Century Readers Research Articles

State of nature or Eden?: Thomas Hobbes and his contemporaries on the natural condition of human beings

State of Nature or Eden? Thomas Hobbes and his Contemporaries on the Natural Condition of Human Beings aims to explain how Hobbes' state of nature was understood by a contemporary readership, whose most important reference point for such a condition was the original condition of human beings at the creation, in other words in Eden. The book uses ideas about how readers brought their own reading of other texts to any reading, that reading is affected by the context in which the reader reads, and that the Bible was the model for all reading in the early modern period. It combines these ideas with the primary evidence of the contemporary critical reaction to Hobbes, to reconstruct how Hobbes' state of nature was read by his contemporaries. The book argues that what determined how Hobbes' seventeenth century readers responded to his description of the state of nature were their views on the effects of the Fall. Hobbes' contemporary critics, the majority of whom were Aristotelians and Arminians, thought that the Fall had corrupted human nature, although not to the extent implied by Hobbes' description. Further, they wanted to look at human beings as they should have been, or ought to be. Hobbes, on the other hand, wanted to look at human beings as they were, and in doing so was closer to Augustinian, Lutheran and Reformed interpretations, which argued that nature had been inverted by the Fall. For those of Hobbes' contemporaries, who shared these theological assumptions, there were important parallels to be seen between Hobbes' account and that of scripture, although on some points his description could have been seen as a subversion of scripture. The book also demonstrates that Hobbes was working within the Protestant tradition, as well as showing how he used different aspects of this tradition. Helen Thornton is an Independent Scholar. She completed her Ph.D. at the University of Hull.

James Bond's “Pussy” and Anglo‐American Cold War Sexuality

The James Bond movies are the longest-running franchise in film history, making 007 the most iconic spy figure in international cinema. Likewise, Fleming's novels enjoyed immense popularity during the Cold War, especially after John F. Kennedy announced in an interview with Life magazine that From Russia with Love ranked as one of his top ten favorite books. In fact, at the time of Fleming's death in August 1964, over thirty million copies of Bond books had been sold, and two years later, at the height of Bond mania, that number had doubled to sixty million (Giblin 24). When inflation is considered in the calculations, the cinematic versions of Fleming's novels reflect equally impressive numbers; From Russia with Love (1963), Goldfinger (1964), Thunderball (1965), Diamonds Are Forever (1971), The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), and GoIdeneye (1997) all rank among the top one hundred highest grossing films of all time (List of Highest Grossing Films). With Penguin Books re-releasing the Bond novels, many people are now turning (or returning) to Fleming's work, and what is perhaps most striking to these twenty-first century readers is the stark political incorrectness that the author employs. As several academic pieces on James Bond reveal,1 the spy clearly views non-British cultures as far inferior to his own, and these views are usually depicted through Fleming's villains who, to Englishmen, are racial others. These characters, which include Bulgarians, Italians, Germans, Yugoslavs, Russians, Koreans, Turks, and Americans, are the victims of shameless racial stereotypes and ethnic slurs (Arms 75). For example, in his first novel, Casino Royale, Fleming describes the local Bulgarians as stupid, but obedient and notes that they are merely used by the Russians simple killings or as fall-guys for more complicated ones (27). In Diamonds Are Forever, American gangsters are described as mostly a lot of Italian bums with monogrammed shirts who spend the day eating spaghetti and meatballs and squirting scent all over themselves (18). Likewise, many of Fleming's villains, in both the novels and the films, possess sexual deviancies and physical abnormalities demarcating them as degenerate enemies. Stromberg, in The Spy Who Loved Me, possesses webbed hands; Scaramanga, in The Man with the Golden Gun, sports three nipples; Kidd and Wmt, in Diamonds Are Forever, are homosexual henchmen, and in the cinematic version of the story, Blofeld dresses in drag. These narrative devices suggest that the James Bond franchise is unwilling to acknowledge that individual differences exist among any nationality or race; the individual is reflective of the whole, and in the world of Bond, no nationality is safe from criticism -except, of course, the British. However, English nationalism is not only embodied in Fleming's villains; the novels also reveal perceived cultural supremacy through the bodies and sexuality of the series' women. In From Russia with Love, Bond is able to seduce Tatiana Romanova, a Russian agent who is originally sent to seduce and destroy Bond; this plot twist links O07's sexual prowess to his national potency by literally placing Britain on top of Russia, as their affair signals Tatiana's desire to defect to the United Kingdom. The link between female bodies and national governments is also apparent in the story when Rosa Klebb, the head of operations and executions for SMERSH, informs Tatiana of her assignment to beguile Bond. Here, Klebb tells the young Russian, You will seduce [Bond]. In this matter, you will have no silly compunctions. Your body belongs to the state. Since your birth, the State has nourished it. Now your body must work for the state (77) -and in fact, Klebb's own body and sexuality reflect the inhumanity and deviancy of the Soviets. Fleming describes Rosa as a neuter who sleeps with both men and women. She might enjoy the act physically, but the instrument was of no importance ... and this psychological neutrality . …

ΟΙ ΠΡΟΤΕΣΤΑΝΤΙΚΕΣ ΙΔΕΕΣ, Ο MARK TWAIN ΚΑΙ ΤΟ ΠΡΟΤΥΠΟ TOΥ ΠΑΙΔΙΚΟΥ ΧΑΡΑΚΤΗΡΑ ΣΤΟ ΜΙΣΣΙΟΝΑΡΙΚΟ ΒΙΒΛΙΟ ΣΤΗΝ ΕΛΛΑΔΑ (19ΟΣ ΑΙ.)

<p>Polly Thanailaki, The protestant ideas, Mark Twain and the model of the child's character in the missionary books in Greece in the 19th century</p><p>This essay explores the historical evolution which was observed in the shaping of the child's model of character in the American literature books of the 19th century within the frame of the protestant ideas and values. It also studies the impact of this development in the missionary books for children in Greece in the same century. We particularly focus on Mark Twain's revolutionary presence in the American children's literature by, firstly, placing emphasis on the change that the great American author made to the strict puritan model with the shaping of a more liberal and «innocent» children's character and, secondly, by analyzing the response which Twain's books met from the Greek 19th century readers. In this paper we argue that Twain's writing, known for realism, biting social satire and memorable children's characters, influenced the Greek children's literature in the end of the 19th century. The translations of his works started taking the lead in the end of this century in Greece. Moreover, this essay studies the re-shaping of the child's character in the missionary books published in Greece in the mid 19th century. The missionaries also followed the new trend for the children's character. The missionary stories appeared less didactic and strict.</p>

Baudelaire and the Art of Memory by J. A. Hiddleston (review)

MLRy 99.1, 2004 205 Hiddleston's study ofthe ambivalence of suicide in Hugo's fiction.This volume clearly demonstrates why Hugo's novels provide such a rich seam of interest forthe twentyfirst -century reader, yet assessment of some of his works remains surprisingly fluid: Noetinger paraphrases Richard B. Grant's judgement of L'Homme qui rit (without necessarily accepting it) as 'franchementmauvais' (p. 137), Hiddleston calls it 'Hugo's most extraordinary and hyperbolic creation' (p. 205), and Thompson proclaims it to be iechef d'oeuvrede Hugo romancier' (p. 187). A thought-provoking volume indeed! University of Liverpool Monica Nurnberg Baudelaire and theArt ofMemory. By J.A. Hiddleston. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1999. xiv + 304 pp. ?59.50. ISBN0-19-815932-3. Scholars of Baudelaire and other nineteenth-century specialists are familiar with the thoroughgoing and incisive criticism of J. A. Hiddleston, especially his work on Baudelaire's art criticism. In this book Hiddleston is at his best: the impressive erudition, the thoroughness of the documentary account, the focus and keenness of the argument, and the critical sensitivity to the Baudelairian text all mark this out as a work of genuine scholarship. Hiddleston's title foregrounds the main strands of his argument, which are that Baudelaire's art (in all its manifestations) and art for Baudelaire are connected to memory in its conception, production, and reception, and the related notion of recognition, which is inherent in the art of criticism itself. The book is organized around key essays by Baudelaire, or artists, which are conceptually framed to suggest Hiddleston's critical trajectory in this book. The Salon de 1846 stands as an emblem to Baudelaire's achievement and contradictions, and to some critical confusion that Hiddleston clarifies, at both the book's beginning and its end. The aesthetic achievement of this early Salon is carefully nuanced and developed by later writings, Hiddleston carefully shows, and key figuressuch as Delacroix, Boudin, Guys, and Manet are explored with close attention to the detail and to their aesthetic significance, and with an eye for the dangers of mere analogy. Manet's presence is important here since, by devoting a chapter to this figure, Hiddleston simultaneously recognizes his significance while foregrounding him to sound a note of caution. Hid? dleston suggestively speculates that Baudelaire's attitude to this great painter is rooted in a perception that art is in decline (generally) and that in Manet particularly there is 'a mismatch between form and medium, and content'. This is cautious speculation, justified by scholarship and principle, but there is a slight sense of disappointment that the promise of a full chapter on Manet does not give rise to more (informed) speculation. There are also chapters on the comic arts and a penetrating analysis of Baudelaire's theory of laughter that considerably adds to our understanding of these works. It is, though, in the chapter on landscape and the painting of modern life that some of the most valuable details and insightful analyses are offered. Here, as elsewhere, Hiddleston's own critical achievement mirrors Baudelaire's, and it is, perhaps, in Hiddleston's erudite symbiosis with the poet, which still manages acute critical distance, that all the power and subtlety of his scholarly arguments lie. All the more so, since what is at issue here is not simply a survey of Baudelaire's art criticism, but an evaluation of the significance and impact of this on Baudelaire's own poetic practice. The Art of Memory is an exceptional and integrating work of scholarship, and a landmark in the field. Royal Holloway, London Sonya Stephens ...

Victor Hugo: romancier de l’abîme ed. by J. A. Hiddleston (review)

204 Reviews distance. Here, Kashiwagi settles his own gaze on the theme of love, and extends the traditional parallel with Sainte-Beuve's Volupte to Raphael's Three Graces, casting Mme de Mortsauf as Chastity, Lady Arabelle Dudley as Pleasure, and Natalie as Beauty. Among the other questions considered in this volume are the identity of Catherine Lescault, the beautiful subject of Frenhofer's painting in Le Chef-d'oeuvre inconnu, and the role of architectural description in La Maison du chat-qui-pelote. All is presented with the critical solidity and intellectual control that specialists have come to expect from Kashiwagi since the publication of his doctoral thesis, La Trilogie des 'Celibataires'd'Honore de Balzac, in 1983 (Paris: Nizet). The main disappointment of the book lies in the insertion of three essays (a comparison of Balzac and Daumier, for example) which have little or no relevance to the central theme. To complain at Takao Kashiwagi's liberal interpretation of his title would nevertheless be churlish. The essay with which he concludes this volume ('Cent ans d'etudes balzaciennes au Japon') shows Japan to have a thriving community of Balzac scholars whose work, one hopes, will one day be made available to a wider readership. University of Bristol Andrew Watts Victor Hugo: romancier de I'abime. Ed. by J. A. Hiddleston. Oxford: Legenda. 2002. xii + 222pp. ISBN 1-900755-58-0. Recent reappraisal of Hugo's ceuvre is well represented in this volume, comprising essays on his fiction by many leading as well as younger scholars under the editorship ofJ.A. Hiddleston. This isa fascinating collection, revealing complexities and shifting sands in place ofthe stark dichotomies once associated with Hugo's novels. Many of the pieces reach beyond the works under discussion to the poetry, travel writing, and graphic work, in all of which 'a rich archive of images, themes, and obsessive motifs is continually reworked and recycled' (Kathryn M. Grossman, p. 120). The firstnine studies deal with individual texts; the book concludes with two thematic studies. Laurence Porter examines tensions in Hugo's political views in the BugJargal and Han d'lslande, in the context of the author's family relationships. In his essay on Le Dernier Jour d'un condamne Frank Bowman provides an extremely useful summary of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century attitudes towards capital punishment before demonstrating that this is essentially a polemic work, enriched by Hugo's prodigious imagination. The bourgeois status ofthe narrator not only lends plausibility to the literate telling of the tale but appeals to that very class which alone had the means of abolishing the death penalty. Rachel Killick, with a fair degree of humour, compares four film versions of Notre-Dame de Paris, including, bravely, the recent Disney cartoon The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. She highlights the strong as well as the weak points of all her chosen versions, but is forced to conclude that while Hugo is able to shift 'constantly between the visual and the visionary' (p. 58), 'transcendence of the visual is exceptionaP (ibid.) in the films. There are two articles on Les Miserables: Jacques Seebacher relates topographical references in the novel to Hugo's travels, particularly around the time of Leopoldine's death; Fiona Cox applies Laingian analysis to the mentality of Javert. Grossman and Delphine Gleizes deal with Les Travailleurs de la mer,the formerrevealing the hidden political engagementin the text. Gleizes concentrates on Hugo's attempts to express movement and i'experience instable du monde' (p. 115). Reproductions here and elsewhere in the volume provide illuminating comparisons, as do the parallels between this piece and that of C. W. Thompson on the fluidity and boundaries in Hugo's ceuvre. Elise Noetinger examines surface and mask in L'Homme qui rit, Yves Gohin analyses the play of oppositions in Quatrevingt-treize, and the volume concludes with MLRy 99.1, 2004 205 Hiddleston's study ofthe ambivalence of suicide in Hugo's fiction.This volume clearly demonstrates why Hugo's novels provide such a rich seam of interest forthe twentyfirst -century reader, yet assessment of some of his works remains surprisingly fluid: Noetinger paraphrases Richard B. Grant's judgement of L'Homme qui rit (without...

American Primacy in Perspective

MORE THAN A DECADE AGO, political columnist Charles Krauthammer proclaimed in these pages the arrival of what he called a unipolar moment, a period in which one superpower, the United States, stood clearly above the rest of the international community (The Unipolar Moment, America and the World 19go/91). In the following years the Soviet Union collapsed, Russia's economic and military decline accelerated, and Japan stagnated, while the United States experienced the longest and one of the most vigorous economic expansions in its history. Yet toward the close of the century readers could find political scientist Samuel Huntington arguing here that unipolarity had already given way to a uni-multipolar structure, which in turn would soon become unambiguously multipolar (The Lonely Superpower, March/April 1999). And despite the boasting rhetoric of American officials, Huntington was not alone in his views. Polls showed that more than 40 percent of Americans had come to agree that the United States was now merely one of several leading powers a number that had risen steadily for several years. Why did the unipolarity argument seem less persuasive to many even as U.S. power appeared to grow? Largely because the goal posts were moved. Krauthammer's definition of unipolarity, as a system with only one pole, made sense in the immediate wake of a Cold War

Book Review: Juvenile Crime and Delinquency: A Turn of the Century Reader

Book Review: Juvenile Crime and Delinquency: A Turn of the Century Reader

The Dis-ease of Katherine Anne Porter's Greensick Girls in "Old Mortality"

For human beings are not so constituted that they can live without expansion. If they do not get it one way, they must another, or perish. --Margaret Fuller, Woman in the Nineteenth Century Readers of Old Mortality have been anything but remiss in bringing attention to the rebellious behavior of Porter's women characters. Her principal female characters have been said either to display a proud rebelliousness or, at the very least, to attempt resistance even though they will inevitably fail because of their ambivalent relationship to a past they cannot quite relinquish and a future they cannot quite embrace.(1) Many of these same critics have considered her characters as semi-autobiographical creations of what Joan Givner called Porter's own fatal ambivalence: She craved the protectiveness and support that she never had from her father and at the same time she disposed to be independent and dominant as her grandmother was (92). Porter's readers over the past decades, decades in which American culture has been marked by the optimism and anger of second-wave feminism, have typically celebrated the struggle undertaken by her female characters to achieve independence and to survive a headstrong (southern) patriarchal culture. Having inhaled the cultural air, which is not to imply that all Porter's readers are feminists, critics have often read Old Mortality as a story of American girlhood: a story not of Jamesian resistance abroad, but of resistance at home since the time when first-wave feminism making itself felt. The nature of her female characters' resistance, however, needs to be reconsidered. I propose that instead of presenting girls engaged in healthy rebellion against their assigned adult social roles, Old Mortality brings sharply into focus the pressures and anxieties suffered by adolescent females in Victorian America and their willingness to take their destinies into their own hands by deferring as long as possible--and at great risk to their own lives--the inevitable crossing from the freedom of girlhood to the restrictions of adult womanhood. The power of cultural ideology to shape and distort a girl's identity and seems to have riveted Porter, perhaps because she felt they were ideologies that persisted with equal force in her own age. Reconsidering Old Mortality in this light leads one to the realization that this not the only occasion in which Porter paired the struggle for self-autonomy with the sick of girlhood. The resisting female character, even if she fails to break out from under the oppression of the dominant culture in which she finds herself, is irresistibly attractive to twentieth-century readers. However, a critical dimension of Porter's story has, as a result, not received much notice: the suffered by pubescent girls who cannot quite accept the cultural status quo for women. To shift the focus from healthy adolescent rebellion to the ailing of girlhood, we need to resituate this text, removing it from the formalist, symbolist, and autobiographical sphere so as to contextualize it in fin-de-siecle American culture. My intent is neither to read the in the feminist context of the rebellious Victorian girl or the New Woman in the process of being born nor to claim that Porter is writing the body in the celebratory manner glorified by Helene Cixous, for instance. Rather, I wish to examine this story in the context of disease and in which Porter sets it, a context which urges us to consider both the sick of adolescent girls and Old Mortality as one of Porter's fictions of illness (Vrettos I). Not unlike Hawthorne who dragged his reader back to the gloom of Puritanism in The Scarlet Letter, Porter forces her modern-day (female) reader half a century back in time to the repressiveness of Victorian America. In this context, the female needs to be read as inscribed by its culture's discourses, one of which is its medical discourse, which will be the focus of this paper, so that we might examine how the nineteenth-century medical establishment read the female as against girls' readings of their own bodies. …

A Preface to Shakespeare's Comedies: 1594-1603.

List of illustrations. Prefaratory note and acknowledgements. Prologue Shakespeare's England- an overview. Part One: Contexts of Comedy. 1 Laughter and Elizabethan Society. 2 Fools, clowns and jesters. 3 An audience for comedy. 4 Twentieth century readers of comedy. Part Two: Critical Analysis. 5 Shakespeare's early comedies 1588-94. 6 A Midsummer Night's Dream c.1595. 7 Much Ado About Nothing 1598-9. 8 As You Like It c. 1599 9 Twelfth Night. Part Three: Reference Section. Short Biographies. Further Reading. Appendix: The Theatre of Shakespeare's London. Index

L'écriture métissée de Marie-Joseph Bonnat dans son journal (1869-1874)

25th October 1570 marks the first stage of their freedom for the four European captives being held prisoner at the confines of Kumansi by Ashanti on a war-path : on this day, indeed, they took possession of writing material. Ramseyer and Kühne, missionnaries, then wrote their journal, with the very tone of the "civilizing mission" which was theirs. Marie-Joseph Bonnat, the French prisoner, also began to write, but this writing act was for him more than the egocentric writing of the chronicle of his misfortunes ; to write meant for him to embark on a spiritual journey ; it was the important event which allowed him to master a new cultural world. Bonnaťs entry into the Ashanti universe can be read through the gradual code-mixig in his language ; his 19th century French undergoes significant changes when it comes into contact with English which he learnt the hard way and particularly with Twi which increasingly became part of him, as he embraced the African way of life. The 20th century reader discovers in Bonnat a precursor of a modern world, which irrisistibly opens itself up to Africa.

Hume's Natural History of Religion

Hume Studies Volume XXI, Number 2, November 1995, pp. 255-274 Hume's Natural History of Religion MICHEL MALHERBE Even though The Natural History of Religion has been said to be one of the first books in the history of religions, it is not much studied for interpreting Hume's philosophy taken as a whole. Nevertheless, its structure is quite clear: after specifying the purpose of the work by distinguishing between the question of the foundation of religion in reason and the question of its origin in human nature, Hume goes over the story of the evolution of religion, from polytheism—its primitive form—to theism (sections I-VIII). He then develops a comparison between these two kinds of religion, evaluating them from several points of view, and closes with a rather whimsical conclusion emphasizing the necessity of scepticism in these matters. The Natural History is written in an easy style and the reader enjoys its progression. Hume uses the same method of composition as the one he had tested with success in several of his Essays: a claim is put forth; then the proof is provided, which mixes some historical material with more abstract arguments ; finally, several general considerations are stated, which are supposed to be profitable to the public. But if we try to understand the text more systematically and attempt to rationalize its composition or its argumentation, we cannot help feeling at a loss to determine Hume's real intentions and to precisely evaluate the Natural History's general import. Of course, it could be said that we ought not overestimate the meaning of the Natural History nor look for more than what could be appreciated by an eighteenth century reader, i.e., look for more than what can be expected from Michel Malherbe is at the Département de Philosophie, Université de Nantes, 44036 Nantes, Cedex 1, France. 256 Michel Malherbe an essay which tries to catch the attention of the public, borrows a large part of its content,1 and follows lines of argument which were not uncommon at that time. But we are twentieth century commentators: we have read the Dialogues, and we can consider Hume's philosophy as a whole. Besides, the subject is religion, and nobody is indifferent to religion, and, we should add, nobody in the eighteenth century was dispassionate concerning religion. Several questions about the work arise at once: What is the scope of the preliminary foundation/origin distinction? Why does Hume associate a doctrine bearing on historical facts with a comparative evaluation? How are we going to understand a conclusion so little consonant with the rather dogmatic development of the work? I do not intend to provide a systematic analysis of the Natural History, but rather to catch some of its difficulties by concentrating on its title, which not only tells us the object (religion), but also designates a certain scientific or philosophical genre, and thus should reflect Hume's method, if not his intention. How can such a text qualify as a natural history? Can we not, by commenting upon this appellation, define the method employed by Hume? And since method is the way towards some end, could we not thus try to delineate the real aims of the text? Except for the foundation/origin distinction, a distinction that he also does not comment upon, Hume offers no clue to the understanding or to the justification of his method.2 The reader is committed to his own appreciation. Therefore, I would like to take up an indirect line of proceeding: using a comparative method, I will offer three definitions of natural history, or rather, three main meanings which are more or less consistent parts of this rather intricate and plainly polysémie concept3 in the eighteenth century. I will then assess the applicability of each of these definitions to Hume's work. The oldest meaning of "natural history" is the one derived from Aristotle and renewed by Bacon; it is still valid and viable in 1750, even if its epistemological import and its philosophical sense are changing. The second meaning takes into account one of those invisible, but real, changes: we are at a time when a historical...

Women in nineteenth century homeopathic medicine.

The novels,Dr. Breen's Practice andDr. Zay provide the twentieth century reader with some interesting and intimate insights into nineteenth century homeopathy as practiced by two women physicians. It becomes apparent after reading these two books that the existing knowledge about women in homeopathic medicine is inadequate to answer the questions that the novels raise. More investigation in this area would help illuminate the motivations women had to enter medicine, as well as their reasons for choosing homeopathy over regular medicine. It would also help us understand the conflicting images we have of women physicians between strident reformer and scientific physician, and what led women like Clemence Lozier and Elizabeth Blackwell to choose one path over (or in addition to) the other.

The representation of cultural difference and the fiction of Joseph Conrad

This paper argues that the fiction of the Polish‐born writer Joseph Conrad has particular relevance for us as late twentieth century readers because it succeeds in dramatising the limitations of its own cultural and historical moment. This process is a necessary prerequisite for approaching other cultures. In “Heart of Darkness” Conrad progressively undermines pre‐established ways of seeing by dramatising failures of vision in the Western protagonist‐narrator who tells the story. Conrad alerts the reader both to the myopia of the West as it encounters Africa and to the aggression of its crypto‐imperialist gaze.

Unto the least of these: the Howard Association and yellow fever.

Epidemics of yellow fever in mid-19th century America caused, in the port cities of the South, devastation and death almost unequalled in this country's history. In response to this horror, a benevolent organization of young men was formed to minister to the unfortunate victims through visitations, nursing care, supplies, and compassion. The group adopted the name Howard Association in honor of the British philanthropist and reformer, John Howard. This paper is an attempt to introduce this little-known society to 20th century readers by taking a brief look at some of the records of Howard Associations in several southern cities: New Orleans, Memphis, Norfolk, and Charleston.

Historical evidence and the reading of seventeenth-century poetry

Cleanth Brooks has deeply influenced the course of letters and literature in America. As coauthor (with Robert Penn Warren) of Understanding poetry, he has helped bring poems to life for many thousands of students. His subsequent studies, including Modern poetry and the tradition and The well-wrought urn, have been praised by students and scholars like and have established him as a critic of stature. His Historical evidence indicates how sadly he has been misrepresented as a kind of formalist who has no concern for biography land history. This series of case studies examines the degree and extent to which some dozen particular 17th century poems deal with the history of the time out of which they came. With the exception of those by Andrew Marvell, they are the work of minor poets, such as Henry Ling, Richard Corbett, James Shirley, Richard Lovelace, Aurelian Townshend, Richard Fanshawe, and Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury. Yet the poems were not chosen merely in the interest of advancing an idea. They are highly interesting in themselves. What Brooks has done with each of these 17th century poets is what he's spent a lifetine doing - bringing their poems to life for a 20th century reader. This book responds to the terrible ills that have befallen our approach to literature. Without waving flags or hurling abuse at a real or imagined foe, Brooks makes it clear how important a knowledge of history and culture may be to the reader of literature. Brooks provides original readings of specific poems and poets. This book should interest students of 17th century poetry in particular and among appreciators of literature in general.

Chekhov Vs. Gor'Kii and the Moscow Arts Theater

AbstractFor most of the twentieth century readers have been wondering how the version of A. P. Chekhov's famous play The Cherry Orchard could be subtitled "A Comedy." Unknown until now is the fact that Chekhov's manuscript was rewritten by the directors of the Moscow Arts Theater for a combination of political, aesthetic, and commercial reasons. This has been unknown until now because A. M. Gor'kii simultaneously wrote a competing play The Summer-Tenants which failed almost completely. Out of loyalty to Gor'kii's memory, Soviet scholarship for over seven decades concealed the true story of The Cherry Orchard.

Wilkie Collins: women, property, and propriety

The novels of Wilkie Collins occupy a marginal space in the canon of English literature. Collins is all too frequently seen as a minor member of the Dickens clique or, at best, the creator of the middle-brown detective novel. However, this is to ignore his prolific and varied output. This book offers a new and fresh appraisal of the Collins novels and treats in detail many of the author's works all but ignored by the twentieth century reader.

Pope, Dryden, Milton, and the Poets' Secret

My subject is a relatively unexplored area of Pope's wit, his wit as a reader. use wit in the broad eighteenth-century, Lockean sense, meaning the ability to perceive resemblances. Allusion, or something like it, may be studied in an uncustomary way, not mainly to reveal implicit augmentations of meaning, or sources, or misreadings, but to discover how well one author understands another. concentrate on how Pope read Paradise Lost. Pope may be shown to have read it unusually, profoundly. He gives evidence in The Dunciad of having understood-to a virtually unprecedented and long-unmatched degree-Milton's poetic signs and even Milton's distinctive sign system. In two recent essays, have begun to look into this matter. One examines the extent to which eighteenth-century and later commentators on Paradise Lost were attentive to its intratextual parallelism. It is a question of some importance because that poem is so remarkably a tissue of parallels large and small. was drawn to the question when a graduate student, Marilyn Hertling, expressed surprise at Merritt Hughes's remark in his edition of Milton that not until 1947, in Balachandra Rajan's Paradise Lost and the Seventeenth Century Reader, did a critic first observe (in print, as circumspection requires me to add) that Satan, Sin, and Death constitute an infernal parody of the Trinity-this somehow despite such lines as Sin's, spoken to Satan: I shall reign / At thy right hand voluptuous, as beseems / Thy daughter and thy darling, without end.' How extraordinary; and yet my search through the eighteenth-century commentators reveals no evidence that they saw an infernal trinity, or, indeed, saw much in the way of intratextual parallels at all. My second essay makes a similar point about the commentary (though not the translated poems themselves) in Pope's Homer: that only parallels which are markedly contrastive, calling for the discriminating power of Lockean judgment, get much attention.2 Yet it may be that some readers saw, or began to see, the infernal trinity and other significant parallels; some poets may have been in on the secret. Ronald Paulson, in his Book and Painting, refers in

‘Against Interpretation’: Petronius and art Criticism

For forty years a debate has raged in Petronian studies between the moralists and, for want of a better term, the anti-moralists. From Highet in the 1940's to Bacon and Arrowsmith in the 1950's and 60's, the moralists held a certain advantage. Whatever important divergences there were among these critics, all agreed on a Petronius who stood in some critical relation to his society. The dissenting voices have grown much louder of late. Ironically, the literary brilliance of Arrowsmith's New Critical reading of the Satyricon helped to turn the tide against the moralist viewpoint. The more apparent the literary sophistication of the Satyricon has become, the less willing late twentieth century readers have been to see a programmatic moral critique as its main purpose. Sullivan's view of Petronius as a ‘literary opportunist’ has come to dominate the field.With Graham Anderson's book, Eros Sophistes: Ancient Novelists at Play, the retreat from the position of Highet is now complete. We have finally reached the logical, New Critical conclusion that the Satyricon is an entirely self-contained literary game without any message whatsoever; in effect we are told that, like any serious piece of literature, the Satyricon ‘should not mean, but be’. Anderson is eager to disavow ‘the unproven conviction that every work must have a message, however diffusely or perversely expressed’.

Meaning, Intention and the Written Text: Anthony Close's Approach to Don Quixote and its Critics

1) there is one proper task for the literary critic-to make clear the artistic purposes which grow out of literal meaning (p. ix); 2) there is one correct method to perform such a task-to recover the author's intentions by referring what was said to the living or once-living system of human relationships in which it had its function (p. 250); 3) there is one correct way to view Don Quixote-to accept Cervantes stated intentions and to understand the novel the way that XVIIth and XVIIIth century readers understood it.