bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Caedmon Fiction in the Heliand Preface
Authors: Andersson Theodore M.
Published: February 2007

The Heliand “Preface” comprises a “Praefatio” in prose and thirty-four hexameter “Versus.” According to the “Praefatio” a Saxon poet was commissioned by Louis the Pious to execute a metrical paraphrase of the Bible. To this account the “Versus” add the fiction, borrowed from Bede's Caedmon story, that the poet was inspired in a dream to carry out the undertaking. The “Praefatio et Versus” appear for the first time in a printed book from 1562 and were once thought to be a humanist counterfeit, but they are now generally considered to be medieval in origin. The prose “Praefatio” seems to justify our confidence, but the first fifteen lines in the “Versus” make this composition suspect; they belong to the tradition of the country idyll, a genre unknown in the ninth century, but well documented in the sixteenth. The sentiments and wording are particularly close to Angelo Poliziano's popular poem “Rusticus” (1483). It therefore seems likely that the “Versus” were added to the “Praefatio” by an antiquarian familiar with Bede sometime in the middle of the sixteenth century.
Chaucer's Man of Law and the Tale of Constance
Authors: Scheps Walter
Published: February 2007

The suitability of Chaucer's Man of Law's Tale to its teller can be demonstrated by analyzing: (1) those elements in the Man of Law's character that are dramatically prominent in the tale of Constance, (2) the references to legal proceedings and the use of legalistic rhetoric, especially exclamatio and interrogatio, in the tale, and (3) the affinities between the Man of Law's Tale and the other tales in the rhyme-royal group. As an example, the manner of the Man of Law's defense is heavily dependent upon the advice and examples given to lawyers in the Rhetorica ad Herennium, a dependence not found in those tales, like that of the Clerk, that at first might seem similar to the tale of Constance. Since all of the legal rhetoric and most of the references to the law are Chaucer's additions to Trivet, it is likely that Trivet's account was deliberately modified to suit the Man of Law.
“Man and Beast”: The Meaning of Cooper's The Prairie
Authors: Vance William L.
Published: February 2007

The language, action, setting, and characterization of The Prairie cohere around the idea of man as one species of animal among many. On one level, man is a hunter, dominating the other beasts upon whom he is dependent for food and clothing. On another level, man is a scientist, subjecting the beasts to study, classification, and control. On a third level, the novel observes man as an animal of ambiguous identity. The various groups of characters exemplify differing varieties of humanity. The barbaric Indians and the angelic Inez are opposing extremes in dehumanizing characterization. Ellen and Paul display the conflicting demands of feeling, reason, and conscience on the typical middle ground of human nature. In the most dramatic aspect of the romance, the Bush family is forced by pressure of extraordinary circumstance from a brutal, lawless existence into a troubled consciousness of human guilt, justice, and mortality. Finally, in the aged and dying Leather-Stocking is represented a rare example of a fully human life achieved at the most primitive remove from mere animality.
Guido Cavalcanti as a Mask for Ezra Pound
Authors: Wilhelm James J.
Published: February 2007

A study of Ezra Pound's translations of Guido Cavalcanti's Rime shows Pound's lifelong interest in the work of the Italian poet. A further tracing of Cavalcanti's rhetoric in the Cantos shows that Pound employed Cavalcanti in a twofold way: he related him to Neoplatonic philosophers through his use of light imagery, and he also treated him as an Aristotelian empiricist. He thus made Cavalcanti serve two apparently divergent aims, just as Pound's own work may do. Although the modern poet's philosophic understanding of Cavalcanti is open to controversy, his poetic uses have accounted for some of the finest passages of the twentieth-century epic.
Henry James's Pastoral Fallacy
Authors: Pearce Howard
Published: February 2007

In his early fiction, Henry James’s characters tend to see reality in terms of an idealized pastoral image. This “fallacy” is paradoxical, being both a romantic falsification and an imaginative creation of values. The pastoral complex associates images of frail, vulnerable, but perfect and innocent figures; bright, tranquil, but diminutive fragile scenes; an intruding horror; and a resultant redoubling of efforts to transform the ideal into a perfect harmony. The Europeans and “An International Episode” exploit this Arcadian motif, and in “Brooksmith” the mode is thoroughly explored, even to the elegiac apotheosis of the dead “shepherd.” In the highly ambiguous late novels, The Turn of the Screw and The Golden Bowl, the residual power of the pastoral impulse remains ironically operative. For James the process of life is not to be denied, but the stasis of art and the need to create it are requisite for meaning, richness, and worth in the “felt” life.
Some Thoughts on Gogol's “Kolyaska”
Authors: Garrard John G.
Published: February 2007

Although singled out for special praise by such fellow practitioners of the craft as Dostoevsky and Chekhov, Gogol’s story “Kolyaska” has been ignored by the adherents of both major schools of Gogol criticism: those seeking to demonstrate that Gogol was primarily a social satirist and those who consider him a master of the grotesque. Yet an analysis of “Kolyaska” shows that it is in fact paradigmatic, presenting in quintessential form both Gogol’s central theme of man’s futile search for identity and his favorite narrative strategies of blurring the contours of the visible world by alogism and creating comic incongruity by a “worm’s-eye view” of reality. The point at which the thematic and narrative lines meet is best defined as irony, a concept that enables us to reconcile both satire and the grotesque, both the laughter and the tears so often said to be evoked by his works.
“At Once the Source, and End”: Nature's Defining Pattern in An Essay on Criticism
Authors: Park Douglas B.
Published: February 2007

Scrutiny of ambiguous syntax, puns, and buried metaphors in key passages reveals a less eclectic, more defined vision than readers have usually recognized in An Essay on Criticism. Its center is an image of Nature that adumbrates various analogies involving expansive energy and limiting boundaries, inspired intention and realized form. Pervading the poem, reappearing in different forms, these analogies define the relationships between Nature and Art, creative process and artistic form, artistry and criticism. Implicit in all such relationships is a further image of creating power’s radiating from God, and of the created being’s attempting to rise back to its “Source, and End” where all seeming discords and divisions are perfectly unified. Pope’s Essay follows this image by asking its reader not just to mediate between apparently opposing critical precepts but to transcend their limits to recognize the unconfined truths that bring precepts into being.
Theatrical Fiction and the Reality of Love in As You Like It
Authors: Van Den Berg Kent Talbot
Published: February 2007

The relationship between the two worlds of As You Like It becomes a metaphor of love, defined by conspicuous narrative and theatrical artifice. The expository opening scenes have a storybook flatness which becomes a metaphor of a world that limits self-realization while the liberating sojourn in the forest, a festive world of disguise and imagination, parallels the spectators’ experience in the playhouse as a withdrawal from everyday life. The pattern of withdrawal and return also objectifies the psychological development of love: the courtship of Rosalind and Orlando progresses from impulsive love at first sight at court, through subjective and imaginative responses to desire in the forest, to fulfillment in marriage. The play concludes by placing subjective freedom, expressed metaphorically through theatrical artifice, in the larger setting of forces beyond the self, established metaphorically in narrative artifice.
Unamuno's Niebla: From Novel to Dream
Authors: Weber Frances W.
Published: February 2007

Critics have said that Niebla shows both the protagonist's emergence into conscious existence and the author's attempt to create himself through the novel. But the plot repeatedly points up the character's self-deception, which makes the author's effort problematical. Niebla begins with a comic view of Augusto Pérez's falling in love with the image of a woman he has invented; it ends with a philosophical defense of the confusion of fiction and reality. The ambiguity caused by these incompatible approaches is heightened by the similarities between Augusto's ideas and Unamuno's. The ironic exposure of selfdelusion alternates with a serious theory of fantasy. In the last chapters Unamuno, like Augusto, seems to argue for total delusion. This view is most explicitly formulated in the “Historia de Niebla” which appeared as a prologue to the 1935 edition. In it Unamuno fuses legend, novel, nivola, and eternal life into the image of a communal mist in which one can be saved. Throughout his life Unamuno tried to see himself as a substantial entity and not merely an idea in the minds of others. As that goal became more elusive, he chose instead to imagine that the world was a dream in which he could be eternally represented. In order to perpetuate his illusory self, he turned all reality into fiction. Niebla anticipates this maneuver.
“The Elements Were So Mix'd . . . ”
Authors: Levitsky Ruth M.
Published: February 2007

In an effort to correct the overidealization of Brutus, recent criticism has tended to obscure the distinctions between Brutus and his fellow Romans. Yet, Shakespeare was at some pains to depict him as the noblest Roman of them all. That is not to say he was flawless: the noblest pagan was still pagan, and as such was guided only by the light of Reason and tempted to trust in himself. If contemporary prose treatises are any key to Elizabethan attitudes toward ancient philosophy, Shakespeare's audience regarded the Stoic with ambivalence: they admired his constancy, purity of motive, and pursuit of virtue; yet they distrusted his pride, his self-sufficiency, and his hardness. By contrasting Brutus with Cassius and Caesar, Shakespeare has shown him as possessing the best of the Stoic characteristics commingled with touches of Christian compassion and ordinary human weakness. The elements are seen to be so mixed in him that one must say of him with both pride and humility: This was a man.
The Power of Distance in Wordsworth's Prelude
Authors: Ogden John T.
Published: February 2007

As Wordsworth views the rustic fair at the foot of Helvellyn (VIII. 1-69), distance in the landscape takes on a poetic function, focusing and harmonizing the sights and sounds, and setting the observer apart in a mood of esthetic detachment. As he continues to gaze, distance seems to belittle the men he is viewing, but suddenly his perspective shifts, so that the distant view reveals the preeminence of man. In contrast to this scene, London (Book VII) brings objects too close, leaving him confused and oppressed. In retrospect, however, the temporal distance of memory provides the order and detachment necessary for understanding, and leads him again to see the sublimity of man. Distance in space and time operates on the poet's mind throughout The Prelude to modify, shape, and compose the scenes of his life. Distance is necessary to Wordsworth's love of man, and it characterizes the philosophical pose he assumes for “The Recluse.” In Wordsworth's poetry distance serves as a power of imagination that elevates the act of perception into the act of poetic creation.
Browning's Political Skepticism: Sordello and the Plays
Authors: Poston Lawrence
Published: February 2007

Where they touch on political themes, Browning's early works—particularly Sordello and the plays—are reflective less of the kind of liberalism he derived from Shelley than of a growing skepticism as to the value of partisan commitments and a distrust of merely “political” solutions. In Strafford, Sordello, Pippa Passes, The Return of the Druses, Luria, and A Soul's Tragedy, Browning explores the relationship between a character or group of characters and a culture in turmoil. Virtually all the characters, in their limitations—whether imposed by blind idealism, indecision, or charlatanism—are unequipped to assume a truly heroic role, and they are frequently poised between two equally unacceptable political alternatives. The rare, truly heroic figures of Browning's poetry are those who transcend the political obsessions of their culture and decisively assert their own best selves. In his distrust of institutional machinery and his emphasis on personal salvation, Browning belongs with Victorians like Dickens and Carlyle; in the major monologues, most of which followed this formative period, he views religion, art, and human love, rather than political action, as the motivating forces in human relationships.
Hemingway and Stendhal: The Matrix of A Farewell to Arms
Authors: Stephens Robert O.
Published: February 2007

The degree of Hemingway's frequently confessed debt to Stendhal as master and model is best seen in his adoption of The Charterhouse of Parma as the matrix of A Farewell to Arms. His use of Stendhal's novel is consistent with his esthetic practice of finding imaginative models to extend the meaning of autobiographical experience. He employed the battle and retreat experiences of Fabrizio at Waterloo as the paradigm of Frederic's experience during the Caporetto retreat. Both protagonists play the roles of outsiders in their armies, endure the suspicions of others, leave their retreating columns and seek survival in smaller groups, desert their routed armies, seek refuge in Switzerland, and later attempt to understand through reading and reflection the changes worked in them by their experiences in the debacles. Hemingway also followed Stendhal's lead in depicting the way in which language becomes a casualty of military catastrophe. In his larger development Frederic builds on the example of Fabrizio, changing from a man initially unable to love because he has no religious belief to one who loves and believes passionately and finds his destiny in his identity as a believer.
The Bible and Les Fleurs du mal
Authors: Avni Abraham
Published: February 2007

The sources of the Bible's influence on Baudelaire, which is greater than previous research would indicate, are his education at home and school, the example of other French poets, and some preoccupation with the Bible in his criticism of art and literature. The influence manifests itself in allusions to the Bible's characters, often involving use of its imagery, and many other echoes of its diction, including some Hebraisms. Of single books of Scripture, Job, the Song of Songs, and the Apocalypse exerted the strongest influence: Job affected not only the diction but also the structure and train of thought of “Benediction”; many love poems of Les Fleurs du mal are indebted to the Song of Songs for their stark sensuality and bizarre similes; the Apocalypse helped to shape the visions of “Une Gravure fantastique” and “Rêve parisien.” Also, the poet blunted the anti-Biblical edge of the chapter “Révolte” in Les Fleurs du mal by a genuine Biblical tone and diction. Yet, although Baudelaire is much plagued by a sense of sin and evil, the effect of the Bible on his poetry remains generally external, limited to the use of image, symbol, and event or character.
Butor's Use of Literary Texts in Degrés
Authors: Walters Jennifer R.
Published: February 2007

The construction of Degrés is based on a series of texts taken from Western literature and ranging from Homer to Keats. These are grouped in different ways around a brief sequence of events, and it is the responsibility of each reader to elaborate on the scanty story by using the information offered by these texts, to the extent of his knowledge, awareness, and willingness to participate in the creation of the novel. An analysis of the texts extracts the information each contains, then correlates relevant fact and possible interpretation in order to show clearly the two major themes of the novel: the relationship of Vernier to his nephew Eller, and the vast possibilities open to man in the world; and the three styles of presentation: as a structure, a personal experience, and a retrospective fact. Butor teaches his readers to understand his work by attempting to break down mental barriers between different fields of experience and force people to draw on the full range of their knowledge at all times.
Rosebud, Dead or Alive: Narrative and Symbolic Structure in Citizen Kane
Authors: Carringer Robert L.
Published: February 2007

Something more than the obvious psychological interpretation must be made of Rosebud, the. object from the protagonist's childhood that is the focus of the plot activity in Orson Welles's Citizen Kane (1941). This essay applies traditional methods of literary criticism—interpretation of symbolic imagery, close reading of dramatic language and gesture, and source and influence study—toward a solution of this major critical problem in one of the most important films. To assume that Rosebud will provide a definitive explanation of Charles Foster Kane is to disregard the function of the film's complex narrative organization. The position that Rosebud will explain everything is maintained by a character who is an object of comedy; the film's symbolic imagery and dramatic organization pose the issue quite differently: not Rosebud will explain everything! but Will Rosebud explain anything? Far from being a sign of the film's intellectual shallowness, Rosebud is the surest guide into its undetected complexities.
An Anchorage of Thought: Defining the Role of Aphorism in Wallace Stevens' Poetry
Authors: Coyle Beverly
Published: February 2007

Wallace Stevens noted in his journal that while aphorisms are never believed for very long they help us make brief, intensely felt discoveries about ourselves; there he made a connection between his love of aphoristic expression and his theory of human perception of reality as a perception of fragments, never the whole. Exploring the nature and variety of his aphorisms as a manifestation of this concept is important to the understanding of his poems. The tendency to experience life as fragments is, on the one hand, a centripetal tendency akin to aphoristic expression, since in each case one momentarily pulls experience into a self-contained unit. But such moments invariably give rise to a centrifugal tendency, an encompassing of the plenitude of experience in all its contradictory fullness. The juxtaposition of these opposing tendencies lies at the heart of Stevens' aphoristic technique and of the tension in much of his poetry.
Suffering and Calm in Wordsworth's Early Poetry
Authors: Averill James H.
Published: February 2007

In Wordsworth's early poetry, a description of natural tranquillity often follows a narration of human suffering. The most notable instance of this is the Pedlar's spear grass vision at the conclusion of The Ruined Cottage. This pattern of calm following suffering is not an attempt to evade the metaphysical questions provoked by evil and human misery; rather it represents a bona fide response which Wordsworth's imagination makes to the fictional representation of suffering. The poet contemplates the pathetic, as he does images of nature and memory, in order to provide himself with the excitement necessary to achieve the transcendental state he calls “calm.” This natural calm is Wordsworth's version of a significant and familiar response to fictive suffering, the psychological mechanism of catharsis.
“The Grease of God”: The Form of Eighteenth-Century English Fiction
Authors: New Melvyn
Published: February 2007

Recent criticism of the eighteenth-century English novel points to a providential world view as the “proper conceptual context” for these fictions, but it would be an error to see the fictions of Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett as uniformly or unhesitatingly committed to the providential order. These authors constructed fictions, characters, and structures in response to the historical actuality of the age, in transition from the Christian to the secular world view. It is this transition and its effect on the providential world view that provide the conceptual context for the fiction of this period. Critics, having recognized the novel as the fictional form of a secular age, must also recognize the significance of the romance as that fictional form best depicting the providential order. In eighteenth-century English fiction the romance is gingerly displaced from the theoretical center of narrative by elements of form now identified with the novel.
Doris Lessing and R. D. Laing: Psychopolitics and Prophecy
Authors: Vlastos Marion
Published: February 2007

Doris Lessing's major novels dealing with madness show a striking similarity to the ideas of R. D. Laing. Novelist and psychiatrist share the belief that the primary ill of our society is self-division; both see the mad person as victim and revealer of what is wrong with normal society. Lessing shares Laing's conviction that the therapist can help his patient best by transposing himself into the patient's world view. The Golden Notebook portrays the progressive disintegration of Anna's normally fragmented life to its culmination in madness with Saul, her fellow patient and unwitting therapist. In The Four-Gated City Martha helps the mad Lynda and eventually herself and the world by entering into Lynda's view of reality. In Briefing for a Descent into Hell Charles goes on a Laingian cosmic journey; however, the hero's vision of a fatally structured universe undercuts the force of Lessing's final portrayal of madness as potential salvation for the world.
“Reading” in Great Expectations
Authors: Byrd Max
Published: February 2007

The theme of education pervades nineteenth-century novels, often particularized in the theme of learning to read and write. Great Expectations reveals the complex metaphorical nature of the terms “reading” and “reader,” deepening our sense of how Pip's moral perceptions are related to his literal education. The novel begins with several scenes in which Pip learns to read and then goes on to show a wide range of characters reading rightly or wrongly, dramatically or narrowly, with self-deception or with charity. Dickens' own reader comes to see that the stages of Pip's expectations correspond to the growth in his powers of interpretation.
The Literal and the Metaphorical: Dialectic or Interchange
Authors: McCanles Michael
Published: February 2007

The opposition of fictive to nonfictive (i.e., scientific) discourse current during the last 350 years is linked here to the relations between metaphorical and literal discourse. The problem is this: if metaphorical usage is somehow a “misuse” of the literal relation of words to things, what are we to make of the fact that all language is metaphorical? (A) Metaphorical usage retroactively affirms the “dictionary” meanings of its words as if they were literal. (B) Fictive and nonfictive discourses encompass a (literal) heterocosm and a (metaphorical) second world, between which there is a dialectical liaison. (C) Langue stands metaphorically for extra-linguistic reality, but parole may become metaphorical by retroactively affirming its words' meanings within its langue as if they were literal. (D) Fiction is discourse that makes metaphorical statements by defining these as if they were literal, and nonfiction makes literal statements by defining these as functions of metaphorical statements.
Spenser's Garden of Adonis and Britomart's Quest
Authors: Tonkin Humphrey
Published: February 2007

Two allegorical movements dominate the central books of the Faerie Queene, the generative cycle and Britomart's quest for Artegall. Britomart's assumption of her role as mother of the British line depends on the reconciliation of these two movements, the one natural, the other historical. The Garden of Adonis presents an emblem of the generative cycle, the desire of Venus for Adonis mirroring the desire of Form for union with Matter. This search of the Female for the Male is presented sequentially in the story of Florimell and Marinell, whose adventures are juxtaposed with those of Britomart and therefore form a bridge between the emblem of the Garden and the sequence of Britomart's quest. We see the coalescence of the two in Isis Church, where Britomart's dream has both sexual and historical significance, and in her resumption of femininity after her rescue of Artegall from Radigund.
The Necessity of Myth in Updike's The Centaur
Authors: Vargo Edward P.
Published: February 2007

The Centaur is a complete ritual, a patterned ceremony of word and action in which Peter Caldwell celebrates his former experiences with his father. The explicit use of the Greek Chiron-myth serves the functions of comedy, a sign of Caldwell's estrangement from the Olinger aristocrats, and a quality of Peter's memories. What sustained Peter during the three days that he spent in town with his father was his adolescent myth of Art, the City, and the Future, by which he hoped to answer the tyranny of time and the inevitability of death. Now, in his atheist maturity, with that myth tarnished, he must depend upon a reenactment of his father's sacrifices for him, another myth that enables him to face the transcendent questions of time, life, and death. Man is presented as a creature in the middle, a participant in the conceivable and the inconceivable, a mediator between heaven and earth. The ritual actions of The Centaur—notably the lectures on the universe by Caldwell and Chiron, the obituary, and George's acceptance of life in the final chapter— serve as actions of communion or as actions against death in an atmosphere of the Barthian visibilia et itwisibilia.
A Study of Allusion: Barbey's Stendhal in “Le Rideau cramoisi”
Authors: Pasco Allan H.
Published: February 2007

A study of Barbey d'Aurevilly‘s “Le Rideau cramoisi” and Stendhal's Le Rouge et le noir provides insights into the functioning of allusion as an artistic device. Barbey, with his use of Stendhal's masterpiece, was probably appealing to a group of ardent stendhaliens forming as early as the 1850's. Where a feeling for the rather equivocal reactions aroused in Le Rouge et le noir‘s nineteenth-century readers may be obtained from a perusal of the epoch's criticism, a deeper understanding of the novel arises from an analysis of “Le Rideau cramoisi.” On the levels of vocabulary, imagery, character, and plot, Barbey's story alludes to the earlier work. Within “Le Rideau,” the allusion works in the fashion of a gradually enlarging metaphor. Like metaphor, Barbey's allusion has two terms: Le Rouge et le noir and Brassard's tale. The two terms work as a unit in the framework of the whole story to intensify those elements shared with Le Rouge—an egotistical protagonist incapable of preventing himself from violating the codes of honor and hospitality. Moreover, the allusion serves as the principal means for eliciting the central theme of diabolism. The masterful use of this artistic device partially explains both the continuing interest aroused by “Le Rideau cramoisi” and its power.
La Voix de Rimbaud: Nouveau point de vue sur les “naissances latentes” des “Voyelles”
Authors: Hunting Claudine
Published: February 2007

The numerous interpretations by critics of all decades of Rimbaud's sonnet on the “Vowels” are mostly based on considering A E I O U solely as letters and not as sounds. New perspectives on the poem can be opened by emphasizing its sonorous aspects and stressing the importance of vowels as primeval shouts. An analysis of the sound structure in the sonnet reveals that the profusion of images, colors, movements, emotions, evoked by the five vowel sounds, appear to be derived directly from larynx vibrations and from the shape and movement of the lips as they pronounce each key vowel. This discovery of the “naissances latentes” possible origin in the “Vowels” relies greatly on Rimbaud's other poetic works and on his new theories on poetry. A close look at some of his predecessors' ideas, themes, and images—like Victor Hugo's and Baudelaire's—that elicit a probable influence on the young poet or a strange correspondence with his own objectives further unveils, in the study of each vowel, the esoteric aspects and poetic elaboration of the “Vowels.” A living vestige of Rimbaud's adolescent voice speaking to us in its original spontaneity, the sonnet thus discloses the poet's secret: shown in the very process of creating a new language, he is like a true God: through the magic of his word, he creates light, colors, a whole new world of vivid sound-objects, that illustrate the five stages of man's life from nonexistence to eternity. (In French)
Création et fonctionnement de l'atmosphère dans “Le Renégat” d'Albert Camus
Authors: Fortier Paul A.
Published: February 2007

Analysis of descriptive passages in Camus's “Le Renégat” shows that the protagonist associated violence with a means of escape from his unpleasant surroundings in France. Fascinated by violence, he goes to convert the cruel inhabitants of Taghâsa. But on arriving at the town built of salt, excessively hot and violent, he is enslaved. After a time the protagonist freely adores the idol of Taghâsa, believing it to represent a universal and eternal principle of violence, thus becoming the Renegade. He kills the next Christian missionary to come to Taghâsa, but in a decor which negates, thematically, the universality and the eternity of the evil principle of violence which he adores. After this futile murder, the story ends with the Renegade's more futile repentance. The thematic structures of this short story seem to embody the same rejection of violence which can be found in the last section of L'Homme révolté. (In French)
La ficción de Juan Ruiz
Authors: Bandera Cesáreo
Published: February 2007

The art of Juan Ruiz must be understood in the light of the medieval conception of art as facere, a conception that postulates the artistic independence of a work while emphasizing its didactic nature in the use that individuals can make of it following their own personal motivations. The independent artistic form of Ruiz's work is at the same time an autobiographical form, wherein lies its fictional character. The fiction of the Book of Good Love is not to be seen as the fiction of its imaginary adventures but as the psychological fiction of its protagonist, i.e., the literary illusion that this protagonist mistakes for reality. Such an illusion is best exhibited in the central episode of the book, that of don Melón and doña Endrina, Ruiz's own amplified translation of Pamphilus de Amore. The autobiographical form of the book, therefore, should not be seen as a conventional literary device for self-expression but as an ironic portrait of Juan Ruiz, the man, taking for reality what Juan Ruiz, the artist, knows to be only literary fiction. (In Spanish)
Notes from Underground: A Horneyan Analysis
Authors: Paris Bernard J.
Published: February 2007

In attempting to make sense of the vacillating, inconsistent, and often bizarre behavior of the underground man, critics have employed two distinct modes of analysis, thematic and psychological. The psychological approach seems more appropriate; the novel is essentially a portrait of a character. As yet, however, critics have not approached the work with a psychological theory that is congruent with it and adequate to its complexities. The underground man's character structure, attitudes, and behavior can be understood in terms of Karen Horney's analysis of neurotic processes. In Horneyan terms, the underground man is a detached person whose aggressive and compliant trends are very close to awareness and rather evenly balanced. He experiences severe and almost continuous conflict between all three of his trends and is caught in a devastating crossfire of contradictory “shoulds.” He compensates for his feeling of worthlessness by self-glorification and then hates himself even more because he cannot live up to his idealized image. The novel's philosophic passages are an integral part of Dostoevsky's portrait of his character. The underground man's worship of freedom, will, caprice, and individuality, and his phobic reaction to anything suggesting coercion, conformity to law, or ordinariness are all aspects of his detached solution.
Reading Criticism
Authors: Nelson Cary
Published: February 2007

Prefaces to critical books often display more self-consciousness and uneasiness than we usually associate with critical discourse. These moments when critics speak about their own work can undermine our assumptions about disinterested scholarship. Moreover, they can lead to a reexamination of the critical activity and a search for new ways of evaluating critical prose that take account of the critic's attitude toward his own work. We need to examine criticism's stylistic and formal properties, not just its paraphrasable content. Such analysis can reveal the way a critic's interests and commitments are woven into the texture of his language. That language, however, will always partly betray or suppress the critic's experience. Criticism, moreover, can neither wholly escape nor wholly dominate the texts it treats. Yet it can also never be entirely self-effacing. As a result, criticism is a particularly ambivalent and compromised form of writing.
Coleridge and the Endeavor of Philosophy
Authors: Hunt Bishop C.
Published: February 2007

Platonism, in its eclecticism and hidden continuity, proved congenial to Coleridge, whose conception of the nature and role of philosophy differed profoundly from the empirical orthodoxy of his time (and ours). Coleridge's conception resembles the Greek ideal, found in Plotinus and others, of philosophy as less a purely rationalistic pursuit than a form of gnosis involving the whole man and leading toward ultimate perceptions. Platonism has important literary consequences: Coleridge's “philosophical” writings may be read as a complex (and often beautiful) form of prose poetry. Analysis suggests that the mode of argument in crucial chapters of the Biographia (xxi-xiv) is substantially poetic in nature and perhaps deliberately paralogical. Coleridge attempts certainty, without attaining it, and shows, astonishingly, an equivalent of Keats's “Negative Capability” in the disinterestedness of his symbolic investigations or “constructs” of reality. Literary form and style are more important in Coleridge's intellectual prose than has been thought.
Swift's Explorations of Slavery in Houyhnhnmland and Ireland
Authors: Kelly Ann Cline
Published: February 2007

Swift recognized that “slavery” was an ambivalent term: on one hand, slavery can be seen as a biological imperative—a natural condition of the innately servile; on the other hand, slavery can be seen as a political accident— a circumstance imposed from without by those with the will and power to oppress. Swift consistently characterized the Irish as “slaves” and called the relationship of Ireland to England “slavery.” In the case of the Irish, Swift feared that their slavery, which may have begun as external oppression, would eventually become an intrinsic part of Irish character. If Swift's observations on slavery in Ireland are applied to the slavery of the Yahoos to the Houyhnhnms in Book iv of Gulliver's Travels, the question of whether slavery is a matter of nature or nurture also arises, for there is evidence in Book iv to suggest that the Yahoos were as rational as Gulliver when they arrived in Houyhnhnmland.
Mesmerism in Die Jungfrau von Orleans
Authors: Richards David B.
Published: February 2007

Schiller, far from regarding the story of Joan of Arc as a web of medieval superstition, found a rational explanation for her peculiar behavior in Mesmer's theory of animal magnetism. It can be shown that Johanna starts out in a somnambulistic trance, is awakened gradually to normal consciousness by her encounters with Montgomery, the Black Knight, and Lionel, and finally regains a trance state in her apotheosis. The source of Johanna's control over persons and events is her possession of “active” (hypnotic) vision. Her enjoyment of this power coincides with her trance states, and she is bereft of it when conscious. This radical break between somnambulism and consciousness symbolizes the unbridgeable gulf between the aims and values of human life (represented by Thibault, Charles, and Agnes Sorel) and the exigencies of the historical and political process.
Hierogamy versus Wedlock: Types of Marriage Plots and Their Relationship to Genres of Prose Fiction
Authors: Hinz Evelyn J.
Published: February 2007

Because we conventionally think of marriage in social and moral terms, we tend to regard it as a subject practically indigenous to the novel. Hence a work like Wuthering Heights poses problems for the traditional genre critic, since while this work is concerned with marriage its conventions are not those of the novel. The usual tactic is to call Brontë's work a “romance,” but marriage is not compatible with the “romance” as the term is usually defined. It is thus important to recognize that there are two types of marriage plots in prose fiction: one indigenous to the novel, that might be called “wedlock”; another, indigenous to works like Wuthering Heights, that may be called “hierogamy.” Thus, works like Wuthering Heights should not be classified as “displaced novels” but as examples of an autonomous genre which for the present might be designated “mythic narrative.”
Schiller's Fiesco —A Republican Tragedy?
Authors: Phelps Reginald H.
Published: February 2007

Schiller's subtitle, “Ein republikanisches Trauerspiel,” creates serious difficulties of interpretation. His four principal historical sources give little basis for regarding the conspirators or the conspiracy as “republican” in the sense of “antimonarchical.” The play itself likewise disregards the republican motif. A study of the vocabulary shows that such politically emotional words as Republik, Freiheit, Burger, Volk are infrequently used and are likely to bear a neutral or negative-ironic meaning. Schiller's two later versions, the Mannheim stage version and the Leipzig/Dresden manuscript, show no conspicuous change in his use of such terms. The play belongs rather among contemporary dramas generalizing about freedom than to the category of sociopolitical Tendenzdrama, and concerns Republik in the older sense of res publica rather than in the modern meaning. Not Rousseau, but Plutarch as translated by G. B. von Schirach, most strongly influenced Schiller in theme, incidents, traits of character, and perhaps political attitude. The play appears as a conflict among three strong personalities—Fiesco, Verrina, and Andreas Doria—-for power within the state; and Doria, representing the essence of the state, may be the real “hero.”
The Franklin's Tale: Chaucer or the Critics
Authors: White Gertrude M.
Published: February 2007

The Franklin's Tale, which has caused much disagreement among critics of Chaucer, may best be understood in the light of Chaucer's own writings, particularly The Merchant's Tale and three short lyrics, “Truth,” “Gentilesse,” and “Lak of Stedfastnesse.” The relationship between the characters and events of the two Tales dramatizes a moral ideal that operates throughout The Canterbury Tales and is given explicit expression in the lyrics. It may be summed up as “gentilesse,” which consists, in the Knight's words, of “Trouthe and honour, fredom and curteisie.” In a variety of contexts, this standard operates throughout Chaucer's writings. An understanding of it puts The Franklin's Tale into clear perspective, identifies its true theme, answers its critics, accounts for its apparent absurdities, inconsistencies, and contradictions, and reveals its suitability to its teller.
The Metamorphoses of Moria: Structure and Meaning in The Praise of Folly
Authors: Rebhorn Wayne A.
Published: February 2007

Following Moria's metamorphoses, Erasmus' Praise falls into three sections whose interrelationships generate the total meaning of the work. Moving from section to section, Folly leads her auditors through a dialectic of conversion. At first ironic, Folly is the goddess of metamorphosis, a variant of Circe, offering men her gift of pleasurable illusion. She wants them to accept life as a comic play and attacks the “Stoic” for attempting self-divinization while rejecting the play of life. She argues that her power can make men happy in Plato's cave. But in the satirical middle section, Folly betrays them by showing them the real tragedy of their lot. While revealing that one cannot separate lifepreserving, pleasurable folly from destructive madness, by her transformation into a “Stoic” truth-teller, Folly prevents men from placing their faith in her benevolence. Thus, in the final section, she turns with them to Christian folly, the faith that leads men out of Plato's cave to God's unchanging, benevolent reality. Folly's final, ecstatic vision gives her followers a transcendent perspective redefining and including the comitragic visions of the first two sections.
“I Know My Course”: Hamlet's Confidence
Authors: Skulsky Harold
Published: February 2007

At the outset, Hamlet remarks on the futility of attempting to guess at his state of mind by appeal to the notatio, or standard behavioral model, favored by the science of physiognomy. Although the possibility of knowing other minds is provided for by Renaissance theory of natural law and by certain tenets of Neoplatonism, Hamlet's initial skepticism is in full accord with the weight of received opinion—e.g., with folk wisdom, orthodox theological authority, and traditional reservations about friendship and selfknowledge. The deceptiveness of notatio, moreover, is illustrated in the play by the hubris of Polonius' art of espionage and by the bitter testimony of Claudius to his success as a dissembler. In practice, however, both Claudius and Hamlet rely with no less confidence than Polonius on the possibility of reading the inner by the outer man. Though Hamlet is sustained in this confidence by a hopeful theory of histrionic performance, a scholar's habits of observation, a flair for satirical portraiture, and even a few trivial successes, the treachery of notatio is ominously revealed, along with the Polonian arrogance of relying on it, in his encounter with Gertrude, and especially in his conception of how the “Mousetrap” can be sprung.
The Representation of Visual Reality in Perceval and Parzival
Authors: Mahler Annemarie E.
Published: February 2007

The image projected in the reader's mind by an author's description offers a basis for comparison with the visual arts. Art historical criteria are applied to equivalent descriptions—a portrait, an architectural complex, and a scene involving motion—in the Perceval of Chrestien de Troyes and the Parzival of Wolfram von Eschenbach. Chrestien's traditional rhetorical portrait of Blancheflor is a still, frontal, symmetrical image; his description of chastel merveile gives meticulous surface detail but instead of a logical spatial connection the parts are simply juxtaposed in the plane; Gavain's fight with the lion shows no real motion but breaks down into a series of still vignettes which represent rather than show the action. On the other hand, Wolfram's portrait of Condwiramurs is glimpsed from various angles and distances as she moves through space; Schastel Marveile is vaguely described but spatially self-consistent; motion in Gawan's lion fight is continuous in both space and time. Thus Chrestien's descriptions relate to the dominant tradition of medieval art which shows figures and objects in characteristic poses or arrangements outlined in the plane, Wolfram's to that uncommon strain which attempts to cope with natural relationships, particularly those of volumes in space.
No Cloistered Virtue: Or, Playwright versus Priest in 1698
Authors: Williams Aubrey
Published: February 2007

Charges by Jeremy Collier and others in the controversy generated by A Short View of the Immorality, and Profaneness of the English Stage have been widely accepted while the replies by Congreve, Vanbrugh, and many other stage defenders have been generally neglected or depreciated. The critical tenets of Collier's opponents are examined in the framework of four postulates Congreve presents in his own defense. Along with others sharing his views, Congreve the “Aristotelian” argues that the drama must represent vice and folly in strongly mimetic terms in order to shame offenders and divert and warn others, and also that the virtue portrayed on stage must be uncloistered and subjected to trials and temptations of a most pressing and realistic nature. Collier the “Platonist,” on the other hand, is shown to believe that such realistic examples are corruptive rather than corrective, and that therefore vice and folly must be represented only “in Generals.”
Vision and Satire: The Warped Looking Glass in Vanity Fair
Authors: Lougy Robert E.
Published: February 2007

In Vanity Fair Thackeray moves beyond the inherited traditions of moral and social satire as his vision of society darkens and as he realizes the anarchic potentials of laughter and satire. Examining not the particular ills of a certain society, but the diseased structures inherent in civilization itself, Thackeray creates a world defined by madness and emptiness; in it satire holds little sway. In trying to locate alternatives to or a way out of an apparently inexorable pattern of death and destruction, Thackeray looks, through the image of childhood, toward a pastoral vision, one that assumes various and yet similar configurations for those characters who travel into this visionary landscape. As Charlotte Brontë intuited, Thackeray's novel embodies both the impulses of the moral and social satirist and those of the visionary or prophet. It is the final irreconcilability of these double impulses that accounts for much of the power and haunting quality of Vanity Fair.
Risk and Redundancy
Authors: Norman Liane
Published: February 2007

There are two kinds of risk in the act of reading: that the reader will not understand what the author wants him to and that the emotional or moral risk involved in such understanding will be so great that the reader may reject it. Either kind of risk threatens the community between author and reader by jeopardizing the confidence the reader has in his own competence as reader and in the author's purposefulness. Failures of communication or too great resistance to the experience offered by a piece of literature prevent active, perceptive, and morally receptive involvement. Redundancy assures that the reader will understand, or that he will receive the message accurately and draw the intended conclusions; and it reassures him so that he will be able to tolerate the lessons he learns.
The Green Yeoman as Loathly Lady: The Friar's Parody of the Wife of Bath's Tale
Authors: Szittya Penn R.
Published: February 2007

The Friar’s Tale is replete with distinct verbal echoes of the Wife of Bath’s Tale that point to subtler structural similarities: clear parallels exist between the Friar’s green Yeoman and the Wife’s Loathly Lady in their mysterious shape-shifting, their knowledge of unearthly secrets, and their radical metamorphoses as each tale ends. The Friar’s quiet parody of the Wife’s romantic idealism contributes to a pattern familiar in the architectonics of the Canterbury Tales. The consecutive tales of Wife, Friar, and Summoner form a dramatic triad exactly parallel to the well-known triad involving the Knight, Miller, and Reeve where, as here, the unity of the three turns upon the parody in the pivotal second tale. The Friar’s parody of the Wife also suggests that the thematic center of the Third Fragment is in the idea of maistrie, and coincidentally, suggests that the Friar’s and the Summoner’s Tales do not interrupt the Marriage Group but advance its chief theme.