Authorial Comments Research Articles

Rereading the Imagist Poetry in the Light of the Deconstructionist

Imagism is probably the most important single movement in English-language poetry of the twentieth century. Hardly any prominent poet in that generation went untouched by imagist theory and practice. It emphasized a romantic return to origins, a simplication of needless complexities, a zealous Puritanical stripping-away of the excrescences which had attached themselves to the art of poetry like barnacles to a clean hull. Amony the luxuries to be relinquished were traditional meter and rhyme, artificial poetic diction, superfluous verbiage, rhetoric, philosophizing and editorializing, and transitional filler. The poem was to be made as economical and functional as possible, and it chiefly present images unmediated without authorial commentary. However the Imagist poems turn out to be obscure and largely inaccessible to common public due to the focus on the immediacy of time, impersonality of viewpoint and irregularity of form. It is because, on the one hand, the imagist poets innovated boldly, to free the poetry from the shackles of old conventions, on the other hand, the imagist poets depicted the apprehensive inner world and the crisis of belief after the World War I, instead of the traditional abject of loyalty and perpetuity. However the sensational, chaotic and elusive form of language in the Imagist poems may obtain its justification in the Deconstructionist doctrine of human language which is characterized with a revolt against logocentrism and phonocentrism and which attempts to restore the prototype of language that was sensuous, intuitive and metaphorical in essence. The paper falls into two parts. It begins with a basic introduction of the Deconstructionism. Next, it endeavors to unfold the nature of the Imagist poetic language in the light of the Deconstructionist interpretation of language, which is conducted through a meticulous investigation of the Imagist poetry in terms of its instantaneity of emotion, fragmentation of structure and multiplied explications of the metaphorical language

Ostrich Legs by Alicia Kozameh (review)

Reviewed by: Ostrich Legs by Alicia Kozameh Janis Breckenridge Alicia Kozameh. Ostrich Legs. Trans, David E. Davis. San Antonio: Wings Press, 2013. 192p. With Ostrich Legs (2013), David E. Davis has crafted a graceful and fluid translation that now makes available to an English-speaking audience Alicia Kozameh’s highly poetic, semi-autobiographical novel recounting childhood and adolescence. Patas de avestruz (1988) narrates the complexities of growing up with a severely disabled older sister (Mariana) in a rather repressive household while simultaneously chronicling Alcira’s (the author’s alter ego) development as a young writer. The work has been aptly described as a “modern, feminine bildungsroman” structured around the dichotomous bodies of the siblings: actively healthy versus passively infirm, sexually curious rather than seemingly asexual and, perhaps most importantly with respect to this recent translation, profoundly adept at self-expression in sharp contrast to being nearly silenced due to a pronounced linguistic deficiency (see Erna Pfeiffer, “El cuerpo-texto en Patas de avestruz de Alicia Kozameh”). The fictionalized memoir plots the sisters’ ever-evolving relationship; the intense and highly charged bond culminates with the tremendous physical and emotional impact that the spastic girl’s eventual death has upon Alcira. From the opening paragraph of this deeply personal tale the daunting task faced by the translator becomes apparent: how to adequately render an experimental text that features various registers including sustained incorporation of child-like pronunciation together with a lack of understanding of syntax and verb tenses. David E. Davis successfully maintains the lyricism and wonderment of the original Spanish text—effectively transferring unique pronunciation patterns and lexical curiosities into English as well as creatively transposing grammatical errors and inconsistencies. For example, in the second sentence of the text, “hambe” (9)—Mariana’s distorted enunciation for “hambre”—becomes appropriately rendered as the child-like utterance “hungwy” (3) for hungry. Examples abound throughout the novel. To cite just a few: “moobie” for movie (43; “zine” in Patas, 45), “tathi” for taxi (61; “tazi” in Patas, 62) and “buth” for bus (63; ónimu in Patas, 64). Far more difficult to convey in a foreign language are the young narrator’s humorous musings regarding her native tongue as she begins to grasp its nuances. In one instance Alcira contemplates the purpose of the expression con más razón (“even more so”), one of her aunt’s favored muletillas or fillers; curiously, this linguistic term is translated as the rather serious sounding expression “Spanish catch phrases” (137; Patas 132) rather than the more literal and catchy “little crutches.” An even more pointed example occurs when Alcira ponders the significance and [End Page 166] logic of the newly acquired Spanish words meaning fish, pez and pescado (Patas 52)—the former referring to a live creature and the latter to something dead that has become food for consumption—in relation to the contested existence of her fish-like imaginary friend. In translating a child’s internal monologue on the nature of language and reality that simultaneously demonstrates the girl’s vivid imagination, fascination with language and proclivity for endless reflection, Davis relies upon the terms tuna and tuna fish (51) to skillfully convey a distinction that simply does not exist in English. Apart from linguistic anomalies, another challenging aspect of translation involves discretion regarding whether to decode or otherwise identify and explain culturally specific references. In the case of Ostrich Legs, Davis opts to maintain the original text’s cultural references (rather than substitute them) and at the same time entirely avoids disrupting the novel’s narrative flow with cumbersome footnotes. In this way, Mariana’s pronunciation of dulce de leche as dulcelete (Patas 15), which becomes rendered simply as “dulthelete” in the English (9), might remain inexplicable to a reader unfamiliar with the rather decadent confection. In parallel fashion, occasional references to pop culture icons such as Pedrito Rico (a wildly popular Spanish singer, dancer and actor who began to make frequent visits to Argentina during the mid-late 1950s) remain embedded in the text without authorial commentary. Ostensibly such figures are immediately recognizable to a Spanish-speaking reader; however, they most likely will be far less familiar to an Anglo readership. Thus, as with...

Julie Byrd Clark: Multilingualism, Citizenship, and Identity: Voices of Youth and Symbolic Investments in an Urban, Globalized World

In this book, Julie Byrd Clark sets out to disentangle ‘‘the complex interrelationships between globalization, multilingualism, and identity’’ (p. ix) using interview data from nine young adult bior multilingual Italian-Canadians, training to teach French. The book uses its interview data to create an account of the way these teacher trainees construct their identities in relation to others around them, their family history, their ethnolinguistic context and their social and professional aspirations. The purpose is to shed greater light on the lived experience of multilingual individuals in a globalising world, and in a nation (Canada) with a complex and politically heated national language and immigration backdrop of its own. The main undercurrent of the book is that the interviewees—and by implication others in similar situations—make significant ‘‘symbolic investments’’ in different language practices, which reveal their perceptions of themselves as citizens (local, national and global). Analyses of interview data are frequently supplemented by authorial commentary and personal reflection, a methodology referred to throughout as ‘‘critical sociolinguistic ethnography, discourse analysis, and reflexivity’’. Empirically the book is constrained to Italian-Canadians, but is pitched as mappable onto other ethnolinguistic contexts. Ultimately Byrd Clark endorses greater flexibility—or ‘‘wiggle room’’ as she affectionately puts it periodically—in these kinds of identity-making practices. The book is fundamentally problematic for a number of reasons. First is its engagement with theory. Although the idea of ‘‘symbolic investments’’ is a promising one, and lends itself to such a small-scale sensitive ethnography, it is not substantially developed, or sufficiently backed up with reference to relevant theory. There is a tendency to dip superficially into theories from famous (fashionable?) authors, like habitus, linguistic markets, capital, power, agency. Authors are seldom cited in detail, or even by page, and consistently over-reduced for point/counterpoint. Other, more

Le roman comme déploiement symbolique du rêve : la thématique du rêve dans l’oeuvre de Milan Kundera [The Novel as an Emblematic Developing of a Dream : On the Topic of Dream in Milan Kundera’s Work

The Novel as an Emblematic Developing of a Dream : On the Topic of Dream in Milan Kundera’s Work The study is focused on the motif (or rather subject matter) of dream in Milan Kundera’s work. The examination of this motif doesn’t restrict itself neither to Kundera’s authorial comments nor to the frequency of this motif in his writings. Dream (dreamy experience) is treated here as the proper origin (birth, cause, motif) of writing (narration, novel). Since the author can be declared as the interpreter of dreams, it is in this way possible to reconstruct originality (and origin) of authorial subject (which classical narratology systematically suppressed). This also enables to inscribe non-textual subjects (author and reader) into the space of semiosis. From this point of view it’s possible to infer that the reader finds common ground with the author only insofar as the reader handles the novel as the developing analogy instead of insisting on distinctive objectiveness.

Thucydides, Pericles, and Periclean Imperialism by Edith Foster

BOOKREVIEWS 243 Thucydides, Pericles, and Periclean Imperialism. By Edith FOSTER. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Pp. xi + 256. Hardcover,£50.00/$85.00.ISBN: 978-0-521-19266-8. Thucydides stands like a champion wrestler, challenging all opponents to interpret his History. Each new reader enters the ring, confident that some new and better hold will pin the historian down, only to find him slip from hisor her grasp. In recent years a major issue hasbeen Thucydides’ position on Athenianimperial policy, in particular whether and to what extent he sees a difference between Pericles and his successors. In Thucydides, Pericles, and Periclean Imperialism, Edith Foster presents a sensitive reading of the text that builds especially on the observations of Strasburger and Stahl. Foster’s principal “new hold” is an analysis of references to materials of war (collectively, paraskeuê), which she studies exhaustively in the Archaeology and more selectively thereafter. Using contrasting close readings of the narrative and the speeches from the beginning of the history to 2.65, Foster argues that the differences indicate that Pericles is not a spokesman for the author, nor does Thucydides the narrator share the chauvinism, imperialism , and materialism displayed in Pericles’ speeches as reported. On the contrary, Thucydides writes partly “to show the price of Periclean materialism and imperialism ”(3). In the first chapter, Foster’s analysis of the Archaeology, including the thalassocracy of Minos, the Trojan War, and the later increase in naval power of Corinth and other cities, focuses on the destructive effects of the growth of resources for war. Sparta and Athens were able initially to become stronger without “the acquisitive habit,” but they too succumbed after the Persian Wars. Foster concludes, “The Archaeology in fact shows that each successive phase of Greek history wrecks itself on warfare and the attempt to exploit others and showcases the psychologies (the love of gain and glory, the desire to be free of labor, the fear of domination) that motivate the continuous appearance of the imperialistic drive” (43). The next chapter on the conflict between Corinth and Corcyra illustrates further how “the mere possession of a navy moves human beings to irrational recklessness” (78) and how events quickly escape human control. Moreover, the revolt of Potidaea put Athens under an enormous strain, which revealed a serious weaknessinthe imperial ideal: archê did not guarantee security. In the Pentacontaetia Thucydides displays the acme of Athenian power, but, for Foster, here too the Egyptian disaster and the revolts of the allies illustrate Athens ’precarious hold onempire. 244 BOOK REVIEWS In chapter four, Foster turns to the character Pericles, commenting, “Thucydides makes him symbolic for the tragedy of Athens and his age” (121). Here, exceptionally, Foster’s analysis moves beyond Thucydides’ text to speculate, following Davies, on the possible effect of the Alcmeonid curse on Pericles’ psychology and politics, especially the intransigence of the first speech (129). Foster’s own anti-Periclean bias may lay behind her criticism of Pericles for misleadingly speaking of the Spartans as autourgoi, ignoring the fact that farm work was done by Helots, not Spartans (142–43). In fact, Pericles speaks of Peloponnêsioi, not Spartiates, at 1.141.3. Turning in the following chapter to Pericles ’ indirect speech at 2.13, Foster demonstrates the effectiveness of oratio obliqua here. Thucydides can foreground Pericles’ relentless attention to money and his readiness to count temple dedications and even the statue of Athena as wealth available to support the war, while adding authorial comments. However, whether Thucydides consciously distanced himself from Pericles here, as Foster argues, is less certain: the gar clause at 2.13.3, for instance, which Foster reads as a Thucydidean comment revealing the shaky underpinnings of imperial wealth (168), could equally be a clarification by Pericles himself. However Foster rightly insists that the vivid, highly emotional description of the abandonment of Attica (2.14–17) illustrates the non-monetary cost, minimized in Pericles’ speeches, of the divorce of the city from its land. Finally, in considering Pericles’ last two speeches and the account of the plague, Foster contrasts the speeches, seen as an “idealized and evasive presentation of Athenian imperial rule” with Thucydides’ “inexorably precise” description of the...

A Glass of Water (review)

Reviewed by: A Glass of Water Sean McCray A Glass of Water. By Jimmy Santiago Baca. New York: Grove Press, 2009. 215 pages, $23.00. Jimmy Santiago Baca's first novel is as notable for its lyrical prose and humane treatment of the plight of immigrant workers in the southern United States as it is for its novelistic shortcomings. Though Baca renders the experience of immigrant laborers honestly, A Glass of Water's thematic impact is undercut by intrusive, if earnest, authorial commentary and characters that border on the stereotypical. The novel follows the Lucero family through father Casimiro's trek from the desert into New Mexico and into the adult lives of his two sons, Lorenzo and Vito. Casimiro's story is presented as archetypical of his generation; his efforts at building a better life in America are stymied by a corrupt and exploitative labor system and an endemic Chicano passivity. In contrast, Lorenzo and Vito reject the tropes that hard work, loyalty, and perseverance can affect a realization of the American Dream. Lorenzo, with the help of a graduate student and the proceeds from marijuana [End Page 195] smuggling, creates a populist utopia on his overseer's land, complete with improved labor conditions, a school, and a soccer field. Vito becomes a boxer, whose consistent destruction of a series of minority opponents and populist post-fight speeches inspire a following of Chicano fans. Episodes throughout the novel are punctuated by the musings of Casimiro's murdered wife, Nopal. These semi-lyrical intrusions often foreshadow events in the lives of her husband or sons. Too often, however, Nopal serves as an explanatory voice, as if Baca felt that his prose were insufficient to the task of making a point. In order to emphasize even more the struggles of Mexican American laborers, Baca introduces a love interest—alternately for Lorenzo and Vito—who is all too conveniently a graduate student ethnographer tasked with uncovering the effects of oppression on the culture and language of migrant workers. Carmen is depthless in her tear-spilling sympathy for Lorenzo and the workers and equally two-dimensional in the infrequent paragraphs written from her point of view. A Glass of Water functions better, however, when ancillary characters speak out from the margins of the plot. One older fellow comments, "I had all the fantasies as a young man, that I was special in my talents, but it turns out I was very common," and in contrast another, younger man says, "Chicano life is unbearable because we make it so. … [W]here's the story in scurrying away like mice from la migra" (74). The disparity between the fantasy of virtuously pursuing the American Dream and the reality of what it takes to achieve it that plays out melodramatically in the narrative of Casimiro and his sons is more subtly and effectively articulated in such asides. Baca's novel is, in the end, frustrating for its stylistic deficiencies but laudable in its exploration of a topic that remains largely on the periphery of the broader issue of immigration. A Glass of Water examines the human toll of immigrant labor practices from the point of view of those inside the workforce, who believed in the myths of success and freedom only to realize too late that neither can be achieved. Lorenzo and Vito, however, provide an alternative to either passive acceptance of oppression or self-reflective paralysis; in their stories, culminating in revenge for Nopal, the brothers posit Baca's most profound and brutal assessment of the violent choices Chicano and other immigrant workers must make for their survival. [End Page 196] Sean McCray University of Nevada, Las Vegas Copyright © 2010 The Western Literature Association

The Subordination of Humanism: Young More’s ‘Profitable’ Work, The Life of John Picus

This article revisits the often argued question of the relationship between More’s English Life of Picus and his Latin original. However, instead of emphasizing More’s transformation of his humanist model into what is essentially a work of medieval piety, the article arrives at the conclusion that humanism and faith in More’s text mutually reinforce each other. By looking in detail at some of More’s changes to Gianfrancesco’s Latin biography, especially his striking omissions of intrusive authorial comments, the paper will argue that More turns his model into a much more open and contradictory text, thus provoking his readers to reflect upon their own state of soul in comparison with Pico’s. In addition, More’s transformation of his appended material from Pico’s writings also makes it clear that his humanism remains essentially subordinate to his faith.

Exegeting the Passio of St Agatha: patriarch Methodios (†847) on sexual differentiation and the perfect ‘man’

This article challenges the widespread belief that Byzantine authors of the Dark Ages showed no interest in anthropological speculation. It focuses on patriarch Methodios of Constantinople († 847) who developed a highly original exegesis of Late Antique hagiographical texts, which he presented in the form of authorial comments in his paraphrases of these texts. His Encomium of St Agatha, which is based on the Passio of the saint, reveals a keen interest in the significance of gender and gender-related roles within the Christian belief system. Analysis of select passages shows that Methodios no longer subscribed to the widely held Late Antique belief that human perfection necessitated the dissociation from gender and gender-related roles, and that he therefore radically redefined such dissociation as an intermediary stage leading towards the sanctification of such urges through a redirection towards Christ.

Acts of Persuasion in Jane Austen’s Novels

The article attempts to describe the inner world of the characters in Jane Austen’s works from the perspective of the acts of persuasion. The detailed investigation reveals that the characters who, according to the authorial comments, have a low level of consciousness and moral values, often try to make their speech as persuasive as possible. They make use of their appearance, experience and the trust they enjoy. Very often the efficiency or failure of a certain act of persuasion depends on the expense the speaker is subjected to the character or opposes him. Those with a higher level of consciousness and morality hardly ever attempt to impose their opinion on others. Endowed with self-awareness they manage to preserve their own way of thinking and the ability to judge correctly.

Metaphor in the Author's Comments

Metaphor is the most characteristic element of a literary text since it reflects the individual style of the author and provides the reader with some information about the secret part of his/her creativity.The article investigates the metaphors in D.H. Lawrence’s authorial comments in his stories. Authorial comments are one of the methods used in poetic speech to provide a more complete picture of the personalities of the characters involved and their speech characteristics.

Chronicle of the Third Crusade. A Translation of the Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi by Helen J. Nicolson

108BOOK REVIEWS abroad,foreigners in England, and pilgrimage within England and Scotland,with some excellent, lively material. Webb introduces each chapter with a helpful summary, setting the scene and referring to some of the excerpts to follow. Chapter 4, "Help and Hazard: The Pilgrims' Experience," is particularly interesting , touching upon some often-ignored aspects of this commonplace of medieval life, including one case that resembles a modern lawsuit for false advertising (pilgrims who had unwisely relied upon Rome's "proclamation of safe-conduct" [p. 106]). The next brief chapter, too, is one of the more engaging : "Remembering Pilgrimage: Souvenirs," contains apposite authorial comments , and sources, for the trinket business in its technical as well as tawdry aspects. The professional medievalist will probably enjoy this collection, which is a convenient teaching tool, as a stimulus to reflection rather than research. (Though most of the excerpts are in print, Webb includes some unpublished material from Italian archives.) Since the intended audience seems to be the student interested in this facet of medieval life, one hopes that a paperback edition will be forthcoming, given the price of the hardback. One might add, to Webb's extensive bibliography of sources, source collections, and secondary works, Brian Spencer's Pilgrim Souvenirs & Secular Badges: Salisbury & South Wiltshire Museum Medieval Catalogue, F'art 2 (Salisbury, 1990), and Linda Davidson and Maryjane Dunn-Wood's Pilgrimage in the Middle Ages: A Research Guide (NewYork, 1993). Diana Webb is to be thanked for combing a great deal of printed (and some archival) materials in an imaginative fashion with an eye to the ordinary as well as the unusual, and in providing succinct, well-crafted introductions to each of the chapters in her enjoyable, and useful, book. R. C. Finucane Oakland University, Michigan Chronicle of the Third Crusade. A Translation of the Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi. By Helen J. Nicolson. [Crusade Texts in Translation 3] (Brookfield, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing. 1997. Pp. ix, 409. $72.95.) This excellent translation of Stubbs's Rolls Series edition (1864) of the most comprehensive, near-contemporary history of the Third Crusade will be an immense boon to all students of the crusade and of the crusading movement in general. It has long been accepted that the history, though strictly speaking anonymous, was compiled c. 1220 by Richard de Templo, prior of the Augustinian priory of Holy Trinity, London. In 1962 Hans Eberhard Mayer showed that it was an amalgam of two eyewitness narratives: the first a Latin history, which Mayer called IP 1 (Itinerarium Peregrinorum I) of events up to the death of Archbishop Baldwin of Canterbury (November 19, 1 190)—a date which, curi- BOOK REVIEWS109 ously, is nowhere mentioned by Dr. Nicolson in her otherwise very helpful notes—and the second, IP 2, based on the Anglo-Norman Estoire de la Guerre Sainte by Ambroise. In deciding to translate Stubbs's edition she took the simplest and most sensible course since he had taken as his base manuscript an expanded text, including some matter from Howden and Diceto which was tacked on later in the thirteenth century. Here then we have the most complete version of the chronicle in readily accessible form. Dr. Nicolson has successfully achieved her aim of producing readable modern English while staying close to the original Latin. Just occasionally she has amplified in ways which could mislead . For example, the addition of the word 'Europe' when it is not there in the Latin (Book I, cc. 10 and 11) might deceive those studying ideas of Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. My one regret is that the opportunity to provide a full translation of IP 1 , as well as of Richard de Templo's text, was not quite grasped. This would have required no more than to give the former in the footnotes on those rare occasions, as in Book I, cc. 11, 25, 33, and 40, when Richard de Templo altered IPl 's words. Dr. Nicolson has provided an admirably lucid introduction, discussing the relationship between Richard de Templo's text and its sources—though without considering Hannes Möhring's suggestion that IPl could have been written as late as early 1 194, nor using...

Introduction to the Paratext

HE LITERARY WORK consists, exhaustively or essentially, of a text, that is to say (a very minimal definition) in a more or less lengthy sequence of verbal utterances more or less containing meaning. But this text rarely appears in its naked state, without reinforcement and accompaniment of a certain number of productions, themselves verbal or not, like an author's name, a title, a preface, illustrations. One does not always know if one should consider that they belong to text or not, but in any case they surround it and prolong it, precisely in order to present it, in usual sense of this verb, but also in its strongest meaning: to make it present, to assure its presence in world, its reception and its consumption, in form, nowadays at least, of a book. This accompaniment, of varying size and style, constitutes what I once christened elsewhere,' in conformity with frequently ambiguous meaning of this prefix in French2--consider, I said, adjectives like parafiscal or paramilitary-the paratext of work. Thus paratext is for us means by which a text makes a book of itself and proposes itself as such to its readers, and more generally to public. Rather than with a limit or a sealed frontier, we are dealing in this case with a threshold, or-the term Borges used about a preface-with a vestibule which offers to anyone and everyone possibility either of entering or of turning back. An undecided zone3 between inside and outside, itself without rigorous limits, either towards interior (the text) or towards exterior (the discourse of world on text), a border, or as Philippe Lejeune said, the fringe of printed text which, in reality, controls whole reading.4 This fringe, in effect, always bearer of an authorial commentary either more or less legitimated by author, constitutes, between text and what lies outside it, a zone not just of transition, but of transaction; privileged site of a pragmatics and of a strategy, of an action on public in service, well or

Authorial Comments in Lina Kostenko’s “Skifs’ka odisseia”

In the wake of structuralism which gained prominence during the I960' s there emerged an array of literary theories and methodologies. Even an incomplete list of them would include reader-response criticism, deconstruction, semiotics, hermeneutics, reception theories, psychoanalytic criticism, feminist criticism, and various combinations of the above theoretical precepts. Although there are obvious and substantial variations in the methodologies and objectives in the aforementioned tenets of scholarship, many of them are predicated on a premise that is pivotal in structuralist criticism. Consequently, regardless of whether they perceive literature as a process of communication, as a system of signs, as a system of codes or concentrate on the psychological responses of the readers, the promulgators of the above methodologies regard texts as the sole premise for literary studies. To put it in other words, authors do not signify, only literary texts signify. As a result, in most of the above mentioned literary approaches authors of belles-lettres are relegated to a subordinate, or even to a superfluous role. Although this may be disconcerting to some writers, certain genres and literary works can indeed be studied, duly understood and appreciated without any knowledge of the author's life or views. But this does not hold true for all literary texts. In some the views of the author are not only an integral part of the text, but also an important signifier. This is obvious when one reads a work like Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy which contains not only an abundance of digressions, but even digressions on digressions which compel the reader to take the author's views into account. This holds true for a number of novels as well as narrative poems, written in the past and in recent times, where the poets express their personal views deliberately and quite explicitly. Narrative texts with authorial comments did not escape the attention of structuralist theoreticians and some of them have argued that such com-

After the Fall: The World of Graham Greene's Thrillers

Although such statements from Greene have tended to discourage critical consideration of his entertainments, if we overlook the perfunctory tone we can see the remark revealing his understanding that such formulaic literature as spy novels demands a special structure of narrative conventions not encountered in serious or, to use J.A. Cawelti's term, fiction-conventions which, as critics like Cawelti, Robert Warshow and Ralph Harper argue, both determine and are determined by the expectations readers bring to these works. Yet, despite his labelling Stamboul Train, The Confidential Agent, The Ministry of Fear and Our Man in Havana as entertainments, and authorial comments like the one quoted above notwithstanding, I shall argue that Greene deliberately sets out to challenge-if not frustrate-reader expectations by either departing from the basic conventions of the formulaic narrative world or else utilizing these conventions in such a way as to blur the line separating formulaic from mimetic fiction. I do not wish to suggest, however, that these entertainments are mere literary games in which a clever author plays with his readers' sensibilities. Like Conrad's The Secret Agent before them, Greene's thrillers represent a attempt to establish the spy novel as an appropriate vehicle for exploring the tensions, ambiguities, darkness and sense of alienation which characterize the experience of modernity in the twentieth century. The most significant feature of formulaic narratives-spy novels, westerns, gothic romances, science fiction fantasies, detective thrillers-as defined by Warshow is self-referentiality:

Edith Wharton's Use of France

Henry James, on his first acquaintance with her work, believed that Edith Wharton would do best to concentrate her fiction on a subject where, by the 19oos, she was probably more at home than he was; the American social scene. 'She must be tethered in native pastures, even if it reduces her to a back-yard in New York.'t Critics have tended to follow this lead, building her reputation on those novels where she attacks the American attitude to women (The House of Mirth (190o5), The Custom of the Country (1913)) and exposes the Puritan inheritance of the American past, either grimly in the country (Ethan Frome (1 91 ) ) or affectionately in the city (The Age ofl Innocence (1 92o)). Yet powerful as this body of work is, it often lacks the immediacy which James had hoped Edith Wharton could command. There is a stiffness about The House of Mirth, especially in the authorial commentary on the heroine's higher nature, and there is a satirical brittleness about The Custom of the Country. Both are very episodic, and the episodes vary in quality; it is hardly a high point in American literature when Bertha Dorset pronounces in a voice of singular distinctness, 'Miss Bart is not going back to the yacht' (The House of Mirth, Book 2, Chapter 3)! In fact James had begun to modify his original advice (that Edith Wharton should stick to her Americanness) by the time he had read The Custom of the Country. He now felt that in the de Chelles episode in that novel she had passed by a 'magnificent subject' which ought to have been her main theme. This subject was the unprepared entry of a crude young American woman 'into the mysterious labyrinth of family life in the old French aristocracy'.2 It is, of course, the 'international' theme again. Actually, to be fair to Edith Wharton on this point, which is the object of this essay, she had already before 1913 shown great skill in handling the Franco-American subject in a series of works which have been too little read. The labyrinth of French family life, where James had trodden tentatively before, held no secrets for her. She was probably more deeply steeped in French life than he was. This process began early. Edith Wharton's parents, who had themselves personally witnessed the sacking of the Tuileries Palace in the Revolution of 1848, had her there in 1870o, for the next round as it were, though in the event she just missed the burning down. After I88o, when she was eighteen, she was in Paris virtually every year. Her father died in France

Annie Howells and The Vacation of the Kelwyns

William Dean Howells' posthumously published novel The Vacation of the Kelwyns (1920), as Richard Chase has pointed out, is a charming narrative with a "pervasive quality of reminiscence, calm wisdom, and idyllic pleasure in life."1 Based loosely on the author's recollections of the summer of the American Centennial, the novel was obviously inspired by the same over- whelmingly retrospective mood reflected in his five volumes of personal reminiscences beginning with A Boy's Town (1890) and ending with Years of My Youth (1916). In form and style The Kelwyns is very discursive and informal, although its leisurely digressions and frequent authorial comments consort quite agreeably with the languid atmosphere which pervades the work as a whole. It is possible, furthermore, to discern considerable unity in the three motifs which Ho wells brings together into a suggestive, interconnected pattern. These three motifs include the familiar study of commonplace people and incidents which was Howells' most prominent stock in trade, a semi-allegorical love story ending in a reconciliation of contrasting character types, and certain extraordinary elements which seem related to the literary traditions of the romance. Parallels and antecedents for these three elements can be found in varying proportions in Howells' earlier work, and theoretical justification for their use in The Vacation of the Kelwyns can be discovered in his eclectic statements about the art of fiction. But the unusual form and tone of the novel can also be partially explained by an appeal to its biographical background. Specifically, the meaning of The Vacation of the Kelwyns is illuminated by various records relating to the author's relationship with his younger sister Annie.

The Old French and Chaucerian Fabliaux: A Study of Their Comic Climax by Thomas D. Cooke

Reviews THOMAS D. CooKE, The Old French and Chaucerian Fabliaux: A Study of Their Comic Climax. Columbia and London: University of Mis­ souri Press, 1978. Pp. 220. $15. The subtitle of this book, which is a reworking of the author's disserta­ tion, is an accurate statement of its delimitations; the title as a whole may mislead Chaucerians into thinking that his work gets as much attention as the Old French material, when in fact Professor Cooke de­ votes only the last eighth of the book to Chaucer's fabliaux and does not deal with all his work in the genre. Recognizing that the most influential fabliau scholarship has been in great part concerned with the sociology of the genre (Bedier, Nykrog, Rychner), Cooke has chosen to consider the tales intrinsically in an attempt to illuminate the nature of their comedy. The introductory chapter offers a succinct statement of his argument: the principal goal of the fabliaux is humor; the most important factor in its achievement is the "comic climax," to which all other elements in the tales are sub­ ordinated; and the climax has two features: "it comes as a surprise, and yet it has been carefully prepared for in such a way that when it comes, it is seen as artistically fitting and appropriate. The tension experienced between the surprise and preparation generates the humor of these tales, and an audience's appreciation of the climax is the deep satisfac­ tion that it feels in seeing the appropriateness of that climax" (p. 13). The next three chapters develop this thesis. In chapter two Cooke explains, using Wayne Booth's distinction between showing and telling, how some of the "more objective aspects" of the fabliaux-characteriza­ tion, setting, actions, dialogue-are manipulated as part of the prepara- STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER tion for the comic climax. Chapter three turns to the more "subjective" role of the narrator and discusses how it too prepares the listener (throughout Cooke rightly stresses fabliau presentation as performance) for the climax through the use of such devices as authorial commentary, formulaic tags, rhetoric, moralizations, and quick insights into a charac­ ter's thoughts. There follows a chapter on the comic climax itself which attempts to categorize the various ways in which the surprise appears: through "discoveries, escapes, tricks, reversals" and other means (p. n8). In the course of these chapters a variety of fabliaux are summarized and discussed according to the categories specified above. Usually Cooke deals with a few tales to illustrate each aspect of preparation and each type of climax, though in the subdivision "tags and formulas" he ex­ amines only one and is content to "suspect" that other tales also put formulaic diction to artistic use (p. 77). There seems to be an inconsistency throughout these chapters between Cooke's intentions and his methods. He is concerned with the merits of fabliau narrative and would like to elevate the genre esthetically. Hence what other critics may deprecate as literary casualness or thinness he can justify as "a deliberate act of artistic selection" (p. 17) in an effort to achieve a successful comic climax. Accordingly, he stresses the artistic integrity of each fabliau (e.g. pp. 45, 96), and it is reasonable to assume that his exposition would give us some detailed analyses of individual stories. Yet the material is organized in such a way that categories and subcategories for the genre as a whole take precedence over sustained attention to specific works; some fabliaux are discussed piecemeal be­ causetheirvariousaspectsoccur indifferentsubdivisions of the taxonomy. Though he frequently acknowledges the inability of such categorizing to do justice to the uniqueness of each text ("unique," in fact, is one of his favorite words), Cooke is unable to escape its consequences, and the re­ sulting fragmentation does not help his attempt to convince us of the careful artistic control that the best fabliaux reveal. He does offer some useful observations about certain stories; but I doubt that as presented here his central thesis is likely to change measurably most readers' opinions of fabliau artistry. Much of what he points to seems fairly basic, and his focus on fabliau economy in the service of...

Vision and Viewpoint in The Mayor of Casterbridge

Research Article| September 01 1968 Vision and Viewpoint in The Mayor of Casterbridge Robert Kiely Robert Kiely Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Nineteenth-Century Fiction (1968) 23 (2): 189–200. https://doi.org/10.2307/2932369 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Robert Kiely; Vision and Viewpoint in The Mayor of Casterbridge. Nineteenth-Century Fiction 1 September 1968; 23 (2): 189–200. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/2932369 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All ContentNineteenth-Century Literature Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1968 By The Regents of the University of California Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

"The Rhetoric of Fiction" and the Poetics of Fictions

The Rhetoric of Fiction has been praised and blamed for saying many things that it does not say, and I am naturally tempted now to set everybody right about it. The invitation to reconsider my book and responses to it is not likely to be repeated, and it would be pleasant to tick off many misreadings, affecting tone of those happily anonymous TLS reviewers who always have last say: Mr. X (his name is Legion) has called me a moral reactionary, because I talk about norms. Yet Mr. X himself has shown, in his own review, that he cannot escape norms, try as he will.... Mr. Y has praised me for finally providing a systematic terminology for criticism of fiction. If he had read more closely, however, he would have discovered that I am not quite so naive as to believe in possibility of.... But even if I could make such corrections interesting, which is unlikely, I doubt very much that I could make them convincing, and they would almost certainly sound petulant: That is not what I meant at all. Those who saw book as a quarrel with fiction, or with modern fiction, or with up-to-date morality and postJamesian fictional techniques are not likely to be swayed by my asserting, however passionately, that they are wrong. Any reader who can believe that book asks novelists to return to Victorian period, that it deplores all irony, that it requires novelist to state his position clearly in authorial commentary, or that it implies a demand for censorship, has developed subtleties of interpretation that would keep him immune from whatever could be said in a short article. Another tempting direction would be to revise book instead of admonishing its readers. I could try once more on that troublesome last chapter. I could recast section on beliefs, as Stuart Tave (and David Hume) have convinced me I should, and I might either rewrite clumsy sections on The Aspern Papers and Journey to End of Night or find examples which would lead fewer readers astray. There might even be a kind of masochistic thrill in public confession and correction of stylistic horrors. But it should be more useful, writing for a new journal like Novel, to resist these forms of self-indulgence and try instead to say something about where we stand, in profession, as we try to write to each other about the novel. Do six years of discussion of my book suggest any reasons for our failure to get anywhere in our criticism of fiction? I think I detect a sense of stagnation and

THE MORALITY OF STERNE’S YORICK

THE relation of Sterne to the Yorick of the Sentimental Journey has been variously interpreted. Some have assumed the two to be identical, even that Sterne's purpose is to demonstrate his own sensitivity and goodness of heart; others that Yorick is the butt of the author's irony and that Sterne laughs at his hero's excessive indulgence in sentimental situations. These extreme views arise from a misunderstanding of Yorick's self-awareness, and of his amusement at the workings of his own thoughts and feelings. Sterne shows how these thoughts and feelings wander, sometimes quite erratically, as they are influenced by continual changes in the situations in which Yorick finds himself. Because Yorick's behaviour depends on the environment of the moment, it is not easy to find firm ground from which to analyse his character; and because Yorick narrates his own experiences, Sterne is effectively prevented from offering any authorial commentary. But these difficulties vanish if one allows Yorick full awareness of the implications of what he writes. A comparison of Yorick's moral principles with those of Sterne gives some authority for doing this. It is possible to piece together Yorick's consciously maintained beliefs about virtuous behaviour and the nature of man, and these prove to be based on consistent ethical principles far from absurd. The Sentimental Journey is not a systematic exposition of thes:c~ beliefs, and it is true that they find expression only as they are prompted by incidents in Yorick's travels. If Sterne is assumed to be critical of Yorick, it is hard to determine how seriously Yorick's views are to be taken. Sterne, however, expresses similar ideas more directly in his sermons, where he is less bound by fictional situations; in fact, the first four volumes of the Sermons make an admirable commentary on the Sentimental Journey.2 For this reason it is useful, \vhile Yorick's ideas are discussed, to compare passages of similar bearing in the sermons in order to show that one does not necessarily lay oneself at the mercy of a jester by taking Yorick seriously. The major part of the Sentimental Journey is concerned with the thoughts and feelings of Yorick. Like anyone else, Yorick holds certain convictions about the nature of man. He believes