novel, arguing that the novel did not emerge as a form until the early nineteenth century, when the fictional prose narratives of the previous century were grouped together as "novels." In addition to exploring the role of personal correspondence and social gossip in various works from this era, Brown discusses works by Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Laurence Sterne, and Sir Walter Scott, among others. Brown investigates the ways in which notions of self, personal identity, family, and history participate in the construction of these precursors of the modern novel.

Bryant, J. A., Jr. Twentieth-Century Southern Literature. Lexington: U of Kentucky P, 1997.

Bryant's volume provides a comprehensive account of southern American literature since 1900. In addition to providing cultural and historical contexts with the works and authors represented in his study, Bryan discusses the two most influential events in twentieth-century southern literary history - the publication of The Fugitive magazine at Vanderbilt University and the publication and widespread recognition of William Faulkner. Bryant devotes particular attention to southern playwrights and women writers, as well as to Robert Penn Warren's influence upon twentieth-century literature and culture.

Buccini, Stefania. The Americas in Italian Literature and Culture:, 1700-1825. University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 1997.

Buccini investigates the representation of the Americas in Italian literature during the Age of the Enlightenment. In addition to analyzing the motivations and circumstances behind the emergence of the myth of the "noble savage," Buccini discusses the role of the Americas in the evolution of Italian culture during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Buccini contends that the myths of the old and new Americas shared in the creation of a more complex image of the New World for the Italians.

Budick, Emily Miller. Nineteenth-Century American Romance: Genre and the Construction of Democratic Culture. New York: Twayne, 1996.

Budick examines the ways in which the nineteenth-century American romance was defined by the writings of James Fenimore Cooper, Washington Irving, Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Henry James. Budick explores the genre of the romance both as a style and within an historical context. Additionally, Budick critiques the American romance as an evolving literary aesthetic and cultural philosophy that possesses the values of democracy and pluralism.

Budick, Sanford, and Wolfgang Iser, eds. The Translatability of Cultures: Figurations of the Space Between. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1996.

Selections include Budick's "Crises of Alterity: Cultural Untranslatability and the Experience of Secondary Otherness"; Jan Assmann's "Translating Gods: Religion as a Factor of Cultural (Un)Translatability"; Moshe Barash's "Visual Syncretism: A Case Study"; Kalrheinz Stierle's "Translatio Studii and Renaissance: From Vertical to Horizontal Translation"; Lawrence Besserman's "Augustine, Chaucer, and the Translation of Biblical Poetics"; Aleida Assmann's "The Curse and Blessing of Babel; or, Looking Back on Universalisms"; Stanley Cavell's "Emerson's Constitutional Amending: Reading 'Fate'"; Emily Miller Budick's "The Holocaust and the Construction of Modern American Literary Criticism: The Case of Lionel Trilling"; Sacvan Bercovitch's "Discovering America: A Cross-Cultural Perspective"; Klaus Reichert's "'It Is Time': The BuberRosenzweig Bible Translation in Context"; K. Ludwig Pfeiffer's "The Black Hole of Culture: Japan, Radical Otherness, and the Disappearance of Difference (or, 'In Japan everything normal')"; J. Hillis Miller's "Border Crossings, Translating Theory: Ruth"; Budick's "Cross-Culture, Chiasmus, and the Manifold of Mind"; Iser's "The Emergence of a Cross-Cultural Discourse: Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus"; Gabriel Motzkin's "Memory and Cultural Translation"; Renate Lachmann's "Remarks on the Foreign (Strange) as a Figure of Cultural Ambivalance"; and Iser's "Coda to the Discussion."

Buonomo, Leonardo. Backward Glances: Exploring Italy, Reinterpreting America, 1831-1866. Cranbury: Associated UP, 1996.

Buonomo demonstrates the ways in which Americans often described and narrated Italy during the middle nineteenth century. Using works by such authors as James Fenimore Cooper, Henry T. Tuckerman, Margaret Fuller, Julia Ward Howe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry P. Leland, and William Dean Howells, Buonomo argues that these texts were enjoyed primarily for their commentary on Italian customs and character. Buonomo also notes the ways that poems, travel books, romances, and feature articles for nineteenth-century American newspapers celebrated similar nuances of Italian lifestyle and culture.

Chapman, Michael. Southern African Literatures. London: Longman, 1996.

Chapman offers a useful introductory volume to the literature and literary history of South Africa. Subdivisions include: "Oral Tradition: A Usable Past"; "Writing of European Settlement: South Africa, 1652-1910"; and "African or Colonial Literature: 1880s to 1960s." Chapman supplements his survey with a variety of valuable materials, including a map of South Africa and a list of South African nations, as well as notes on racial terminology, orthography, conventions, and translated works.

Collins, Michael J., ed. Shakespeare's Sweet Thunder: Essays on the Early Comedies. Cranbury: Associated UP, 1997.

Selections include Collins's "Introduction: The Afterlife of Shakespeare's Early Comedies"; Robert S. Miola's "The Influence of New Comedy on The Comedy of Errors and The Taming of the Shrew"; Alan C. Dessen's "The Tamings of the Shrews"; Homer Swander's "Love's Labor's Lost: Burn the Parasols, Play the Quarto!"; Jeanne Addison Roberts's "Convents, Conventions, and Contraventions: Love's Labor's Lost and The Convent of Pleasure"; Ann Thompson's "'Errors' and 'Labors': Feminism and Early Shakespearean Comedy"; Brace R. Smith's "A Night of Errors and the Dawn of Empire: Male Enterprise in The Comedy of Errors"; Carol J. Carlisle and Patty S. Derrick's "The Two Gentlemen of Verona on Stage: Protean Problems and Protean Solutions"; Miriam Gilbert's "The Disappearance and Return of Love's Labor's Lost"; Carol Rutter's "Kate, Bianca, Ruth, and Sarah: Playing the Woman's Part in The Taming of the Shrew"; Jay L. Halio's "A New Watershed?: Robert Lepage's 'Mudsummer' Night's Dream"; and Ralph Alan Cohen's "Teaching Shakespeare's Early Comedies."

Connor, Steven. The English Novel in History, 1950-1995. London: Routledge, 1996.

Drawing upon the works of such figures as George Orwell, William Golding, Angela Carter, Doris Lessing, Timothy Mo, Hanif Kureishi, Marina Warner, and Maggie Gee, Connor analyzes the postwar history of the English novel. Connor discusses the interconnections between the novel and the social, economic, and political conditions in Britain during the latter half of the twentieth century. Connor also addresses the relationship between the novel and other cultural media during the postmodern era.

Corkin, Stanley. Realism and the Birth of the Modern United States: Cinema, Literature, and Culture. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1996.

Corkin provides an interdisciplinary view of American culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Drawing upon works by William Dean Howells, Theodore Dreiser, and Ernest Hemingway, Corkin traces American literature's movement from realism through naturalism, and finally, to modernism. Corkin considers the interconnections between American literary history and such issues as the rise of the American cinema and the advent of eras of Progressive political and economic reform.

Cross, J. E., ed. Two Old English Apocrypha and Their Manuscript Source: "The Gospel of Nichodemus" and "The Avenging of the Saviour." Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997.

Selections include Cross's introduction; Cross and Julia Crick's "The Manuscript: Saint-Omer, Bibliotheque Municipale, 202"; Thomas N. Hall's "The Euangelium Nichodemi and Vindicta saluatoris in Anglo-Saxon England"; Cross's "SaintOmer 202 as the Manuscript Source for the Old English Texts"; and Andy Orchard's "The Style of the Texts and the Translation Strategy."

Deane, Seamus. Strange Country: Modernity and Nationhood in Irish Writing since 1790. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997.

Deane traces the development of a self-consciously national tradition in Irish literature from the end of the French Revolution through the present. In addition to providing close readings of works by Stoker, Synge, Yeats, and Joyce, Deane examines the ways in which Irish literature intersects a number of issues, including national character, the conflict between discipline and excess, the division between languages of economics and sensibility, and the onset of modernity. Deane also discusses the rise of the Irish print culture and its effects upon the national literature's novels, songs, typefaces, and poems.

De Bruyn, Frans. The Literary Genres of Edmund Burke: The Political Uses of Literary Form. Oxford: Clarendon, 1996.

De Bruyn examines the works of Edmund Burke within the larger context of eighteenth-century literature, an era that did not recognize the boundaries between literature and other forms of discourse, including history, oratory, politics, and philosophy. Additionally, De Bruyn explores what the eighteenth century meant by the term "literature" and discusses Burke's reliance upon the dominant literary discourses of his time. De Bruyn devotes special attention to the manner in which Burke's political writings reflected the restrictive political culture of his era.

Demastes, William W., ed. Realism and the American Dramatic Tradition. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 1996.

Selections include Demastes's "Preface: American Dramatic Realisms, Viable Frames of Thought"; Brian Richardson's "Introduction: The Struggle for the Real - Interpretive Conflict, Dramatic Method, and the Paradox of Realism"; Patricia D. Denison's "The Legacy of James A. Heme: American Realities and Realisms"; Yvonne Shafer's "Whose Realism? Rachel Crother's Power Struggle in the American Theatre"; J. Ellen Gainor's "The Provincetown Players' Experiments with Realism"; Robert F. Gross's "Servant of Three Masters: Realism, Idealism, and 'Hokum' in American High Comedy"; Patricia R. Schroeder's "Remembering the Disremembered'. Feminist Realists of the Harlem Renaissance"; Frank R. Cunningham's "Eugene O'Neill and Reality in America"; John W. Frick's "'Odets, Where Is Thy Sting?' Reassessing the 'Playwright of the Proletariat'"; Christopher J. Wheatley's "Thornton Wilder, the Real, and Theatrical Realism"; Judith E. Barlow's "Into the Foxhole: Feminism, Realism, and Lillian Hellman"; Thomas P. Adler's "Tennessee Williams's 'Personal Lyricism': Toward an Androgynous Form"; Brenda Murphy's "Arthur Miller: Revisioning Realism"; Janet V. Haedicke's "Margins in the Mainstream: Contemporary Women Playwrights"; Eric Bergesen and Demastes's "The Limits of African-American Political Realism: Baraka's Dutchman and Wilson's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom"; Michael L. Quinn's "Anti-Theatricality and American Ideology: Mamet's Performative Realism"; and Demastes and Michael Vanden Heuvel's "The Hurlyburly Lies of the Causalist Mind: Chaos and the Realism of Rabe and Shepard."

Diehl, Huston. Staging Reform, Reforming the Stage: Protestantism and Popular Theater in Early Modern England. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1997.

Diehl reads Elizabethan and Jacobean drama as both a product of the Protestant Reformation - a reformed drama - and a producer of Protestant habits of thought - or a reforming drama. Diehl argues that the popular London theater, which flourished in the years after Elizabeth reestablished Protestantism in England, rehearsed the religious crises that disrupted, divided, energized, and in many respects revolutionized English society. Using works by Thomas Kyd, Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, Thomas Middleton, and John Webster, Diehl contends that plays of the period reflexively explore their own power to dazzle, seduce, and deceive.

Egan, Ken, Jr. The River Home: Narrative Rivalry in the American Renaissance. Cranbury: Associated UP, 1997.

Egan examines the ways in which narratives from the American Renaissance represent intense social, political, and literary rivalry among its writers. Drawing upon works by such figures as Cooper, Douglass, Stowe, Melville,and Southworth, Egan argues that each figure projected competing visions of the American family that challenged the claims of other writers. Using the theories of Poe, Bakhtin, and Bloom, Egan traces the intertextual struggles during the American Renaissance over the meaning of home and family.

Ellis, Markman. The Politics of Sensibility: Race, Gender, and Commerce in the Sentimental Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996.

Ellis argues that sentimental fiction self-consciously participated in several highly contested public controversies during the late eighteenth century, including the emergence of anti-slavery opinion, discourse on the morality of commerce, and the movement for the reformation of prostitution. Ellis investigates the significance of political materials on the evolution of the sentimental novel and the manner in which such fictions took part in the era's various political disputes.

Frank, Judith. Common Ground: Eighteenth-Century English Satiric Fiction and the Poor. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1997.

Frank employs poststructuralist theory in her study of satire in the eighteenth century. Using such works as Humphry Clinker and A Sentimental Journey, Frank identifies the role of satire as a means for understanding poverty during that era. Frank also discusses such issues as class, the agricultural revolution, and melancholia and their interconnections with the impoverished during the eighteenth century.

Gilmartin, Kevin. The Press and Radical Opposition in Early Nineteenth-Century England. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997.

Gilmartin examines the culture of the popular radical movement for parliamentary reform during the early decades of the nineteenth century, an era that was characterized by popular agitation and repressive political measures. Gilmartin discusses such historical phenomena, particularly early nineteenth-century trials for sedition and libel. Using works by William Cobbett, Richard Carlile, and Leigh Hunt, Gilmartin explores the styles and strategies of radical opposition in the popular press and in the print culture of the era.

Gould, Philip. Covenant and Republic: Historical Romance and the Politics of Puritanism. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996.

Gould examines the cultural politics of historical memory in the early American republic, affording particular attention to the historical literature of Puritanism. In addition to placing the historical writing about Puritanism within the cultural context of republicanism and liberalism, Gould reconsiders the emergence of the historical romance in the 1820s, arguing for the textual and historical recovery of these preHawthornian works.

Grant, Patrick. Personalism and the Politics of Culture. London: Macmillan, 1996.

Grant investigates the interconnections between literature and religion in order to discover what they tell us about individuals and the larger human community. Drawing upon works by Donne, Beckett, Dostoevsky, and selected Northern Irish poets, Grant argues that ideology separates value from fact, as well as spirit from matter. Grant contends that these separations depersonalize and alienate us from our selves and our communities.

Grey, Robin. The Complicity of Imagination: The American Renaissance, Contests of Authority, and Seventeenth-Century English Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997.

Grey discusses the complex relationship between selected nineteenth-century authors and the culture and politics of seventeenth-century England. Using the works of Emerson, Fuller, Thoreau, and Melville, Grey portrays an American Renaissance whose writers were familiar with the literature and controversies of seventeenth-century England and appropriated its cultural artifacts for their own literary and ideological purposes. Grey demonstrates the manner in which literary texts participate in the artistic, political, and theological tensions within nineteenth-century American culture.

Gunning, Sandra. Race, Rape, and Lynching: The Red Record of American Literature, 1890-1912. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996.

Drawing upon works by Charles W. Chesnutt, Kate Chopin, Thomas Dixon, David Bryant Fulton, Pauline Hopkins, Mark Twain, and Ida B. Wells, Gunning explores the stereotype of the black male as a sexual brute who functioned for white supremacists as a symbol of social chaos. Gunning contends that the emergence of this stereotype corresponds to the growth of white-on-black violence during and after the Reconstruction era. Gunning argues that the works of the writers in her study underscored the tangle of race and gender that characterized nineteenth-century literature on lynching.

Haley, David B. Dryden and the Problem of Freedom: The Republican Aftermath, 1649-1680. New Haven: Yale UP, 1997.

Haley contends that Dryden was the first English poet after Shakespeare to engage in historical reflection upon his own culture. Using Dryden's works before Absalom and Achitophel, Haley argues that Dryden exercised the moral integrity of a public poet and brought home to his readers the meaning of their historical experience. Haley maintains that Cromwell became Dryden's model of authority because he was able to abolish the Commonwealth and control the army.

Hammond, Brean S. Professional Imaginative Writing in England, 1670-1740: "Hackney for Bread." Oxford: Clarendon, 1997.

Drawing upon such writers as Pope, Swift, Gay, and Fielding, Hammond provides an overview of the social, political, and historical context for writing during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Hammond discusses the ways in which literature emerged as a commodity, literacy improved, women entered the literary workplace, newspapers and periodicals emerged as distinct forms, and the novel became a recognized literary genre during this era. Hammond investigates the distinctiveness of individual writers as well as the historical conditions in which they produced their works.

Haviland, Beverly. Henry James's Last Romance: Making Sense of the Past and the American Scene. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997.

Haviland devotes special attention to the analysis of The American Scene, Henry James's classic study of cultural criticism. Haviland discusses the manner in which James confronted the complex problem of making sense of the past. Haviland examines James's return to America during the early years of the twentieth century, while also analyzing his unfinished novels, The Sense of the Past and The Ivory Tower. Haviland also explores such issues as James's use of "natives" and "aliens," as well as the impact of this terminology upon his unfinished works.

Helsinger, Elizabeth K. Rural Scenes and National Representation: Britain, 1815-1850. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1997.

Drawing on recent work in social history, nationalism, and geography, as well as the visual and literary arts, Helsinger recovers other possible and alternative readings of social ties embedded in the imagery of land. Drawing upon works by Tennyson and George Eliot, Helsinger discusses the power of rural images to transfer local loyalties to the national scene, first popularizing and then institutionalizing them. Helsinger explores the difference between art and ideology, as well as the problems and dangers of asserting any kind of national identity through imagery of the land.

Hyland, Peter. An Introduction to Shakespeare: The Dramatist in His Context. London: Macmillan, 1996.

Hyland attempts to decipher the "real" Shakespeare by discussing the material and political conditions under which he lived and worked. Additionally, Hyland provides an account of Shakespeare's life, while also identifying the historical, social, and intellectual pressures of his time. Hyland offers a comprehensive description of the development of the theatrical profession in Shakespeare's England and the practical constraints that shaped his texts.

Innes, Paul. Shakespeare and the English Renaissance Sonnet: Verses of Feigning Love. London: Macmillan, 1997.

Innes evaluates the English Renaissance sonnet in terms of recent developments in literary theory. Innes situates the sonnet in relation to the historical surroundings of its various uses in England, as well as its interconnections with such subjects as women and Renaissance family life. Drawing upon works by such figures as Sidney, Spenser, Drayton, and Shakespeare, Innes examines the development of the sonnet as a literary form.

Jarvis, Robin. Romantic Writing and Pedestrian Travel. London: Macmillan, 1997.

Jarvis argues that much Romantic literature had its source in the popularization of recreational walking in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. Drawing upon the works of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Keats, among others, Jarvis discusses the impact of this cultural revolution on the creativity of major Romantic writers. Jarvis also suggests an alternative Romanticism grounded in the experience of the body in motion.

Jessop, Ralph. Carlyle and Scottish Thought. London: Macmillan, 1997.

Jessop examines Carlyle's tremendous impact upon Scottish intellectual culture. In addition to discussion of texts by Hume, Reid, and Sir William Hamilton, Jessop offers an interdisciplinary approach to an understanding of Carlyle's philosophy. Jessop recontextualizes Carlyle's life and work within Scottish philosophical and theoretical discourse.

Johanningsmeier, Charles A. Fiction and the American Literary Marketplace: The Role of Newspaper Syndicates in America, 1860-1900. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997.

Drawing upon works by Crane, Kipling, James, Stevenson, and Twain, Johanningsmeier evaluates the unique interaction between publishers and their reading audiences during the last four decades of the nineteenth century. Johanningsmeier demonstrates the ways in which economic practicalities of the publishing syndicate governed the consumption and interpretation of various literary texts. Johanningsmeier also examines the roles that syndicates played in the professionalization of literature and literary studies, as well as in the transition from the centralized literary publishers of the nineteenth century to the mass-market publishers of the twentieth century.

Joughin, John J., ed. Shakespeare and National Culture. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1997.

Selections include Joughin's introduction; Graham Holderness and Andrew Murphy's "Shakespeare's England: Britain's Shakespeare"; Simon Barker's "Reloading the Canon: Shakespeare and the Study Guides"; Richard Wilson's "NATO's Pharmacy: Shakespeare by Prescription"; Willy Maley's "'This sceptred isle': Shakespeare and the British Problem"; Ania Loomba's "Shakespearian Transformations"; Martin Orkin's "Whose Things of Darkness? Reading/Representing The Tempest in South Africa after 1994"; Robert Weimann's "A Divided Heritage: Conflicting Appropriations of Shakespeare in (East) Germany"; and Thomas Healy's "Past and Present Shakespeares: Shakespearian Appropriations in Europe."

Kamps, Ivo. Historiography and Ideology in Stuart Drama. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996.

Kamps examines the Stuart history play, a genre often seen as an inferior version of the Elizabethan dramatic form. Kamps traces the development of Jacobean drama in the rapidly changing literary and political environments of the seventeenth century. Drawing upon the works of a variety of Stuart-era playwrights, Kamps also explores the relationships between literature, history, and political power.

Lerer, Seth. Courtly Letters in the Age of Henry VIII: Literary Culture and the Arts of Deceit. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997.

In addition to offering a revisionary study of the origins of courtly poetry and examining the culture of spectatorship and voyeurism that shaped the development of early Tudor English literary life, Lerer devotes particular attention to an analysis of Pandarus's role in Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, arguing that Pandarus has become the model for the early modern courier. Lerer also examines the poetry of Hawes and Skelton, ass well as the writings of Thomas Wyatt and the correspondence of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn.

Lezra, Jacques. Unspeakable Subjects: The Genealogy of the Event in Early Modern Europe. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1997.

Drawing upon works by Descartes, Shakespeare, and Cervantes, Lezra argues that the concepts and discourses that define European modernity developed as strategies for evading a genuine redefinition of the nature of events in early modern Europe. Lezra examines a wide range of issues, including genealogies of intention and freedom, as well as the literary, legal, and medical construction of the body. Lezra discusses the grounds of literary and philosophical history as materialist practices of eventful reading in early modern Europe.

Lindberg, Kathryne V., and Joseph G. Kronick, eds. America's Modernisms, Revaluing the Canon: Essays in Honor of Joseph N. Riddel. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1996.

Selections include Lindberg's introduction; Riddel's "To Perform - A Transitive Verb?"; Jacques Derrida's "A demi-mot"; Paul A. Bove's "Anarchy and Perfection: Henry Adams, Intelligence, and America"; Mark Bauerlein's "Henry James, William James, and the Metaphysics of American Thinking"; Henry Sussman's "At the Crossroads of the Nineteenth Century: 'Benito Cereno' and the Sublime"; Edgar A. Dryden's "Mute Monuments and Doggerel Epitaphs: Melville's Shattered Sequels"; Michael Beehler's "'Riddle the Inevitable': Levinas, Eliot, and the Critical Moment of Ethics"; Margot Norris's "The Trace of the Trenches: Recovering Modernism's World War I"; Charles Altieri's "A Tale of Two Modernisms, or Richard Rorty's Philosophy as Trojan Horse"; John Carlos Rowe's "Whitman's Body Poetic"; John Johnston's "Jameson's Hyperspace, Heidegger's Rift, Frank Gehry's House"; and Kronick's "Afterword: Joseph N. Riddel (1931-1991)."

Lloyd, Tom. Crises of Realism: Representing Experience in the British Novel, 1816-1910. Cranbury: Associated UP, 1997.

Using works by a wide range of Romantic and Victorian writers, Lloyd examines the vital "middle spaces" in which these authors attempted to create realist fictions. Drawing upon the theoretical insights of Michel de Certeau, Hayden White, and George Levine, Lloyd explores the growing instability of literary representation during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Lloyd argues that the middle spaces of realism originated from tensions between the experiences and aesthetic strategies of Romantic and Victorian writers.

Lupton, Julia Reinhard. Afterlives of the Saints: Hagiography, Typology, and Renaissance Literature. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1996.

Selected essays include: "Typologies of the Renaissance: Burckhardt, Warburg, and Benjamin"; "The Denouement of Martyrdom: The Symptom in Psychoanalysis and Hagiography"; "The Gleaner's Prologue: Chaucer's Legend of Ruth"; "New Wine in Old Skins: The Decameron and Secular Literature"; "Saints on Trial: The Genre of Measure for Measure"; "Typological Designs: Creation, Iconoclasm, and Nature in Vasari's Lives of the Artists"; and "The Winter's Tale and the Gods: Iconographies of Idolatry."

Lynch, Deidre, and William B. Warner, eds. Cultural Institutions of the Novel. Durham: Duke UP, 1996.

Selections include Warner's "Introduction: The Transport of the Novel"; Homer Brown's "Prologue: Why the Story of the Origin of the (English) Novel Is an American Romance (If Not the Great American Novel)"; Michelle Burnham's "Between England and America: Captivity, Sympathy, and the Sentimental Novel"; Bridget Orr's "The Maori House of Fiction"; Lisa Lowe's "Decolonization, Displacement, Disidentification: Asian American 'Novels' and the Question of History"; Dane Johnson's "The Rise of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Toni Morrison"; Lynch's "At Home with Jane Austen"; Katie Trumpener's "The Abbotsford Guide to India: Romantic Fictions of Empire and the Narratives of Canadian Literature"; James A. Fujii's "Writing Out Asia: Modernity, Canon, and Natsume Soseki's Kokoro"; Susan Z. Andrade's "The Joys of Daughterhood: Gender, Nationalism, and the Making of Literary Tradition(s)"; Warner's "Formulating Fiction: Romancing the General Reader in Early Modern Britain"; Dorothea von Mucke's "'To Love a Murderer' - Fantasy, Sexuality, and the Political Novel: The Case of Caleb Williams"; Jann Matlock's "The Limits of Reformism: The Novel, Censorship, and the Politics of Adultery in Nineteenth-Century France"; Nancy Glazener's "Romances for 'Big and Little Boys': The U.S. Romantic Revival of the 1890s and James's The Turn of the Screw"; Lauren Berlant's "Pax Americana: The Case of Show Boat"; and Clifford Siskin's "Epilogue: The Rise of Novelism."

MacDonald, Joyce Green, ed. Race, Ethnicity, and Power in the Renaissance. Cranbury: Associated UP, 1997.

Selections include MacDonald's introduction; Rebecca Ann Bach's "Bearbaiting, Dominion, and Colonialism"; Daryl W. Palmer's "Merchants and Miscegenation: The Three Ladies of London, The Jew of Malta, and The Merchant of Venice"; Alan Rosen's "The Rhetoric of Exclusion: Jew, Moor, and the Boundaries of Discourse in The Merchant of Venice"; Constance C. Relihan's "Erasing the East from Twelfth Night"; Marjorie Raley's "Claribel's Husband"; Kim F. Hall's "'Troubling Doubles': Apes, Africans, and Blackface in Mr. Moore's Revels"; John Michael Archer's "Antiquity and Denigration in Antony and Cleopatra"; and Virginia Mason Vaughan's "The Construction of Barbarism in Titus Andronicus."

Maley, Willy. Salvaging Spenser: Colonialism, Culture, and Identity. London: Macmillan, 1997.

In addition to analyzing Spenser's poetry within a cultural and political context, Maley discusses a wide range of subjects, including the censorship of Spenser's works and his early formative experiences as a writer. Maley also discusses the relationship between Book V of The Faerie Queene and A View of the Present State of Ireland. Maley examines the issue of absentee monarchy and the intersections between language and identity in Spenser's verse.

Maquerlot, Jean-Pierre, and Michele Willems, eds. Travel and Drama in Shakespeare's Time. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996.

Selections include Maquerlot and Willems's introduction; Anthony Parr's "Foreign Relations in Jacobean England: The Sherley Brothers and the 'Voyage of Persia'"; Andrew Hadfield's "'The naked and the dead': Elizabethan Perceptions of Ireland"; Jonathan Bate's "The Elizabethans in Italy"; Philip Edwards's "Tragic Form and the Voyagers"; J. R. Mulryne's "Nationality and Language in Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy"; Yves Peyre's "Marlowe's Argonauts"; Lois Potter's "Pirates and 'Turning Turk' in Renaissance Drama"; Brian Gibbons's "The Wrong End of the Telescope"; Peter Holland's "'Travelling Hopefully': The Dramatic Form of Journeys in English Renaissance Drama"; Michael Hattaway's "'Seeing Things': Amazons and Cannibals"; Andrew Gurr's "Industrious Ariel and Idle Caliban"; Leo Salingar's "The New World in The Tempest"; Gunter Walch's "'What's past is prologue': Metatheatrical Memory and Transculturation in The Tempest"; and Kenneth Muir's "Lope de Vega and Shakespeare."

Marcus, Leah S. Unediting the Renaissance: Shakespeare, Marlowe, Milton. London: Routledge, 1996.

Drawing upon the works of Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Milton, Marcus discusses the manner in which their Renaissance-era texts have been filtered through eighteenth-century and Victorian sensibilities. By "unediting" these texts, Marcus discovers several textual nuances in the works of these authors that were altered during later eras. Using ethnographic modelling to explore typical features of modern textual practice, Marcus demonstrates the ways in which modern texts of early modern authors have shifted through the centuries.

May, Brian. The Modernist as Pragmatist: E. M. Forster and the Fate of Liberalism. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1997.

Drawing upon such works as Howards End, A Passage to India, and The Longest Journey, among other novels, May examines the manner in which modernist works have often been considered to be the products of stale Victorian liberal ideology. May argues that Forster is neither a traditional liberal nor an imperial modernist stylist. Drawing upon recent theoretical insights by such figures as Richard Rorty and Cornel West, May examines Forster's novels in a cultural and sociological context.

Mayer, Robert. History and the Early English Novel: Matter of Fact from Bacon to Defoe. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997.

Mayer contends that the novel emerged from historical writings during the early modern era. Mayer demonstrates that in the seventeenth century historical discourse embraced history, fiction, polemic, gossip, and marvels. Using works by Aphra Behn and Daniel Defoe, Mayer explores the theoretical implications of reading seventeenth-century historical works in the context of fictional narratives.

McDonald, Peter. Mistaken Identities: Poetry and Northern Ireland. Oxford: Clarendon, 1997.

McDonald examines the various identity crises experienced by modern and contemporary Northern Irish poets. Drawing upon works by Seamus Heaney, Louis MacNeice, John Hewitt, Michael Longley, Derek Mahon, Tom Paulin, Ciaran Carson, and Paul Muldoon, among others, McDonald argues against the totalizing ambitions of identity-politics. McDonald questions the value of nationalist assumptions regarding the understanding of Northern Irish poetry. McDonald argues that close attention to Northern Irish poetry subverts political analogies in terms of identity.

McEachern, Claire, and Debora Shuger, eds. Religion and Culture in Renaissance England. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997.

Selections include McEachern's introduction; Patrick Collinson's "Biblical Rhetoric: The English Nation and National Sentiment in the Prophetic Mode"; David Scott Kastan's "'The noyse of the new Bible': Reform and Reaction in Henrician England"; Jesse Lander's "'Foxe's' Books of Martyrs: Printing and Popularizing the Acts and Monuments"; Lowell Gallagher's "The Place of the Stigma in Christological Poetics"; Shuger's "'Society Supernatural': The Imagined Community of Hooker's Laws"; William J. Bouwsma's "Hooker in the Context of European Cultural History"; Janet M. Mueller's "Pain, Persecution, and the Construction of Selfhood in Foxe's Acts and Monuments"; Richard C. McCoy's "Love's Martyrs: Shakespeare's 'Phoenix and Turtle' and the Sacrificial Sonnets"; Michael Schoenfeldt's "The Gender of Religious Devotion: Amelia Lanyer and John Donne"; Robert N. Watson's "Othello as Protestant Propaganda"; and Richard Strier's "Milton Against Humility."

Medine, Peter E., and Joseph Wittreich, eds. Soundings of Things Done: Essays in Early Modern Literature in Honor of S. K. Heninger, Jr. Cranbury: Associated UP, 1997,

Selections include Stuart Curran's foreword; Medine's introduction; Medine's "The Art and Wit of Roger Ascham's Bid for Royal Patronage: Toxophilus (1545)"; Richard C. McCoy's "Eulogies to Elegies: Poetic Distance in the April Eclogue"; Judith H. Anderson's "Weighing Words with Spenser's Giant"; Jean R. Brink's "Appropriating the Author of The Faerie Queene: The Attribution of the View of the Present State of Ireland and A Brief Note of Ireland to Edmund Spenser"; Suzanne Woods's "Imitation and Authority in Donne's 'Anatomy' and Lanyer's 'Salve Deus'"; Richard S. Ide's "The Renaissance Dramatic Heritage of Samson Agonistes"; Arthur F. Kinney's "Imaging England: The Chorographical Glass"; Anne Lake Prescott's "Housing Chessmen and Bagging Bishops: Space and Desire in Colonna, 'Rabelais,' and Middleton's Game at Chess"; Stanley Stewart's "Donne's Recreative Misogyny: The Critic as Spoilsport"; Edward W. Tayler's "The First Individual"; Don E. Wayne's "'A More Safe Survey': Social-Property Relations, Hegemony, and the Rhetoric of Country Life"; and Wittreich's "'Under the Seal of Silence': Repressions, Receptions, and the Politics of Paradise Lost."

Meyer, Michael J., ed. Literature and Ethnic Discrimination. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997.

Selections include Karen Surman Paley's "Religious Skirmishes: When the Ethnic Outsider Cannot Hear 'The Loudest Voice'"; Charles Trainor's "Sam, Walter Lee, and The Powerless Black Male"; S. Krishnamoorthy Aithal's "Willa Cather's America, A Nation of Nations"; Edvige Giunta's "Speaking Through Silences: Ethnicity in the Writings of Italian/American Women"; Eric Sterling's "Loss and Growth of Identity in Shimon Wincelberg's Resort"; Ana Maria Fraile Marcos's "'Time and Place Have Had Their Say': Literature and Ethnic Discrimination in Zora Neale Hurston's Aesthetics"; Tim Libretti's "Rediscovering Nation, Resisting Racial Oppression: The Aesthetics of 'Putting Up' in U.S. Third-World Writing"; Obododimma Oha's "What God Has Put Asunder: The Politics of Ethnic Barriers in Chukwuemeka Ike's Toads for Supper and Isidore Okpewho's The Last Duty"; Eva Darias Beautell's "East/West Pardigms of History and Fiction: Joy Kogawa's Obasan and Sky Lee's Disappearing Moon Cafe"; Peter Erspamer's "Women Before Hell's Gate: Survivors of the Holocaust and Their Memoirs"; Rafael Ocasio's "From Nuyorican Barrio Literature to Issues on Puerto Rican Literature Outside New York City: Nicholasa Mohr and Judith Ortiz Cofer"; and Nina Cornyetz's "Fetishized Blackness: Racial Desire in Contemporary Japanese Narrative and Culture."

Mongia, Padmini, ed. Contemporary Postcolonial Theory: A Reader. New York: St. Martin's 1996.

Selections include Edward Said's "From Orientalism"; Homi Bhabha's "The Other Question"; Kwame Anthony Appiah's "Is the Post- in Postmodernism the Post- in Postcolonial?"; Stephen Slemon's "Unsettling the Empire: Resistance Theory for the Second World"; Benita Parry's "Resistance Theory/Theorizing Resistance, or Two Cheers for Nativism"; Stuart Hall's "Cultural Identity and Diaspora"; Rey Chow's "Where Have All the Natives Gone?"; Barbara Christian's "The Race for Theory"; Biodun Jeyifo's "The Nature of Things: Arrested Decolonization and Critical Theory"; Chandra Talpade Mohanty's "Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses"; Gayatri Chakrabarty's "Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History: Who Speaks for 'Indian' Pasts?"; Paul Gilroy's "'The Whisper Wakes, The Shudder Plays': 'Race,' Nation and Ethnic Absolutism"; Aijaz Ahmad's "The Politics of Literary Postcoloniality"; Arif Dirlik's "The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism"; Ella Shohat's "Notes on the Post-Colonial"; Sara Suleri's "Woman Skin Deep: Feminism and the Postcolonial Condition"; Ruth Frankenberg and Lata Mani's "Crosscurrents, Crosstalk: Race, 'Postcoloniality' and the Politics of Location"; and Rosemary Jolly's "Rehearsals of Liberation: Contemporary Postcolonial Discourse and the New South Africa."

Mulryan, John. "Through a Glass Darkly": Milton's Reinvention of the Mythological Tradition. Pittsburgh: Duquesne UP, 1996.

Mulryan examines the mythological underpinnings of Milton's verse and establishes the incredible richness of the mythological tradition available to the poet. Mulryan explores Milton's own view of classical myth, with particular attention to the ways in which the writer attempted to reconcile pagan learning and Christian thought. Using recent insights in deconstructionist, feminist, and new historicist thought, Mulryan demonstrates the manner in which Milton drew upon myth in his verse.

Oxenhandler, Neal. Looking for Heroes in Postwar France: Albert Camus, Max Jacob, Simone Weil. Hanover: UP of New England, 1996.

Oxenhandler examines the impact of Camus, Jacob, and Weil on his own evolution as a writer, particularly regarding the ways in which they taught him about morality, politics, and religion. Oxenhandler reads the works of these writers in the context of his travels in postwar France, from his first Atlantic crossing as a soldier in the Second World War through his recent experiences in the country. Additionally, Oxenhandler reads their works in terms of a variety of historical events, including the Holocaust and the cultural effects of the German occupation of France.

Parkes, Adam. Modernism and the Theater of Censorship. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996.

Parkes investigates the literary and cultural implications of a wide range of modernist controversies, including the legal battles over James Joyce's Ulysses and D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, among other topics. Parkes situates modernism in the context of censorship and examines the relations between Joyce, Lawrence, Radclyffe Hall, and Virginia Woolf. In addition to discussing the ways in which modernism evolved within a culture of censorship, Parkes suggest that modern novelists - while being shaped by their culture - attempted to reshape it themselves.

Parlej, Piotr. The Romantic Theory of the Novel: Genre and Reflection in Cervantes, Melville, Flaubert, Joyce, and Kafka. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1997.

In addition to comparing the romantic origins of the idea of the novel to post-modern philosophy, Parlej discusses romantic theory's development by Friedrich Schlegel in the context of German idealism, particularly in the works of Kant, Fichte, and Novalis. Parlej argues that the revelation of an ironic subject in the romantic novel points to a constitutive bridge between romantic theory and speculative genre theory.

Paulson, Ronald. The Beautiful, Novel, and Strange: Aesthetics and Heterodoxy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1996.

Paulson studies aesthetics and its origins in England during the 1700s. Paulson examines the ways in which aesthetics finds its roots in British empiricism, as well as in forms of religious heterodoxy such as deism. Using texts by Shaftesbury and Hogarth, Paulson discusses a form of aesthetics that had tremendous support during the eighteenth century, yet became obscured by more dominant academic discourses and current trends in art and literary history.

Pearson, John H. The Prefaces of Henry James: Framing the Modern Reader. University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 1997.

Pearson examines Henry James's controversial New York Editions during the early years of the twentieth century and the 18 prefaces in which he defined his aesthetic. Pearson argues for a reading of the prefaces within the context of the New York Editions as James's attempt to construct an ideal reader attentive to the writer's art and authorial performance. Pearson also explores the strategies that James employs while preparing his readers for the New York Editions of his novels.

Pickering, O. S., ed. Individuality and Achievement in Middle English Poetry. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1997.

Selections include Alexandra Barratt's "Avian Self-Fashioning and Self-Doubt in The Owl and the Nightingale"; John J. Thompson's "The Governance of the English Tongue: The Cursor Mundi and Its French Tradition"; Karl Reichl's "The 'Charms of Simplicity': Popular Strains in the Early Middle English Love Lyric"; Derek Pearsall's "The Timelessness of The Simonie"; Thorlac Turville-Petre's "English Quaint and Strange in 'Ne mai no lewed lued'"; Pickering's "Middle English Metaphysical Verse?: Imagery and Style in Some Fourteenth-Century Religious Poems"; David Lawton's "Titus Goes Hunting and Hawking: The Poetics of Recreation and Revenge in The Siege of Jerusalem"; John Burrow's "Redundancy in Alliterative Verse: St. Erkenwald"; Julia Boffey's "'Loke on this wrytyng, man, for thi devocion': Focal Texts in Some Later Middle English Religious Lyrics"; Avril Henry's "The Dramatic Function of Rhyme and Stanza Patterns in The Castle of Perseverance"; Myra Stokes's "Masters and Servants in the Plays of the Wakefield Master"; and Peter Meredith's "Performance, Verse, and Occasion in the N-Town Mary Play."

Pittock, Murray G. H. Inventing and Resisting Britain: Cultural Identities in Britain and Ireland, 1685-1789. London: Macmillan, 1997.

Pittock examines such subjects as religion, Jacobitism, nationalism, feminism, money, the British Empire, travel, Romanticism, and the idea of history in his survey of cultural identity in Britain and Ireland during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In addition to discussing the origins of Britain, while also considering its various growing pains, Pittock explores the ideas of dual identity, religion, gender, and politics in his analysis of the unification of England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales.

Price, Alan. The End of the Age of Innocence: Edith Wharton and the First World War. New York: St. Martin's, 1996.

Price examines Wharton's selfless efforts to save the lives of thousand of Belgian and French refugees during World War I. Price narrates the dramatic story of Wharton's heroic crusade to save the lives of displaced Belgians and the suffering citizens of her adopted France. Additionally, Price supplements his study with a useful bibliography of manuscripts, correspondence, and archives of interest to all students of Wharton's life and work.

Pugliatti, Paola. Shakespeare the Historian. London: Macmillan, 1996.

In addition to proposing that Shakespeare's staging of English history helped to establish a new historiographical perspective of the Elizabethan era, Pugliatti provides close readings of the playwright's various methods and writing styles, arguing that Shakespeare achieved a radical multi-perspectivism in his works. Pugliatti illustrates the principal features of Tudor historiography and outlines the writer's polyphonic practice through readings of King John, Henry V, and Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2, among other works.

Quinn, Patrick J., ed. Recharting the Thirties. Cranbury: Associated UP, 1996.

Selections include Jerald Zaslove's "We Shall Act: We Shall Build: The Nomadism of Herbert Read and the Thirties Legacy of a Vanished Envoy of Modernism"; Jennifer Fairley's "David Jones's Thirties"; Steven Trout's "R. H. Mottram: The Great War and Europa's Beast"; Caroline Zilboorg's "Irene Rathbone: The Great War and Its Aftermath"; Renee C. Hoogland's "Elizabeth Bowen: Unconscious Undertows: Queer Perspectives on Friends and Relations"; John Bowen's "The Melancholia of Modernity: Antony Powell's Early Fiction"; Dean Baldwin's "H. E. Bates: The Poacher"; Patrick Williams's "'No Struggle But the Home': James Hanley's The Furys"; James Gindin's "C. Day Lewis: Moral Doubling in Nicholas Blake's Detective Fiction of the 1930s"; Chris Hopkins's "Cyril Vernon Connolly: Inside The Rock Pool"; Judy Simmons's "Rosamond Lehmann: The Weather in the Streets"; George McKay's "Katharine Burdekin: An Alien Presence in Her Own Time"; Steve Nicholson's "Montagu Slater and Theater of the Thirties"; John Coombes's "The Novels of Rex Warner"; Patrick Quinn's "At the Frontier: Edward Upward's Journey to the Border"; Elizabeth Tilley's "Religion and Popular Culture: Charles Williams's Descent Into Hell"; Luisa Maria Rodrigues Flora's "Jean Rhys: Composition in Shadows and Surfaces"; and David Wheatley's "'Courage Means Running': William Empson as Poet."

Relihan, Constance C., ed. Framing Elizabethan Fictions: Contemporary Approaches to Early Modern Narrative Prose. Kent: Kent State UP, 1996.

Selections include Relihan's "Introduction: Framing Elizabethan Fictions"; Kathleen Pories's "The Intersection of Poor Laws and Literature in the Sixteenth Century: Fictional and Factual Categories"; Susan C. Staub's "The Lady Frances Did Watch: Gasciogne's Voyeuristic Narrative"; Sharon Stockton's "Making Men: Visions of Social Mobility in A Petite Pallace of Pettie His Pleasure"; Joan Pong Linton's "The Humanist in the Market: Gendering Exchange and Authorship in Lyly's Euphues Romances"; Maria Teresa Micaela Prendergast's "Philoclea Parsed: Prose, Verse, and Femininity in Sidney's Old Arcadia"; Lori Humphrey Newcomb's "The Romance of Service: The Simple History of Pandosto's Servant Readers"; Relihan's "Rhetoric, Gender, and Audience Construction in Thomas Nashe's The Unfortunate Traveller"; Derek B. Alwes's "Elizabethan Dreaming: Fictional Dreams from Gascoigne to Lodge"; Mark Thornton Burnett's "Henry Chettle's Piers Plainness: Seven Years' Prenticeship: Contexts and Consumers"; and Walter R. Davis's "Silenced Women."

Rigby, S. H. Chaucer in Context. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1996.

Rigby's guide to Chaucer includes attention to the literary conventions of his work, as well as to the roles of scientific, literary, and social stereotypes in his verse. In addition to a chapter on the monologic and dialogic aspects of The Canterbury Tales, Rigby offers analysis of patristic and humanist criticism of Chaucer's works. Rigby concludes with an examination of various misogynist and feminist readings of Chaucer's life and work.

Roe, Nicholas. John Keats and the Culture of Dissent. Oxford: Clarendon, 1997.

Roe attempts to recover the lost voices of Keats's verse by reading his poetry in the context of his contemporary literary culture. Roe devotes particular attention to an analysis of the dissenting culture of Enfield School, demonstrating the school's tremendous influence upon Keats's imaginative life and his radical politics. Roe also discusses the manner in which imagination and politics intermingle in Keats's friendship with Charles Cowden Clarke; during his brief medical career; in the "Cockney" milieu in which Keats wrote his verse; and on the immediate and controversial impact of his three published collections of poetry.

Rosenthal, Laura J. Playwrights and Plagiarists in Early Modern England: Gender, Authorship, Literary Property. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1996.

Rosenthal examines the results of the first copyright law in 1710 that marked a radical change in our modern perceptions of authorship. Rosenthal argues that this new construction of the author has different consequences for women than for men, for amateurs than professionals, and for playwrights as opposed to other authors. Drawing on the works of such writers as Aphra Behn, John Dryden, Colley Cibber, and Susanna Centlivre, Rosenthal investigates distinctions between legitimate and illegitimate forms of literary appropriation in drama from 1650 to 1730.

Ross, Charles. The Custom of the Castle: From Malory to Macbeth. Berkeley: U of California P, 1997.

Ross examines the notion of the "custom of the castle" and the manner in which it imposes strange ordeals on knights and ladies seeking hospitality, particularly in the form of daunting and evil challenges that travelers must obey and occasionally defend. Using works from a range of authors including Malory and Shakespeare, Ross discusses the social motives behind this ritual. Ross examines the changing legal and cultural conceptions of custom in France, Italy, and England in order to reveal the moral imperatives that undergird these castle narratives.

Rowe, John Carlos. At Emerson's Tomb: The Politics of Classic American Literature. New York: Columbia UP, 1997.

Selections include "'Hamlet's Task': Emerson's Political Writings"; "Antebellum Slavery and Modern Criticism: Edgar Allan Poe's Pyro and 'The Purloined Letter'"; "A Critique of Ideology: Herman Melville's Pierre"; "Between Politics and Poetics: Frederick Douglass' Narrative of the Life of an American Slave, Written by Himself'; "Reconstructing the Family: Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl"; "The Body Poetic: Wait Whitman's Drum-Taps"; "Fatal Speculations - Murder, Money, and Manners: Mark Twain's The Gilded Age and Pudd'nhead Wilson"; "The Politics of Innocence: Henry James's The American"; "The Economics of the Body: Kate Chopin's The Awakening"; and "The African-American Voice: William Faulkner's Go Down, Moses."

Rumrich, John P. Milton Unbound. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996.

In addition to arguing that contemporary critics - despite their various methodological differences - have contributed to the invention of a monolithic and institutional version of Milton, Rumrich suggests that this version of Milton casts him as a censorious preacher, aggressive misogynist, and champion of the emerging bourgeoisie. Rumrich analyzes Milton's poetry and prose within the context of the historical forces that informed his writings.

Schmitt, Cannon. Alien Nation: Nineteenth-Century Gothic Fictions and English Nationality. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1997.

Schmitt examines the ways in which Gothic fictions and conventions gave shape to a sense of English nationality during the British imperial era. Using works by Thomas De Quincey, Charlotte Bronte, Ann Radcliffe, and Bram Stoker, among others, Schmitt explores such issues as xenophobia and foreign expansion. Schmitt argues that the elaboration of nationality in Gothic narratives functioned by means of threatened female characters who embodied English sensibilities.

Sealts, Merton M., Jr. Beyond the Classroom: Essays on American Authors. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1996.

Selections include "Emerson as Teacher"; "Melville and Whitman"; "Herman Melville's 'Bartleby'"; "Melville's 'Benito Cereno'"; "Innocence and Infamy: Melville's Billy Budd, Sailor"; "An Author's Self-Education: Herman Melville's Reading"; "Melville's Reading, 1853-1856"; "'Pulse of the Continent': The Railroad in American Literature"; "Emerson Then and Now"; "The Scholar Idealized"; "'The Flower of Fame': A Centennial Tribute to Herman Melville"; "The Presence of Wait Whitman"; "The 'I' of Walden"; "Hawthorne's 'Autobiographical Impulse'"; and "Whose Book Is Moby-Dick?"

Silkin, Jon. The Life of Metrical and Free Verse in Twentieth-Century Poetry. London: Macmillan, 1997.

Silkin offers an expansive account of the history of metrical and free verse in the twentieth century. Using the verse of Whitman, Hopkins, Eliot, Pound, Lawrence, and Thomas, Silkin examines the way in which these two poetic modes function in the intellectual and artistic culture of their particular literary eras. Silkin concludes his study with previously unpublished memoirs by Basil Bunting and Connie Pickard.

Singal, Daniel J. William Faulkner: The Making of a Modernist. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1997.

Singal offers a new literary biography of Faulkner and examines the structure and nature of the writer's narrative aesthetic. Singal devotes particular attention to an analysis of the ways in which Faulkner was able to produce his classic novels in isolation from his contemporary culture. In addition to providing close readings of Faulkner's celebrated fictions, Singal discusses the writer's work within the context of the cultural and intellectual discourse of his era.

Thomas, Brook. American Literary Realism and the Failed Promise of Contract. Berkeley: U of California P, 1997.

Thomas explores the social and cultural crises that accompanied America's transition from an agrarian economy to the cultural capitalism of the twentieth century. Using works by Twain, Howells, James, and Chopin, Thomas argues that social contract promised to generate an equitable social order, yet the law failed to deliver on this pact, opting to legitimize hierarchies of race, class, and gender instead. Thomas contends that the writers in his study used social contract as a model in their fictions and highlighted its possibilities while dramatizing its failures.

Van Wienen, Mark W. Partisans and Poets: The Political Work of American Poetry in the Great War. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997.

Van Wienen discusses the popular poetics that interacted with American political culture during the First World War. Van Wienen examines the ways in which poetry in newspapers and anthologies during this era bolstered ideologies of nationalism, while the verse of pacifists and socialists mobilized minority groups who were contending for power. Additionally, Van Wienen argues that wartime verse engaged in complex negotiations with often dangerous historical, cultural, and political circumstances and events.

Wallace, David. Chaucerian Polity: Absolutist Lineages and Associational Forms in England and Italy. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1997.

Drawing upon Chaucer's encounters with the great Trecento authors - Dante, Boccaccio, and Petrarch - Wallace argues that no magic curtain separated "medieval" London and Westminster from "Renaissance" Florence and Milan. Wallace examines the manner in which Chaucer was exposed during his Italian travels to the Trecento's most crucial material and ideological conflict - that between a fully developed and highly inclusive associational polity (Florence) and the first absolutist state of modern times (Lombardy). Wallace offers a detailed articulation of "Chaucerian polity" through analyses of art, architecture, city and country, household space, guild and mercantile cultures, and literary texts.

Wallace, Jennifer. Shelley and Greece: Rethinking Romantics Hellenism. London: Macmillan, 1997.

Wallace examines the writing of Shelley, while also affording attention to the contemporary verse of Keats and Byron, among others. Wallace explores Shelley's intellectual and radical political interests, particularly regarding his perceptions of Greece. Using recent insights in cultural studies and postcolonial theory, Wallace traces the influence and appropriation of Greece through a detailed analysis of early nineteenth-century cultural life.

Westervelt, Linda A. Beyond Innocence, or the Altersroman in Modern Fiction. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1997.

Westervelt defines the nature and textual boundaries of a new and previously unidentified form of novel, the altersroman, or age novel. Westervelt argues that such fictions focus on a protagonist's confrontation with morality toward the end of middle age, contending that these novels are likely to become even more prominent in contemporary culture as the average age of the population increases. Using works by Cervantes, Cather, James, Morrison, Faulkner, Stegner, and Didion, Westervelt discusses the ways in which these fictions narrate the seeking of wisdom and a wide array of responses to the act and nature of living.

White, Nicholas, and Naomi Segal, eds. Scarlet Letters: Fictions of Adultery from Antiquity to the 1990s. London: Macmillan, 1997.

Selections include White's "Introduction: The Present State of Affairs"; Marie Maclean's "The Heirs of Amphitryon: Social Fathers and Natural Fathers"; Sarah Kay's "Adultery and Killing in La Mort le roi Artu"; Elizabeth Guild's "Adultery on Trial: Martin Guerre and His Wife, From Judge's Tale to the Screen"; Joan DeJean's "Notorious Women: Marriage and the Novel in Crisis in France 1690-1710"; Claire Lamont's "'Let Other Pens Dwell on Guilt and Misery': Adultery in Jane Austen"; Felicia Gordon's "Legitimation and Irony in Tolstoy and Fontane"; Jo Labanyi's "Adultery and the Exchange Economy"; Segal's "The Adulteress's Children"; White's "Carnal Knowledge in French Naturalist Fiction"; D. A. Williams's "Patriarchal Ideology and French Fictions of Adultery 1830-57"; Mary Hamer's "No Fairy-tale: the Story of Marriage in Trollope's He Knew He Was Right"; Maria Manuel Lisboa's "Machado de Assis and the Beloved Reader: Squatters in the Text"; Alison Sinclair's "The Need for Zeal and the Dangers of Jealousy: Identity and Legitimacy in La Regenta"; Michael Wood's "No Second Chances: Fiction and Adultery in Vertigo"; Segal's "The Fatal Attraction of The Piano"; and Jonathan Smith's "Dissolving Adultery: Domesticity and Obscenity in The Game."

White, R. S. Natural Law in English Renaissance Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996.

White examines the role of natural law as a concept that dominated Renaissance thought, although its literary equivalent - poetic justice - undergirded much of the era's imaginative writing. Using Renaissance-era conceptions of natural law, White discusses a wide range of texts by such figures as More, Spenser, Milton, Sidney, and Shakespeare. White demonstrates the ways in which the flexibility of natural law enabled its application by thinkers from all political persuasions.

Zimmerman, Everett. The Boundaries of Fiction: History and the Eighteenth-Century British Novel. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1996.

Zimmerman investigates the relationship between British fiction and historical writing during an era in which both struggled to attain status and authority. Using works by Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, and Laurence Sterne, Zimmerman illustrates the ways in which British novelists employed analogies to history in order to achieve hegemony for their genre. Zimmerman argues that the efforts of these writers amounted to a critique of history's limits and underscored the novel's capacity for transcending them.

Zuccato, Edoardo. Coleridge in Italy. New York: St. Martin's, 1996.

Zuccato discusses Coleridge's involvement in Italian culture in ways which many of his contemporaries ignored. Zuccato dissects the common categorization of the elder Romantics as "German" and the younger as "Italian" and shows how Italian Renaissance poets and painters helped develop Coleridge's theory of imagination. In addition to exploring Coleridge's intellectual life and the history of Italy and English Romanticism, Zuccato argues that an effective cultural history of the period must consider similarities as well as differences between the two generations of Romantics.

William Baker, MLS, is professor, Department of English and University Libraries, at Northern Illinois University. He is the editor of George Eliot-George Henry Lewes Studies, and his two-volume edition of The Letters of Wilkie Collins is forthcoming from Macmillan Press. He is currently working on a third volume of George Henry Lewes's correspondence, which will include previously unpublished George Eliot letters.

Kenneth Womack (kaw16@psu.edu) is assistant professor of English at Penn State Altoona. He has published articles in the Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature, Biography, The International Fiction Review, Style, Literature/Film Quarterly, Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens, Bulletin of Bibliography, and The Library Chronicle. He also works as a Correspondent for the World Shakespeare Bibliography and serves as Associate Editor of George Eliot-George Henry Lewes Studies.

Rebecca Martin, MLS, is assistant professor, University Libraries, at Northern Illinois University. Her recent publications include "Ben Hecht on the Jazz Age: The Scoop and the Scorn," which appeared in Music Reference Services Quarterly. She is currently working on an article about the life and work of Edward Ardizzone.

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