Violence in Charlotte Brontë’s ‘A Letter from Lord Charles Wellesley’: Influence, Representation, Resurrection

Despite the recent revival of critical interest in Mansfield's ‘In the Botanical Gardens’ (1907), much remains to be said concerning this brief story in terms of textual analysis and also of contextualisation, notably with regard to Mansfield's other early – and often fragmentary – attempts at writing fiction, but also to her mature works. This article focuses on this 1907 sketch in an attempt to explore its aesthetic contexts and political implications. It considers Mansfield's invocations of subjectivity and her pursuit of psychological insight, within a pattern that counterpoints nature and culture, rationality and the unconscious, individuality and wholeness, civilisation and the primitive, Europe and its others. A comparison with works by Walter Pater, E. M. Forster, Virginia Woolf and D. H. Lawrence completes the analysis of this story, which arguably played a pivotal role in Mansfield's literary development, and which offers us a vantage point to reassess the transition from aestheticism to impressionism and modernism.

What does the work of Judith Shklar reveal to us about the proper role and limits of political theory? In particular, what are the implications of her arguments both for the way in which we should think of freedom and for the approach we should take to the resolution of moral conflicts? There is growing interest in Shklar’s arguments, in particular the so-called liberalism of fear, characteristic of her mature work. She has become an important influence for those taking a sceptical approach to political thought and also for those concerned first and foremost with the avoidance of great evils. However, this book shows that the most important factor shaping her mature work is not her scepticism but, rather, a value monist approach to both moral conflict and freedom, and that this represents a radical departure from the value pluralism (and scepticism) of her early work. This book also advances a clear line of argument in defence of value pluralism in political theory, one that builds on but moves beyond Shklar’s own early work.

Commentary: The decreasing age of puberty—as much a psychosocial as biological problem?

The work of Alexander Parris (1780-1852) in Richmond, Virginia, has not been previously studied, yet it forms the crucial link between his better known early and mature work in New England. This article focuses on his most important Richmond commission, the John Wickham house, built in 1811-1812, and now part of the Valentine Museum. Traditionally attributed to Robert Mills, the house is reassigned to Parris on the basis of a letter by him claiming the design, four drawings in his hand for the house, and correspondence between the client and B. Henry Latrobe about the initial Parris design. The Parris drawings and Latrobe letters also provide the basis for tracing the sources for, and the evolution of, the design. Parris' preliminary plan includes several features identifiable from his previous work in Portland, Maine, as well as elements derived more directly from English architectural books. Latrobe's blistering critique of that initial design is examined to identify the sources of Latrobe's architectural theories and the impact of his comments on Parris' Wickham project. A second Parris study for the house shows his reaction to that critique, while the final form of the house demonstrates Parris' successful synthesis of his own early work, Latrobe's critique and buildings in Richmond and Philadelphia, and published English sources. Overall, the Wickham project was a critical episode in Parris' development as a designer and in his evolution from housewright to architect. It is the key to understanding the imprint of Latrobe on the remainder of Parris' architectural career.

In this article the author analyzes functioning of the estate text peculiar to Russian literature, especially to A.P. Chekhov’s prose during the period of paradigmatic changes (1887) and mature works (the end of the 1880s – 1890s). For the last decades of the XIXth century, the estate discourse undergoes great changes in socio-historic, cultural and literature aspects. Chekhov's literary works determines the direction of the studied literary phenomenon development in many respects. Deconstruction of the estate literary matrix has been observed on the basis of five works by A.P. Chekhov. In the stories «Verochka» and «In the Country House» the hero is being transformed: in the first story, instead of the ero-carrier of a certain life philosophy and ideology, the character of the «eighties» is embodied,he is oriented to the positivist world image and at the same time possesses a post-romantic «solitary consciousness»; in the second one the character of misanthrope with quasi-positive views is embodied in a satirical mode. In the stories «At Home» and «A Visit to Friends» mythologem of the estate text is destroyed. In this case the «House» aquires the meaning of a dull place. This development was extremely productive in the literature at the turn of the century and in the XXth century. Upon arrival at the steppe estate the heroine of the first story quickly loses her «humanity» and life goal aimed at self-development. The leading character of the second story had an «estate» experience gone a long time ago; the present in the estate seems vulgar to him. The last story «The New Villa» thematically completes the plot of the «turn» of epochs in its estate version. The story shows a change in interaction of social actors in the process of changing socio-historical formations. A Russian intellectual’s call for alleviation of the people’s fate causes peasants’ alienation and unjust malice. In the end, the athor concludes the significance of changes in the entire paradigm of the estate text in the A.P. Chekhov’s prose setting its further development in Russian literature.

74 worldliteraturetoday.org reviews Andrea Pitzer. The Secret Life of Vladimir Nabokov. New York. Pegasus. 2013. isbn 9781605984117 The thesis of Andrea Pitzer’s book on Vladimir Nabokov is an ambitious one, and its ambition is reflected in her title: The Secret Life of Vladimir Nabokov. Given the popularity of Nabokov among academics, one could assume that Pitzer is setting herself up for a battle, and as some battles among literary territories and authors can constitute career suicide, Pitzer would have to be quite sure of herself to give her book—her first book—I might add, such an ambitious title. Yet, The Secret Life of Vladimir Nabokov is a beautifully written, thoroughly researched book that is sure to significantly enrich the stream of Nabokovian studies. Pitzer’s thesis argues that the idea of the concentration camp haunts and informs much of Nabokov’s mature work. However, Nabokov, being the clever trickster that he was, conceals this from his readers, as if daring them to locate the clues that are sprinkled throughout his works like four-leaf clovers in a field. Pitzer has done her research and has plucked these clues for us. Unlike his earlier work, which so demonstrably examined the life of the exile, his more mature work was decidedly more political than early readings might suggest. The book’s sequence follows Nabokov’s life from his birth in St. Petersburg to his death in Montreux. Bookending the sequence are chapters on a meeting that was supposed to take place between Nabokov and Alexander Solzhenitsyn, but did not. In fact, Solzhenitsyn is a figure that haunts the pages of this book. Although The Secret Life of Vladimir Nabokov is not a biography in the conventional sense, Pitzer does present for her reader a fairly standard form that is easy to follow and trails the life of her subject. However, it’s important to note that she does this not for convenience’ sake, but to demonstrate that the undercurrent of Nabokov’s fiction is in fact driven by a harsh criticism of totalitarian rule, revolution, and the paradigm of the concentration camp. Toward the end of the book she writes: “There is hardly a novel in Nabokov’s mature repertoire that does not have a major character shattered by his own imprisonment or haunted by memories of those who perished in the camp.” Nabokov’s brother, Sergei, is one such figure. Humbert Humbert, she argues, is another. Tom Taylor Brock’s Traitor Hancock & Dean Brock’s Traitor, the third volume of a trilogy including Brock’s Agent and Brock’s Railroad, takes place during Canada’s pivotal War of 1812. The likable character of Jonathan Westlake is brought vividly to life as he navigates through intrigue, harrowing battles, honor, and love. Tom Taylor’s prose is crisp and lively, incorporating well-researched historical detail with wit, humor, and imagination. Aaron Shurin Citizen City Lights Books These agile prose poems by Aaron Shurin wander and leap sensually from bed, to lover, to home, to natural wonders, both personal and universal. The individual words of each poem collide and mingle, sometimes harmoniously and sometimes with a purposeful dissonance. Citizen is a lyrical and affirming look into the vibrant life of San Francisco and into the mind of one of its most accomplished poets. Nota Bene The Secret Life of Vladimir Nabokov is a tremendous book, but perhaps the best thing I can say about it is that Pitzer inspires us to return to Nabokov, to go back and re-read his entire oeuvre with a new, now unsentimental eye. If the concentration camp is the dominant political paradigm of the twentieth century , then the works of someone so entangled with revolution and its exilic aftermath could not have escaped unscathed. Perhaps it’s time to return to Nabokov with the eye of a detective, searching for clues not only to the author and his work but to ourselves as well. Andrew Martino Southern New Hampshire University Aman Sethi. A Free Man: A True Story of Life and Death in Delhi. New York. W.W. Norton. 2012. isbn 9780393088908 Aman Sethi’s A Free Man joins such excellent recent nonfiction accounts of India...

8 Victorians Journal Volume Introduction This year has seen a plethora of good new work on the Brontes. Clare Harman’s biography, Charlotte Bronte: A Fiery Heart, tells Bronte’s story powerfully once again to a new audience. The Bronte Parsonage hosted numerous celebratory events, including an international conference centering on Victorian women’s issues held in Manchester, at which Bronte scholars Christine Alexander and Sally Shuttleworth spoke, in company with biographer Clare Harman and feminist writer Germaine Greer. Renowned Bronte juvenilia scholar Alexander and emerging scholar Sara L. Pearson co-wrote Celebrating Charlotte Bronte: Transforming Life into Literature in Jane Eyre, under the aegis of the Bronte Parsonage Museum, a beautiful and wonderfully useful book that connects the material objects ofCharlotte Bronte’s life with the novel Jane Eyre. The exhibit Charlotte Bronte: An Independent Will, held at The Morgan Library & Museum in New York City (Sept. 9,2016—Jan. 2,2017), continues to draw crowds ofBronte readers; the exhibition catalogue, The Brontes: A Family Writes, by Christine Nelson is a beautiful, informative book. If anyone imagined that no more could be said about Charlotte Bronte’s work, they must have been pleasantly surprised when many volumes were published this year, full of profound and illuminating insights into Bronte’s life, writings, and visual art. From collections on the influence of her early Angrian writings upon her mature work' and themed volumes1 2 to compendiums that include new essays on all the Brontes (including Branwell and Patrick),3 the fascination with the Brontes’ lives and work continues unabated into the twenty-first century. This volume of essays continues longstanding debates while exploring original avenues ofresearch and opening new areas ofdiscussion. The germinal work ofKaren Chase in Eros and Psyche: The Representation of Personality in the Works of 1 Charlotte Brontefrom the Beginnings: Xew Essaysfrom the Juvenilia to the Major Works, edited by Lucy Morrison and Judith Pike (Routledge 2016). 2 See Time. Space, andPlace in Charlotte Bronte, ed. Diane Long Hoeveler and Deborah Denenholz Morse (July 2016). 3 See The Blackwell Companion to the Brontes, ed. Diane Long Hoeveler and Deborah Denenholz Morse (May 2016); Charlotte Bronte: Legacies andAfterlives, ed. Amber Regis and Deborah Wynne (Manchester LIP 2016); The Brontes andthe Idea ofthe Hitman: Science. Ethics, & the Imagination, ed. Alexandra Lewis (forthcoming Cambridge, April 2017). Victorians Journal 9 Charlotte Bronte, Charles Dickens, and George Eliot, and of Sally Shuttleworth in Charlotte Bronte and Victorian Psychology into Bronte’s knowledge of mental disorders strongly influences this volume, beginning with the opening essay by Diane Long Hoeveler. Hoeveler builds on Chase’s insights into Bronte’s imagining of mind and the representation ofemotion and personality as having its roots in Angria. Chase herself offers an essay in this volume that takes her critique in new directions as she reads Bronte’s fiction in light ofthe “domestic uncanny.” Chase’s focus upon narrative structure and literary genre is also the center of Ezra Feldman’s paper on “Weird Weather.” Another complex of issues in Charlotte Bronte scholarship focuses on gender, including articles by Beverly Taylor, Richard Kaye, Laura Struve, Anthony D’Agostino, Susan Taylor, and Kimberley Dimitriadis. Some essays revisit old discourses—Marie-Antoinette Smith (religious pilgrimage) and Patrick Fessenbecker (philosophy)—while others interrogate such vibrantly emerging scholarly discourses as the significance ofhands (Kimberly Cox), astronomy and science (Dimitriadis), and the poetics of“weird” texts (Feldman). What follows is a precis of each essay, offered with the intention of helping readers begin with their most passionate Brontean interests. Our hope is that readers will go on to engage with all of these fine essays. The breadth and depth ofthis work will be evident to all who read this new scholarship, and we are honored to have been chosen as editors of this volume dedicated to the wonderful Bronte scholar, the late Diane Long Hoeveler. Reader, we miss her. ft************** Diane Long Hoeveler, in her theoretically complex essay “Charlotte Bronte’s Oeuvre as Fantasy Fiction,” argues that at the center ofBronte’s “early works, as well as her later mature novels, is a type of fantasy writing, for all ofthese works attempt to accomplish the cultural and personal work that lies at the heart...

The aim of the research paper is to answer the question: in what way does Metropolitan John (Zizioulas) of Pergamon understand the teach- ing about the (im)mortality of the soul, and how can the Metropolitan’s attitude be incorporated in contemporary systematic theology. In this context, after the introductory statements, the paper begins with a de- tailed review and analysis of the question of the (im)mortality of the soul, primarily in the Metropolitan’s early works. It focuses on the ques- tion of the place of this teaching in his final and most mature work — Remembering the Future: Toward an Eschatological Ontology. On these grounds, the paper tends to point out the kthysiological-christological- soteriological setting of the stated theme in the Metropolitan’s work, opening up its ontological perspective and foundation.

Stylistic phenomenon of Violin sonatas by Franz Schubert

Judith Shklar’s liberalism of fear, a political and philosophical standpoint that emerges in her mature work, has ostensibly two defining characteristics. It is a sceptical approach that puts cruelty first among the vices. For that reason, it is considered to be both set apart from mainstream liberalism, in particular the liberalism of J. S. Mill and John Rawls, but also an important source of influence for political realists and nonideal theorists. However, I argue here that, in putting cruelty first among the vices, Shklar also offers a value monist approach to political thought, one that she shares with Mill and Rawls as well. Each claims to have identified the general rule for the resolution of moral conflicts, although they disagree about what that rule is. Therefore, Shklar’s mature work combines scepticism with value monism. As such, it represents a radical departure from the value pluralist (and sceptical) approach to moral conflict evident in her early work. Her commentators have not noticed either her mature monism or the move away from her earlier value pluralism, and this is explained by a tendency to see her mature work as offering simply a sceptical alternative to mainstream liberalism.

Nietzsche, die Orchestikologie und das dissipative Denken

What do the victims of tyranny owe each other? In this paper, I examine whether they can be condemned for betraying their friends, and I do so through a novel interpretation of Judith Shklar’s political thought. Shklar is a widely acknowledged and significant influence on non-ideal theory and political realism. However, there is also a previously unnoticed transformation between her early and mature work, for although she remains a sceptic her approach to moral conflict changes from value pluralism to value monism. In addition, it is only in her mature work, as a monist, she believes tyranny cancels obligations of justice. I argue here that Shklar’s monism fails, and this in turn has important implications for political realism and non-ideal theory. While attention has been focused on developing a sceptical critique of ideal theory, this interpretation of Shklar’s work illustrates that greater awareness is needed of the pitfalls of monist strands of scepticism.

This article discusses the philosophy of Alain Badiou from the perspective of a formulation that we believe represents it succinctly: the dialectic of formalization. The main thesis of the article is that Badiou’s doctrine of the four truth procedures (politics, science, love, and art) can be understood as a doctrine of a dialectical realization of new and universal forms in the world. The dialectic of formalization announces a double procedure – an autonomous and creative procedure for the production of a new true form in the world and a process of the formation of continuity in discontinuity. Moreover, the dialectic of formalization represents a connection between Badiou’s mature work and his early writings from the late 1960s. Even though in the 1960s and 1970s Badiou had not yet introduced the concepts of subject and truth in the sense that he understands them today, it is possible to support the thesis that there is an indisputable connection between Badiou’s early concept of formalization and his later concept of generic truth procedure. We will try to show that the dialectic of formalization (Badiou’s own formulation) designates the continuity between Badiou’s early and mature work.

Sergei Prokofiev's operatic career exhibits a multitude of exceptional successes and failures, political and cultural idiosyncrasies and compromises, and bold convictions and uncertainties. Prokofiev considered himself an opera composer and showed his affinity for it from an early age, completing his first opera by age nine and continuing his work in the art form for the remainder of his life and career. Each opera takes on vastly different subjects, topics and time periods, evidence of his diverse selection of libretto sources. For his mature works, Prokofiev adapted literary works from Russia's nineteenth-century greats (Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy), a Russian twentieth-century symbolist author (Bryusov) and two socialist-realist authors (Katayev and Polevoy). He adapted two other operas from the eighteenth century with Richard Brinsley Sheridan's comic opera libretto forThe Duennaand Carlo Gozzi's fiabaL'amore delle tre melarance.

ESC 26, 2000 to situate present work in the context of the past; perhaps that is one of the things Lecker means by “canonical anxieties” (vii). Such anxieties may be the result of the academic debates about canon that have gone on for some time now, or (as I think more likely) they may have deeper economic and political roots and be symptomatic of a loss of confidence in English-Canadian culture itself. The paradox that Lecker’s bibliography should present evidence of such a lot of literary activity in the 1990s and yet prompt such gloomy reflections makes it a document for our times. WORKS CITED Eliot, T.S. “Tradition and the Individual Talent.” Selected Essays. London: Faber, 1934. 13-22. Sutherland, Fraser. “A Vat of Verse: Facts and Observations from a Box of Poetry.” Globe and Mail 20 Feb. 1999, natl. ed.: D12. PAUL DENHAM / University of Saskatchewan Margaret Atwood. A Quiet Game and Other Early Works, edit­ ed by Kathy Chung and Sherrill Grace. Edmonton: Juvenilia Press, 1997. xv, 27. $8.00 paper; Charlotte Bronte. My Angria and the Angrians, edited by Juliet McMaster, Leslie Robertson, and the students of English 672 at the University of Alberta. Edmonton: Juvenilia Press, 1997. xxii, 86. $8.00 paper; and Margaret Laurence. Embryo Words: Margaret Laurence’s Early Writings, edited by Nora Foster Stovel et al. Edmonton: Juve­ nilia Press, 1997. xxiv, 67. $8.00 paper. Juliet McMaster’s Juvenilia Press, founded in 1992, has now produced almost twenty volumes. This is an impressive achieve­ ment for a project that (as she described it in English Studies in Canada in 1996) began with an undergraduate English class edition of Jane Austen’s Jack and Alice and has gone on to in­ clude scholars and students outside of the University of Alberta 366 REVIEWS and texts ranging from Ashford to Atwood. Its primary goal was pedagogical, and “student involvement was of the essence of the project” (9). The intention, however, was also to make avail­ able “the early work of known writers” with an introduction that relates the text to the author’s mature work, annotations that provide scholarly background and commentary, and ama­ teur illustrations that maintain the deliberately “light-hearted” flavour of the enterprise (13). The group of essays that appeared in English Studies in Canada in 1998 further elaborates and theorizes the work o f this unique and innovative Press. The edition of My Angria and the Angrians, written by Charlotte Bronte in 1834 at age eighteen, supervised by Juliet McMaster, introduced by Leslie Robertson (assistant editor of the Press), and annotated by the students of English 672 at the University of Alberta, is a representative volume in this se­ ries. McMaster’s Preface situates this text within the personal and fictional worlds of the imaginative Bronte children. Robert­ son’s Introduction analyses the biographical background, theo­ rizes (using Edward Said) the British imperialism of this repre­ sentation of Africa and critiques the connections between this self-indulgent romance and Bronte’s controlled, mature realism. The 159 student annotations occasionally verge on pedantry but provide a generally useful reference to the Brontes’s biograph­ ical allusions and (along with the “Family Trees” ) to “the An­ grians’ tortuously complex familial relationships” (63). The il­ lustrations and illuminated capitals are appropriately childlike. Typically of this series, the fifty-nine page text is not it­ self the result of original editing; it uses as a copy-text Chris­ tine Alexander’s An Edition of the Early Writings of Charlotte Bronte (1991). This novella presents the melodramatic story of a brooding Byronic hero, his aristocratic liaisons, and po­ litical intrigues through a nine-year-old narrator who sounds like a middle-aged wordsmith. Despite the obvious weaknesses of this text, some interesting examples of parody, satire, and gothic horror reveal the literary potential of the young Char­ lotte Bronte. However, although in her Introduction Robertson relied on the apprenticeship model, in her recent article she makes a good case for revisioning this novel, not as a “mere 367 ESC 26, 2000 apprentice work” (298), but as an important form of “play” whereby the Bronte children asserted mastery over their world. More clearly...