Overt Didacticism Research Articles

\u201cI Am the Eternal Green Man\u201d: Holistic Ecology in Reading Patrick Ness\u2019s A Monster Calls

Holistic ecology considers nature and society as a whole, viewing humans and the environment as interdependent and interconnected. This article takes the lens of holistic ecology to examine the representation of human–nature relationships in Patrick Ness’s A Monster Calls (2011) and explores how the novel guides the child reader to an environmental mind-set beyond overt didacticism. The article focuses on two aspects of the bond between the magical tree and the human characters in the novel: how the powerful tree empowers humans and how the human characters contribute to the tree’s expressions of power. The eternal Green Man—as the tree introduces itself—embodies this bond by being simultaneously tree-like and human-like, a complex merger of “the Green” (nature) and “the Man” (humanity). The monster-tree fulfils several powerful and empowering roles, such as monster and storyteller, destructive force and powerful healer, savage and philosopher, nightmare and escape. Importantly, it always keeps the shape of a yew tree. As such, A Monster Calls can contribute to children’s environmental education by illustrating the connection between the natural environment and humans: the eternal bond between “the Green” and “the Man.”

Father Clement, the Religious Novel, and the Form of Protestant-Catholic Controversy

Grace Kennedy’s anti-Catholic novelFather Clement: A Roman Catholic Story(1823) stands almost alone in the nineteenth century when it comes to evidence not only for its reception, but also its use and success, or lack thereof, as a proselytization and devotional tool. The novel’s form and polemical strategies exerted a powerful influence on both Catholic and Protestant writers, popularizing the controversial novel across denominations. In particular,Father Clement’s celebration of prooftexting rooted insola scripturaas the best method of religious disputation helped end the earlier nineteenth-century “polite” novel’s emphasis on non-confrontational, genteel sociability. But as its Protestant and Catholic reception histories suggest, the novel’s ambivalent treatment of its title character, along with its overt didacticism, led to appropriations that Kennedy could not have predicted.Father Clementcatalyzed resistance amongst Catholic readers and novelists, some of whom were inspired by the title character to creatively reinterpret the novel as a brief for Catholicism, others of whom turned to Biblical quotation as a means of undoingsola scripturaaltogether. Thus, if the novel predictably generated Protestant imitations, it also led Catholics to new experiments in controversial rhetoric and fiction.

British Children’s Poetry in the Romantic Era: Verse, Riddle, and Rhyme by Donelle Ruwe

Reviewed by: British Children’s Poetry in the Romantic Era: Verse, Riddle, and Rhyme by Donelle Ruwe Louise Joy (bio) British Children’s Poetry in the Romantic Era: Verse, Riddle, and Rhyme, by Donelle Ruwe. Houndmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. The significance for the history of children’s poetry of Isaac Watts’s Divine Songs (1715) and William Blake’s Songs of Innocence (1789) has long been appreciated. To identify these volumes as seminal works of children’s poetry presents certain problems, however. For all Watts’s prescience in identifying a role for poetry in enriching the mental life of the child, and considering that he inaugurated forms, subjects, and modes of address that shaped how subsequent generations of children’s poets conceived of the possibilities inherent in children’s poetry, scholars seeking to plot secular histories of children’s literature are uncertain about how to negotiate the overtly proselytizing directions of Watts’s verse, since they sit so uncomfortably with modern notions of literature as bound up with freedom and readerly pleasure. By contrast, Blake’s Songs of Innocence is notable precisely because it rejects the overt didacticism of the Watts volume to which it implicitly responds; however, to view these poems as children’s poems introduces its own complications. Despite the radical and far-reaching ways in which Blake’s Songs fostered a new valorization of childhood innocence, and despite its experimental format which nurtures a shared reading experience between adults and children, it is not altogether clear to what extent these poems, if at all, are accessible to or relevant for a child reader. As has routinely been observed, the obstacles that prevent us from straightforwardly treating work by Watts and Blake as children’s poems largely fall away when we encounter children’s poetry produced during the second half of the nineteenth century by familiar figures such as Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, and Robert Louis Stevenson, wherein we can more obviously recognize the affinities between the plays of poetry and child’s play. It is perhaps unsurprising, therefore, that for scholars interested in children’s poetry, the late nineteenth century and beyond has proven to be so much more inviting than the centuries preceding it. As a result, positivist histories of children’s literature such as John Rowe Townsend’s Written for Children: An Outline of English Children’s Literature (1965) and Geoffrey Summerfield’s Fantasy and Reason: Children’s Literature in the Eighteenth Century (1984), which continue to cast a shadow over the ways in which the history of children’s literature is told, have tended to construe children’s poetry written prior to the 1860s as a tedious, if [End Page 208] curious, prelude to the arrival of children’s literature proper. But our de facto weddedness to this narrative, for all the glaring presentism that it entails, reinforces a series of critical priorities among children’s literature scholars: the prioritization of prose over poetry, the prioritization of material produced since the 1860s over material produced before it, and the prioritization of delight over instruction. As a result of decades’ worth of children’s literature scholarship that has pursued these priorities, we have neglected to hone apposite critical strategies to enable us fruitfully to handle the kind of material that has so frequently fallen beneath our critical notice as we hastily move our gaze toward late nineteenth-century prose that courts the child’s amusement. Donelle Ruwe’s important book, British Children’s Poetry in the Romantic Era: Verse, Riddle, and Rhyme (2014), provides us with a series of maneuvers for thinking our way through and beyond the problems which so often confront us when we attempt to settle our gaze more directly on understudied material of this kind, and need to make choices about the modes of viewing that we will adopt as we look at them. Her focus is on children’s poetry written during the decades between William Blake and Lewis Carroll—the Romantic period—by authors whose names have largely fallen out of the literary landscape. Among the authors she examines are poets who instantiated verse practices which have molded the literary sensibilities of young readers well beyond their own...

Let’s write about sex – YA fiction as a means of learning about sexuality

ABSTRACTJudy Blume’s seminal 1975 novel Forever is commonly referred to as a sex instruction manual for teenagers in the form of a novel. My doctoral project ‘A 21st Century Forever: Learning about Sexuality through Young Adult Fiction’ explores how the creative writer can present honest candid sex scenes for teenagers that provide information while avoiding overt didacticism. Drawing upon Louise Rosenblatt’s Transactional Reader Response theory, this project supposes that the young adult reader can be engaged not didactically but aesthetically and upon further reflection learn from the fictional experience. This paper discusses how narrational point of view can be utilised to both avoid overt didacticism and imbue honesty into the narrative. By comparing two young adult novels that both utilise dual narration with two main protagonists yet use either first or mainly restricted third person voice and in an exegetical analysis of my own work in progress novel which is a dual narrative with a singular voice written in both first and restricted third person, I explore how the choice of narrator impacts the instructional nature of the text and how honest the sex scenes are for a young adult audience.

Anna K.Nardo. Oculto a los ojos mortales. Introducción a El Paraíso perdido de John Milton. Valencia: JPM Ediciones, 2014. 105pp. ISBN 13: 9788415499251. $15.50 (paper).

Anna K.Nardo. Oculto a los ojos mortales. Introducción a <i>El Paraíso perdido</i> de John Milton. Valencia: JPM Ediciones, 2014. 105pp. ISBN 13: 9788415499251. $15.50 (paper).

“Rym[ing] thee to good”: Didacticism and Delight in Herbert’s “The Church Porch”

THE FIRST MOVEMENT OF THE TEMPLE, Porch (1633), has typically been somewhat of an embarrassment to critics of George Herbert's poetry, according to Carol Kessner. (1) Altogether unlike the intimate, deeply moving, frequently charming lyrics of Church (the second movement of The Temple), Porch is long, ponderous, structurally rigid, sometimes repetitious. (2) In a similar vein, Joseph Summers refers to the Porch as a large and worldly dragon, which actually hinders the reader's entrance into Church. (3) A close textual analysis of Porch, however, reveals that Herbert uses a dizzying, complex artistry that some critics fail to observe, and as such the poem merits more careful attention than it has previously been afforded by the scholarly community. A delineation and an explanation of this complex array of Herbert's strategies enable a reader not only to perceive the function of this first movement within the design of The Temple, but even to celebrate rather than be embarrassed by its existence. The title, Porch, implies that this movement functions as a gathering place preparatory to the reader's entrance into Church. Porch centers on instruction. Therefore Herbert applies a number of rhetorical strategies to reach his aim. One rhetorical choice Herbert makes concerns stanza development. He focuses on both method of reasoning and length. Each stanza consists of a precise, tightly knit argument that moves from a general concept to a specific application of that concept. For example, when the poet discusses the proper attitude for the churchgoer, he closes stanza 68 with the ironic assertion that kneeling ne're spoil'd silk stocking (l. 407). With this assertion, the poet confronts his reader not only with the general principle of reverence but also with personal responsibility to act upon that principle before proceeding to read the next stanza. The effect of this deductive method of argument in teaching moral principles encourages the reader to apply the principles immediately upon learning them. Stanza length is also significant in Herbert's overall strategy. Unlike any of the other poems found in The Temple's other two movements, Porch is written in 77 stanzas, each of which contains six short lines. Because overt didacticism can be tedious and short-lived, the stanzas might be less intriguing were they longer. To be instructive and to give simultaneously requires great skill. In choosing to employ brief stanzas, Herbert--to borrow two select phrases from stanza 1--make[s] a bait of pleasure and catches the sermon-flier (ll. 3-4). Not only is overt didacticism apparent through stanza length but also in the poet's choice of the imperative mood, a mood that consistently permeates the entire poem. In stanza 54, for example, Herbert uses the verbs mark, take, balance, be, share, and confesse, all addressed directly to the reader. Mark what another sayes: for many are Full of themselves, and answer their own notion. Take all into thee; then with equall care Ballance each dramme of reason, like a potion. If truth be with thy friend, be with them both: Share in the conquest, and confesse a troth. (ll. 319-24) However, Herbert softens the harsh tone commonly associated with the imperative mood by persistently positing his colloquy in a dialectic of binary choices, such as the following examples illustrate: Abstain wholly, or wed (l. 13), Be thriftie, but not covetous (l. 151), Dare to be true. Nothing can need a ly (l. 77). Herbert proffers options between two differing paths of action to make the reader aware of the consequences of certain choices. All the while, he leaves the decision open-ended. The reader is free to make a decision, having been alerted to the consequences of whatever decision is made. Identification and clarification of certain principles in this opening section assist the reader as well in understanding the complex lessons Herbert imparts in the work as a whole. …

Estrangement and indeterminacy: a model for empowerment in David McKee's I Hate My Teddy Bear

This article suggests that David McKee's picture book I Hate My Teddy Bear (1982. London: Andersen Press) represents a way for children's books to avoid crude, overt didacticism while realizing (rather than imposing) a more progressive social awareness and a broader empowerment than has been present through most of the history of children's literature. It does this through the use of literary, rather than educational, techniques. A close reading of the verbal and visual texts shows how, by offering readers interrogative subject positions, and through distancing strategies, structural sophistication, and overtly inscribed indeterminacy, McKee's book situates child readers firmly outside itself, where immersion in its world, and subjection to its values and world view, are difficult. In doing this, it resists the ideological subjection and marginalization of the culture of childhood by that of adulthood, and it models a way in which sophisticated, and frequently postmodern, literary techniques may, in other children's books, be able to empower and create awareness of further-marginalized and disempowered subsets within the already-disempowered set of child readers.

Rym[ing] thee to good

“Rym[ing] thee to good”: Didacticism and Delight in Herbert’s “The Church Porch” Darci N. Hill (bio) The first movement of The Temple, “The Church Porch” (1633), has typically been “somewhat of an embarrassment” to critics of George Herbert’s poetry, according to Carol Kessner.1 Altogether unlike the “intimate, deeply moving, frequently charming” lyrics of “The Church” (the second movement of The Temple), “The Church Porch” is “long, ponderous, structurally rigid, sometimes repetitious.”2 In a similar vein, Joseph Summers refers to the “The Church Porch” as a “large and worldly dragon,” which actually hinders the reader’s entrance into “The Church.”3 A close textual analysis of “The Church Porch,” however, reveals that Herbert uses a dizzying, complex artistry that some critics fail to observe, and as such the poem merits more careful attention than it has previously been afforded by the scholarly community. A delineation and an explanation of this complex array of Herbert’s strategies enable a reader not only to perceive the function of this first movement within the design of The Temple, but even to celebrate rather than be embarrassed by its existence. The title, “The Church Porch,” implies that this movement functions as a gathering place preparatory to the reader’s entrance into “The Church.” “The Church Porch” centers on instruction. Therefore Herbert [End Page 179] applies a number of rhetorical strategies to reach his aim. One rhetorical choice Herbert makes concerns stanza development. He focuses on both method of reasoning and length. Each stanza consists of a precise, tightly knit argument that moves from a general concept to a specific application of that concept. For example, when the poet discusses the proper attitude for the churchgoer, he closes stanza 68 with the ironic assertion that “kneeling ne’re spoil’d silk stocking” (l. 407). With this assertion, the poet confronts his reader not only with the general principle of reverence but also with personal responsibility to act upon that principle before proceeding to read the next stanza. The effect of this deductive method of argument in teaching moral principles encourages the reader to apply the principles immediately upon learning them. Stanza length is also significant in Herbert’s overall strategy. Unlike any of the other poems found in The Temple’s other two movements, “The Church Porch” is written in 77 stanzas, each of which contains six short lines. Because overt didacticism can be tedious and short-lived, the stanzas might be less intriguing were they longer. To be instructive and to give pleasure simultaneously requires great skill. In choosing to employ brief stanzas, Herbert—to borrow two select phrases from stanza 1—“make[s] a bait of pleasure” and catches the “sermon-flier” (ll. 3–4). Not only is overt didacticism apparent through stanza length but also in the poet’s choice of the imperative mood, a mood that consistently permeates the entire poem. In stanza 54, for example, Herbert uses the verbs mark, take, balance, be, share, and confesse, all addressed directly to the reader. Mark what another sayes: for many are Full of themselves, and answer their own notion. Take all into thee; then with equall care Ballance each dramme of reason, like a potion. If truth be with thy friend, be with them both: Share in the conquest, and confesse a troth. (ll. 319–24) [End Page 180] However, Herbert softens the harsh tone commonly associated with the imperative mood by persistently positing his colloquy in a dialectic of binary choices, such as the following examples illustrate: “Abstain wholly, or wed” (l. 13), “Be thriftie, but not covetous” (l. 151), “Dare to be true. Nothing can need a ly” (l. 77). Herbert proffers options between two differing paths of action to make the reader aware of the consequences of certain choices. All the while, he leaves the decision open-ended. The reader is free to make a decision, having been alerted to the consequences of whatever decision is made. Identification and clarification of certain principles in this opening section assist the reader as well in understanding the complex lessons Herbert imparts in the work as a whole. Because it weds thematic and methodological constructs...

Literary Experimentation in Rowland Hill's Village Dialogues: Transcending "Critical Attitudes" in the Face of Societal Ruination

Adrian J. Wallbank, "Literary Experimentation in Rowland Hill's Village Dialogues: Transcending 'Critical Attitudes' in the Face of Societal Ruination" (pp. 1–36) In the aftermath of the French "Revolution Controversy," middle-class evangelical writers made a concerted effort to rehabilitate the moral fabric of British society. Hannah More's Cheap Repository Tracts (1795–98) are recognized as pivotal within this program, but in this essay I question whether they were really as influential as has been supposed. I argue that autobiographical evidence from the period demonstrates an increasing skepticism toward overt didacticism, and that despite their significant and undeniable penetration within working-class culture, the Cheap Repository Tracts, if not all "received ideologies," were increasingly being rejected by their readers. This essay examines the important contribution that Rowland Hill's Village Dialogues (1801) made to this arena. Hill, like many of his contemporaries, felt that British society was facing ruination, but he also recognized that overt moralizing and didacticism was no longer palatable or effective. I argue that Hill thus experimented with an array of literary techniques—many of which closely intersect with developments occurring within the novel and sometimes appear to contradict or undermine the avowed seriousness of evangelicalism—that not only attempt to circumvent what Jonathan Rose has described as the "critical attitudes" of early-nineteenth-century readers, but also effectively map the "transitional" nature of the shifting literary and social terrains of the period. In so doing, Hill contributed signally to the evolution of the dialogue form (which is often synonymous with mentoring and didacticism), since his use of conversational mimesis and satire predated the colloquialism of John Wilson's Noctes Ambrosianae (1822–35) and Walter Savage Landor's Imaginary Conversations (1824–29).

A Mad Proposition in Postwar America

Comic art scholars and aficionados long have recognized significance of Mad Magazine's cultural criticism and social satire.1 Begun as four-color comic in 1952, Mad converted to magazine format in 1955 and watched its sales steadily grow from 325,000 issues in 1955 (Reidelbach 40), to 1.3 million in 1958 (Maddiction 63), to just under 2 million in 1968-72 (Reeves 95). As Maria Reidelbach has noted in her landmark study Completely Mad (1991), by 1960s, Mad read by 58 percent of all college students and 43 percent of all high school students, perhaps only 'cult' magazine to be read by majority (188). Publisher William Gaines and his staff of madmen writers and artists reveled in postwar America's foibles, providing both social commentary and belly laughs as they spoofed advertising and consumer culture, parodied popular films and songs, and lampooned political figures and events. Gaines repeatedly attempted to deflate claims that either he or his magazine was political, educational, or even useful, claiming reject insinuation that anything we print is moral, theological, nutritious, or good for you in any way, shape, or form. We live in midst of corrupt society and intend to keep making best of it (Gaines & Feldstein 3); yet, he never could abandon completely his inner-educator who held almost straight A average while studying to be teacher at New York University (Jacobs 60). While avoiding overt didacticism, Mad's satire drew its readers' attention to America's sociopolitical problems, demanded they acknowledge them, and did so with big-toothed grin. A quick survey of Mad's issues of 1950s and 1960s reveals many articles on paperbacks, primers, book clubs, and reading programs, therein signaling magazine's engagement in highly charged debate over mass culture and literacy. On one hand, Mad echoed critique offered by academics, intellectuals, and social critics charging book clubs, mass marketed paperbacks, and how-to books with diluting America's literature and transforming readers into a single slushy compost (Rosenberg 5). On other hand, Mad mocked very critics and intellectuals who decried destruction of American culture at hand of mass culture for merely replacing one prescriptive reading system with another.2 Haunting these criticisms was fear that relinquishing one's interpretive authority to others would lead to depersonalization, alienation, and complacent acceptance of party line, and therein would pave way for totalitarian ideologies to take hold. Thus, contrary to Norbert Muhlen's infamous 1949 Commentary article that claimed comic books prime American youth for totalitarianism, Mad used comic magazine medium to challenge totalizing rhetoric within American cultural, intellectual, and political establishment, and to call for readerly autonomy. Reading Masses To best understand place and politics of Afad's musings on readership, one must revisit postwar America's literacy debates. The change in America's position from isolationist to global power following World War II necessitated shift in how America defined itself at home and abroad. Driven by assumption that, as Time editor Carl Solberg put it, a good citizen is good reader (125), educators and politicians alike examined postwar America's cultural and political literacy hoping to find and subsequently advertise an image of enlightened democracy to allies, foes, and those choosing between Democracy and Communism. What groups like American Library Association, American Book Publishers Council, National Book Committee, and Department of Education found was that Americans were not reading, reporting that 13.5% of Americans were functionally illiterate and there is no estimate as to how many are considered semiliterate (Books for Adult Beginners 4); that the United States has lowest proportion of book readers of any major democracy, judging by results of an international survey in six nations (Dutscher 126); and that only 25% of Americans read as much as one book per month (Grambs iv). …

The Dramatic Art of Athol Fugard: From South Africa to the World (review)

Reviews119 rect term is asobibe. I also wish mat he would acknowledge those plays offemale jealousy and revenge such as Dôjôji, diat demonstrate die continuity of male dread offemale sexuality and of Buddhism's failure to quell fully pre-Buddhist (female dominated) religions. Moving away from texts and the medieval period, Brown offers an investigation of Hideyoshi's performances as himself. From 1590-1598, when he was de facto ruler ofJapan, Hideyoshi starred in Noh plays written to commemorate events prior to their occurrence as well as his nonexistent military victories. This example circles back to Brown's introduction, as if tying his arguments widi a neat ribbon: Noh is an active performative mat makes reality happen, not a passive reflection of reality. This slim volume is essential reading for anyone interested in Japanese tiieater , culture, history, politics, or gender relations. Brown has skillfully woven togedier a broad spectrum oftheoretical formulations, close readings, and careful historicizing. He joins a small but growing list ofdistinguished Japan scholars (such asAyako Kano,Jane Marie Law, Susan Blakely Klein, Jennifer Robertson, Helen Bargen, and Susan Napier) willing and able to grapple with contemporary critical dieory. I say "grapple" because for many Japan specialists, there remains a deeply troubling and veryvalid question about the appropriateness of applying Western dieories to other cultures. Witii apologies to Roland Barthes, die issue is the potential for me imposition of a kind of intellectual imperialism —a Eurocentric "Empire of Theories." With only occasional lapses, Brown negotiates diis dangerous territory witii grace and vigor. Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei University ofCalifornia, Los Angeles AlbertWertheim. TheDramaticArtofAtholFugard:From South Africa to the World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000. Pp. xv + 273. $39.95 casebound; $17.95 paperbound. The subtide ofAlbertWertheim's brilliant study ofthe Soutii African playwright Athol Fugard, From South Africa to the World, is doubly resonant. Intending to demonstrate diat "In Fugard's dramas, Soudi African problems become larger global problems" so that "audiences around die world feel the issues in their hearts, debate me issues in dieir minds," die subtitle also indicates the great strength of Wertheim's comparative approach: at every turn, his study makes reference to other works of world literature that invariably help illuminate Fugard's impact and convince us not only ofthe plays' importance to the world 120Comparative Drama of Soudi African antiapartheid politics but of dieir universality and historical significance as works of dramatic literature. Never are mese references—from Shakespeare to Brecht, Beckett, Albee, and D. H. Hwang—made for dieir own sake or merely to flaunt the autiior's extraordinary erudition; rather, they are invariably on-target and cast unexpected beams of light onto the plays themselves . In addition to die breadth ofliterary reference,Wertheim has also clearly steeped himself in Soudi African history and politics so that The Dramatic Art of Athol Fugard achieves bodi a breadth of literary reference and a concrete specificity diat are rare indeed. Wertheim's study of Fugard is straightforward structurally, beginning witii the playwright's earliest works such as No-Good Friday (1958) and Nongogo (1959) and concludingwidi the most recent,postapartheid works MyLife (1994), Valley Song (1995), and the autobiographical The Captains Tiger (1998). Not surprisingly, he is at his best in analyzing two of Fugard's mostjusdy celebrated works, A Lessonfrom Aloes (1978) and "Master Harold"... and the Boys (1982). These two works are treated together in a chapter entitled "The Drama as Teaching and Learning: Trauerspiel, Tragedy, Hope, and Race." Both plays are seen as teaching dieterrible lessons ofapartheid,yet do so according to a method mat avoids the pitfalls of overt didacticism. According to Wertheim, Fugard's skill in these plays is due to his interweaving ofrealistic detail with the symbolic. Thus, die opening stage image of? Lessonfrom Aloes is analyzed to reveal how die characters'clotiiing (Piet, bare-chested in shorts and sandals, his wife Gladys, delicate,fully clotiied and wearing sunglasses) echoes botii dieir marital discord and dieir very different strategies for survival; he concludes that "Gladys is, emotionally as well as physiologically, a woman with sensitive skin, and unlike Afrikaners like her husband,she is not able to survive diat sensitivityeffectively" (120).Wertheim notes that Fugard's skill...

Symbolic Action in the Plays of the Wakefield Master by Jeffrey Helterman

182 Comparative Drama Jeffrey Helterman. Sym bolic Action in the Plays of the W akefield M aster. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1981. Pp. 202. $17.50. In Sym bolic A ction in the Plays of the W akefield Master, Jeffrey Hel­ terman has started from the perspective that the Master knew what he was doing as a dramatist. One finds no apologies here for these plays’ having the ill fortune to be born before Shakespeare or, worse, their having been bom to serve that imagined audience of loutish, illiterate peasants. Instead, Helterman presumes coherent thematic and aesthetic unity in the Master pageants and devotes his not inconsiderable percep­ tion to how the Master created such unity. Although he does not neglect religious and literary aspects, Helterman clearly realizes that to separate the realistic elements from the religious, as others before him have done, is to risk loss of half of the Master’s dramatic ability, summarized as an “insight into mankind’s attitudes which creates a dramatic, three-dimen­ sional realism that is used to present the same basic theme— the juxta­ position of contemporary folly and inhumanity with the biblical world of Christ.” The detailed analyses of the six Master plays explore this dramatic juxtaposition of the temporal and eternal, the human and figural, the realistic and religious. In illustrating how the dramatist moves between the mundane and the heavenly, particularly in the creation of character, Helterman encourages a holistic appreciation which the plays deserve. His critical stance on the Processus N oe is representative of this holistic approach: “the playwright allows figural and human values to play against each other so that the counterpoint—between the typology and humanity of Noah, between the dignity and worthlessness of man, be­ tween crude comic and graceful liturgical styles of composition— produces a complex statement about man’s place in the eyes of God.” Suggesting that the deliberate tension between type and antitype, between an ideal and a parodic representation of it, is responsible for “much of the action in the drama,” Helterman’s study of the M agnus H erodes is especially astute. His thesis, that the “Wakefield Master avoids overt didacticism and relies on the implications of the Antichrist legend and his characterization of Herod to provide his moral,” is amply sup­ ported by details of the Antichrist literature which invert the laws of Christ and imitate His power as the Messiah. Nuntius’ parody of John the Baptist’s voice crying out in the wilderness, his application to Herod of such Christlike epithets as “kyng of kyngys” and “lord of lordyngys,” Herod’s list of his dominions, and his parody of the mass and Christ’s second coming at the end of the play all contribute to this “continued contrast between the earthly and heavenly kings.” This attention to word patterns and image clusters is yet another of the study’s strengths. For the most part Helterman has avoided the perils of the Cloistered Study School of Drama Criticism: his identification of repeated diction, imagery, or structure consistently is yoked to charac­ terization or dramatic effect. Cain’s failure to use the first-person plural pronoun while Abel regularly uses “we,” for example, is a verbal pattern which is supported by the visual, namely Helterman’s observation that Cain’s stage entrance, the one man driving the two-man team, “initiates Reviews 183 the symbolic action.” Cain’s solitary mocking use of “brother,” compared to Abel’s eighteen, is drawn to the significant conclusion that by Cain’s treating Abel as his servant, he is ironically forced to accept his servant, Garcio, as his brother. Although his sense of the whole individual play is primary, Helterman does not ignore its relation to other pageants and characters in the cycle. In the M agnus Herodes, for example, he draws attention both to the almost ritualized murders, a stylized structural aspect of the individual play, and also to Herod’s debate with his counsellors, a scene which parallels Christ’s confrontation with the doctors two plays later. Like­ wise, verbal detail in the Coliphizacio—“nalys” and “crowne” used here as named parts of Christ’s body—is shown to foreshadow...

Wieland's Der Vogelsang: Prodesse Between Enlightenment and Idealism

Whenever asked about the ultimate purpose of literature, Wieland responded in good enlightenment fashion by emphasizing that literary art, in addition to providing pleasure, should instruct.' What he understood by such instruction, however,-its specific nature and manner of realization in practice-underwent a profound change which is reflected in the shift from overt didacticism in his early writings to implied didacticism in the works beginning with Don Sylvio (1764).' His later attitude finds poetic expression in a short verse narrative called Der Vogelsang, oder die drei Lehren (1778), which is a recreation or adaptation of Le lai de 1'oiselet, an anonymous early thirteenth century French fabliau first published by Etienne Barbazan in 1756.:3 Especially in comparison with its source, this work provides an opportunity to study Wieland's understanding of the didactic dimension of literature and to view one portion of the interface between enlightenment and idealism. The narrator sets the scene in Swabia some five hundred years in the past and then describes the opulent estate of a medieval parvenu called der reiche Hans. On this estate there is a paradisiacal grove formed by a seven-fold circle of linden trees with branches intertwined so as to create eternal twilight; in the center a rose hedge surrounds a marble fountain which bubbles forth clear, ice-cold refreshment. Twice a day a little bird endowed by fairies with magical powers appears at the fountain to sing. As long as it is present the beauty of the grove endures; as soon as it leaves, however, the foliage withers, the flowers die, and the fountain runs dry, leaving nothing but rock and sand behind. One day the Philistine Hans snares the bird in order to receive a handsome reward from the king. Finding its arguments of no avail, the bird buys its freedom by promising to tell Hans three things,

The unconscious teaching of the country ? A rereading ofBevis: The Story of a Boy

Richard Jefferies was born at Coate near Swindon on 6th November, 1846. He began his literary career as a reporter on theNorth Wilts. Herald in 1866, and wrote later for several magazines and newspapers.Bevis: The Story of a Boy, first published in 1882, and its predecessor,Wood Magic (1881), represent something of a personal landmark for Jefferies: a literary transition from the pure description of his early natural history essays which had established his reputation as a writer, to the more esoteric style of his later works, culminating in the heady nature mysticism ofThe Story of My Heart (1883). His two books for children are important works in the history of juvenile literature as early examples of a tendency which rejected the overt didacticism of many Victorian children's novels in favour of a freer and more natural imaginative style.Bevis has offered to generations of young readers that joy in the independent life savoured by numerous heroes from Robinson Crusoe onwards. Jefferies's literary career was tragically brief, for he died on 14th August, 1887, his death certificate recording the cause: ‘Chronic Fibroid Phthisis. Exhaustion.’