Critical Legacy Research Articles

Appoaches to Teaching Voltaire’s “Candide” ed. by Renée Waldinger

B o ok R ev iew s Renée Waldinger, ed. A p p o a c h e s t o T e a c h in g V o l t a ir e 's “ C a n d id e . ” New York: Modern Language Association, 1987. Pp. x + 206. Renée Waldinger’s recent anthology constitutes a strong addition to the MLA’s series of Approaches to Teaching World Literature. In keeping with the aims of the series, the book situates Candide in its intellectual context, offers a critical bibliography, and provides both a variety of disciplinary perspectives and practical teaching strategies for the undergraduate classroom. In a section on “ M aterials,” Waldinger gives bibliographic essays on Voltaire, the Enlightenment, and Candide itself, as well as information on editions, translations, and audio-visual aids. The remainder of the book is dedicated to “ Approaches” and includes essays by a number of distinguished dix-huitièmistes. The first group consists of textual studies by Patrick Henry, Clifton Cherpack, John C. O ’Neal, Frederick Keener, Suzanne Pucci, and Ruth Weinreb. The next group of essays focuses specifically on classroom strategies, student assignments, and discussion topics. Contributors, representing both literary studies and intellectual history, both large and small institutions, are T. E. D. Braun, Anthony Pugh, Cassandra Mabe, Janet Letts, Mary Lee Archer, Jeremy Popkin, Patricia Murphy, Ann Engar, and Ralph Engelman. James Andreas, Jean Sareil, and Herbert Josephs address the question of the humor in Candide. Otis Fellows, Richard Brooks, Jean Perkins, Oscar Haac, and Paul Ilie consider various aspects of Candide’s context. The essays represent a happy mixture of approaches and tones. While most frame their analyses to a greater or lesser degree in terms of pedagogy, several are short “journal” articles. While several pieces suppose a fairly traditional classroom practice, teaching “ background” before proceeding to a reading of the text, Anthony Pugh presents wellconsidered reasons for doing precisely the opposite, letting students experience first the text, then drawing conclusions that will enable them to ask questions regarding context, constructing the Enlightenment. His argument is indirectly underscored by Jeremy Popkin, in whose history survey course “ Voltaire . . . rises from the grave to smite one more social institution—the twentieth century textbook” (103). The series of “ background” essays also do much in this regard, particularly Richard Brooks’s fine piece on Leibniz and theodicy. For those committed to, in Gerald G raff’s phrase, “ teaching the conflicts,” T. E. D. Braun offers a model showing how critical controversies engage students in the text. All of the essays have something to offer, practically and intellectually. John O’Neal does a classical analysis of form e and fo n d ; Suzanne Pucci offers a subtle reading of how narration enacts the discrepancies o f system and event. Cassandra Mabe exemplifies the technique of addressing larger questions through the close reading of a single passage. Ralph Engelman reassures us that Voltaire’s critical legacy lives on, in an account of how a class of eighth-graders, upon discovering that their translation of Candide had been severe­ ly bowdlerized, confronted the publisher and demanded an explanation. The anthology’s usefulness as a sourcebook would be enhanced if the index contained not only references to proper names of critics and historical figures, but also thematic and topical references. The three essays on “ Teaching the Hum or,” for example, are not the only ones to discuss Candide’s satire; Letts and Sawyer give alternative onomastic glosses on Thunder-ten-tronckh; Pucci and Mabe both analyze the venereal genealogy of Ch. 4. Candide’s final phrase—“ il faut cultiver notre jardin” —receives a variety of treatments that a hurried instructor preparing for class discussion might wish to review. This minor complaint aside, the collection is useful and interesting. Voltaire’s tale is a jewel of a text that has all too often—for many of us, anyway—become dulled with overVOL . XXXI, NO. 3 89 L ’E spr it C r éa teu r use. In addition to granting us the ever-titillating glimpse into other people’s classrooms, the essays here provide an excellent stimulation for rethinking and rediscovering Candide. Ju l ie C. H a...

The Culture of Criticism and the Criticism of Culture

This important new work is at once a provocative defence of the kind of moral reflection once associated in America with the writings of Lionel Trilling and Edmund Wilson and an acknowledgement that this pragmatic legacy must be revaluated in the light of challenges posed by structuralist and post-structuralist theory. Gunn challenges the assumptions of modern criticism with a revised interpretation of pragmatism and its critical legacy.

VISIONS, REVISIONS AND DIVISIONS: THE CRITICAL LEGACY OF PETER HUCHEL

VISIONS, REVISIONS AND DIVISIONS: THE CRITICAL LEGACY OF PETER HUCHEL

The Culture of Criticism and the Criticism of Culture

This important new work is at once a provocative defence of the kind of moral reflection once associated in America with the writings of Lionel Trilling and Edmund Wilson and an acknowledgement that this pragmatic legacy must be revaluated in the light of challenges posed by structuralist and post-structuralist theory. Gunn challenges the assumptions of modern criticism with a revised interpretation of pragmatism and its critical legacy.

Baptized Infidel: Play and Critical Legacy

Baptized Infidel: Play and Critical Legacy

Negation and liberation: The critical legacy of Herbert Marcuse

Negation and liberation: The critical legacy of Herbert Marcuse

All's Well That Ends Well and the Galenico-Paracelsian Controversy

Despite the prominence given by Shakespeare to the ‘healing of the king’ in All's Well That Ends Well, criticism of the episode has been both sketchy and unenlightening. Writers intent on demonstrating its failure point to the incredibility of the king's cure or to the inconsistency of the heroine's motives. Those arguing for its success speak of the simple sympathetic response that an appeal to romantic source materials would likely have evoked. Either way, preoccupation with questions of literary modes and standards, the critical legacy of W. W. Lawrence's influential pioneer interpretation, has obscured the extent to which the meaning turns not so much on subtleties of literary perception as on matters of contemporary medical interest.