Literary Abilities Research Articles

Globalization and the Work of Fashion in Early Modern German Letters

As historians of the material cultures of Italy, England, India, China, and the Americas continue to reconstruct the early modern overseas trade in fashionable commodities, economic historians increasingly urge the study of early modern (or first-wave) globalism. Drawing on insights from this vast body of work, this essay explores the German Alamode discourse of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Long a stepchild of national literatures, the Alamode discourse across European vernaculars offers a locus of remarkable critical potential, serving to illustrate how global energies shaped local, even apparently provincial, discussions. Via readings of widely circulated and translated illustrated broadsheets, satirical pamphlets, prosodies, and poetry (by Balde, Zesen, Lauremberg, and Logau), this essay also examines the strategies early modern German literati developed to tame the anxieties unleashed when the world arrived at home. Globalization was imagined to work foremost on women, and the backlash it engendered sought to refashion women’s “hard heads,” hammering out “fashionable” notions such as women’s intellectual and literary abilities.

Le Protrepticus ad nepotem d’Ausone: rhétorique et humour, ou Ausone est-il sérieux?

AbstractThis article deals with the rhetorical and literary wealth of Ausonius’ Protrepticus ad nepotem, and particularly with the poet’s irony and humor. Irony is an indispensable key to the correct interpretation of a text that was often misunderstood and whose actual addressee is the Gallo-Roman aristocracy. The aim of this exhortation is promoting a culture and a political vision in which classics play an essential role. Ausonius brings into play all his literary abilities to make his poem into a poetical celebration. The rhetorician of Bordeaux conveys a very serious message in a funny and charming way, in perfect consonance with the culture and the expectations of his readers: this is the power of persuasion of late Antiquity literature.

Josef Svatopluk Machar, Zenon Przesmycki und die Wiener Wochenschrift „Die Zeit“

The essay presents hitherto unpublished letters from Josef Svatopluk Machar, Zenon Przesmycki and Hermann Bahr, which are focussing on the Viennese weekly “Die Zeit”, edited by Bahr between 1894 and 1899. The correspondence between Bahr and the Czech writer and critic Machar shows up the dense modernist network, which came up due to Machar’s regular contributions to Bahr’s journal. This network was based on a mutual benefit, since both critics by means of their co-operation were able to work out their specific notion of modernism. Machar helped Bahr to present in “Die Zeit” the most actual tendencies in Czech literature, whereas Bahr due to the authority of his journal among Czech readers confirmed Machar’s aesthetic positions. The Polish critic Zenon Przesmycki, on the other hand, did not participate in this network because of his disregard for Bahr’s literary abilities.

Still Kissing the Rod? Whither next?

Although early modern women complained of their lack of access to education, it is clear that many of them did not function in intellectual or linguistic isolation. This article calls upon scholars of early modern women writers to widen their perspective and activities to include not only European writers of the period, but also other languages (such as Latin, Greek and French) and archival resources in other countries. Early modern culture was aware of the existence of a female international republic of letters. Femmes savantes like Anna Maria van Shurman, Elena Piscopia and Sophia Brenner were widely famed for their linguistic and literary abilities, and in France, Germany, Spain and Poland other learned women were recipients of royal and aristocratic patronage. Evidence suggests that there were networks and connections between these European women and their English counterparts. Scholarly exploration that includes a European perspective and polyglottal approach would allow a reassessment of the intellectual significance of seventeenth-century English women such as Lucy Hutchinson, Bathsua Makin, Dorothy Moore and Lady Ranelagh.

Voices from Cemetery Hill: The Civil War Diary, Reports and Letters of Colonel William Henry Asbury Speer (1861-1864) by Allen Paul Speer (review)

or fails, and this book does a good deal ofthe former and a bit ofthe latter . Selections from Thomas Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia, Earl Hamner's On Spencer's Mountain, and Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek are as powerful as they were in their original settings. But then again, they are engaging, at least in part, because we are familiar with those settings. Other selections are engaging because of their relative obscurity, coupled with the historical importance-ifnot the literary abilities —ofthe writers. It is intriguing to read the complaints ofthe King of France on his Shenandoah Valley holiday, to learn the ornithological expertise of Theodore Roosevelt, or to experience the way the war in Vietnam intruded on the mountain retreat of Washington journalist Charles Seib. Less engaging are selections from a handful ofwriters who, while rightly included (given the book's focus), have neither the intrinsic power to engage us as quickly as briefselections necessarily demand, nor the historical familiarity to make their works interesting despite a lack of literary merit. While all or many ofthese writers may be excellent in larger doses, the single thematic commonality-that they deal in some way with the region under study-is sometimes insufficient to maintain our sincere interest. But compensations abound. To begin, the descriptions of certain natural and human phenomena create continuities which interest us regardless ofwhether a particular writer fails to engage. Perceptions of the Natural Bridge, for example, develop a cumulative power, and the more the perspectives differ, the better. Too, certain political progressions , such as the creation of the Shenandoah National Forest, allow selections to become mutually enriching which might not have engaged us alone. And ifsome ofthe relatively obscure writers might just as well have remained obscure, the opposite is also true: we owe Branch and Philippon our thanks for rescuing from relative obscurity such superb pieces as Archibald Alexander's "The Sublime and the Beautiful," Havilah Babcock's "Hunting Bee Trees," and the selections from The Journal ofJohn Fontaine. In sum, despite the occasional lapse, this collection is a superb addition to the literature of the Appalachian region. And as a focused scholarly introduction to the nature writing of a region, it presents an excellent model and exercises it with exemplary rigor. -William Jolliff Speer, Allen Paul. Voices from Cemetery Hill: The Civil War Diary, Reports and Letters ofColonel William Henry Asbury Speer (1861-1864). Johnson City, Tennessee: Overmountain Press, 1997. 217 pages. Paperback $19.95. 70 Allen Speer ofLees-McRae College has compiled and edited a book here that is a monumental exercise in family history. Yet Dr. Speer's task is only partly done. When Speer's Aunt Nellie Dobbins died in 1980, a large family archive was left to him, and he has vigorously supplemented these family documents by drawing upon the Official Records ofthe War of the Rebellion, the Vance Papers, letters and diaries of family friends, broad reading in standard Civil War titles and North Carolina local history , research in the National Archives and local newspapers. Yet there are more stories to tell from this family stretching across the eight generations buried in the old Methodist cemetery on the Speer farm in central Yadkin County, North Carolina. Most of this volume involves the remarkably detailed diary, letters, and reports ofWilliam Henry Asbury Speer, which covers his Civil War experience between August 1861, when he enlisted in the Confederate service, and his death at Ream's Station, south ofPetersburg, on August 29, 1864. Together they follow Colonel Speer from the Battle of Hanover Court House (May 27, 1862), where he was captured; his incarcerations at Fort Columbus, in New York harbor, and Johnson's Island near Sandusky, Ohio; then his return to the Confederate army and action at Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, and the siege of Petersburg. Civil War scholars will find important insights into the battles ofHanover Court House and Chancellorsville not found elsewhere. James I. Robertson has called these memoirs what a "family wartime chronicle should be." Colonel Asbury Speer was an able officer and died a hero of the Confederate cause. Yet he opposed secession and attacked slavery...

Textual, Contextual, and Ideological Contradictions in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford

TEXTUAL, CONTEXTUAL, AND IDEOLOGICAL CONTRADICTIONS IN ELIZABETH GASKELL’S CRANFORD MARGARET REEVES University of Toronto “InTHE FIRST PLACE,” the narrative of Cranford begins, “Cranford is in possession of the Amazons; all the holders of houses, above a certain rent, are women. If a married couple come to settle in the town, somehow the gentleman disappears. ... [W]hatever does become of the gentlemen, they are not at Cranford.” 1 Thus Elizabeth Gaskell begins the collection of stories that we know as Cranford, stories of a group of older, single women whose independence and contentment is grounded in female solidarity and community. Gaskell’s portrayal of these women seems to participate in a valorization of spinsterhood and female friendship that many critics read as a kind of female Utopia. I question, however, whether such readings are supported by the text in its entirety, for these “disappearing gentlemen” also have a penchant for reappearing at ideologically crucial moments in the narrative. One of the more interesting curiosities about Cranford is the way in which this relatively short collection of stories (short, that is, by nineteenth-century novelistic standards), about a seemingly innocuous collection of women, lends itself to some widely disparate and politically charged readings. Those who read Cranford as a female Utopia tend to celebrate, in essentialist terms, its triumph of the female over the male. Rowena Fowler, for example, cele­ brates this work as “a society of female survivors” (717) in which men are banished to the margins (719). Similarly, Barbara Weiss ranks Cranford as a “stable, traditional, nurturing, and feminine community, as opposed to the masculine world of the neighboring city” (283), and Nina Auerbach sug­ gests that Cranford’s durable, welcoming, co-operative female community defeats the patriarchal “warrior world that proclaims itself the real one” (87). Directly opposed to these feminist celebrations of a superior, female self-sufficiency are the negative interpretations of Martin Dodsworth, who reads Cranford as “an elegy on the insufficiency of the female” trying to live in a world without men (139), and Peter Keating, who argues that “much of the pathos of Cranford derives from the numerous defeats the Amazons suf­ fer” (21). Both Dodsworth’s and Keating’s pejorative comments are aimed not so much at the gender of these characters as women, but at their status English St u d ie s in Ca n a d a , 23, 4, Dec. 1997 as spinsters, and especially the “sterility of life that spinsterhood in Cran­ ford would represent” (Keating 23). An abhorrence of aged spinsterhood also informs Françoise Basch’s analysis of this “stifling sisterhood of ... re­ spectable old maids” (179). In contrast, Coral Lansbury evaluates Gaskell’s portrayal of older single women not in negative but in positive terms and, like Fowler, considers Cranford a form of Utopian fiction; but she, too, con­ demns the work for its “clumsy narrative methods,” suggesting that it figures as a “cracked touchstone” for Gaskell’s literary abilities (7). Yet it is the narrative style of this text that rates praise from Hilary Schor, who reads Cranford “as a woman writer’s experiment with narrative ... and a serious critique of the role of literature in shaping female readers” (87). Not only is there no critical consensus on this text, but critics who are poles apart in ideological terms have no difficulty finding support in the text for their respective political positions. While Cranford certainly lends itself to radically divergent interpretations, these contradictory responses may be informed by textual, contextual, and ideological contradictions that reveal themselves as determinate contradic­ tions inscribed in the text itself. This analysis offers, in Pierre Macherey’s terms, a “symptomatic” reading of Cranford in order to identify those “con­ tradictions and absences [that] deform the text and reveal the repressed presence of those ideological materials which are transformed in the labour of literary production” (Wall viii). Specifically, I will trace the structural determinations of these contradictions by examining the material conditions of Cranford’s production, relying on the materialist critical categories de­ fined by Terry Eagleton in Criticism and Ideology (44-63). In the case of Cranford, its initial mode of production is crucial to a materialist analysis, because it...

Passages: Three Poems at Thorn Portal

Passages: Three Poems at Thorn Portal

Composing a self through writing: The ego and the ink

Abstract The power of expressive writing needs to be recognized, valued, and promoted within the therapeutic community. As clinicians have grown to appreciate the importance of clients ‘ storying, we need to open up new forms for these stories to emerge. When clients write for themselves, they express their innermost thoughts and feelings, often in disguised, metaphoric form. If they choose to share these writings with a clinician, therapy can move more spontaneously and rapidly around core conflicts and empathic attunement is heightened. This article includes writings from people of varying ages and literary abilities, demonstrating the curative benefit of creative writing.

Minority Access to Literacy: An American Case Study

Despite the urgency felt about the need for eradicating illiteracy, both in developing and industrialised nations, little effort has been made towards understanding the nature and constraints of access faced by the minorities throughout the world; or of the speafic challenges that they face in acquiring literacy and developing literary abilities over time. The paper discusses some of the global issues of minority access to literacy and their manifestations within the United States, focusing on four categories of interest: (1) the relationship between literacy, minority access and human rights, (2) minorities and'standard forms of literacy expression, (3) minority access as a national dilemma in the United States, and (4) changing views of literacy access and develop ment. The implications for research, practice and policy are also spelled out.

Physicians: Heed the Need for Hope

Having diagnosed and followed more than 20 children with Williams syndrome during the past 15 years, I read with great admiration and empathy the article written by a mother of a child with Williams syndrome (Pediatrics 1985;75:962-968). Disregarding the mother's obvious literary abilities, and her and her husband's dogged determination to understand and deal with their son's difficulties, I found their need for hope expressed in such a sensitive but intellectual manner as to bring me to tears.

Evolution of genres in Southern-Sotho literature

The evolution of genres in Southern Sotho is considered in this article, in view of their fecundation from the oral heritage and neighbouring literatures, and with reference to the problematical definition and development of genres in general. Some plays by Sekese, Taoana, Mofokeng, and Masiea were inspired by ditshomo. Some plays by B.M. Khaketla, Malefane, Moiloa, and Taoana constitute a subgenre that cannot be wished away. Mofolo's Chaka finds itself at the crossroads of genre, counterproving C.M. Bowra's doubtful conclusions on the literary abilities of the African mind. S. Afr. J. Afr. Lang. 1985, 5: 102–106

Neuprizorjena Gerbičeva opera »Kres«

Neuprizorjena Gerbičeva opera »Kres«