Poststructuralist Literary Theory Research Articles

Stealing styles

The “uncreative writing” movement has quickly and firmly established its position as one of the prime examples for a genuinely twenty‐first‐century poetics. With regards to stylistics on the level of the text, the most glaring feature of works like Kenneth Goldsmith's “Kenneth Goldsmith Sings Jacques Derrida” (a musical reading/rendition of parts of Derrida's Of Grammatology) or Vanessa Place's “The laugh of the Minotaur” (an almost word‐for‐word retyping of Hélène Cixous's “The laugh of the Medusa”) is, quite simply, not to have a personal literary style at all. Despite its first (non‐)appearance, this lack does not make the question of style obsolete—on the contrary: where other authors’ styles are stolen, the focus shifts to the specific styles of stealing themselves. This multilayered movement, the article argues, directly responds to a specific set of problems in post‐structuralist literary theory and provides a key contribution towards (re)conceptualizing what literary style is—or, rather, was—in the first place.

Review: Architecture in Translation: Germany, Turkey, and the Modern House, by Esra Akcan

Esra Akcan Architecture in Translation: Germany, Turkey, and the Modern House Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2012, 408 pp., 143 b/w illus. $24.95 (paper), ISBN 9780822353089; $89.95 (cloth), ISBN 9780822352945 Esra Akcan’s Architecture in Translation is a study in the remarkable migrations of modern architecture from Central Europe’s German-speaking lands to Turkey. Extrapolating from a linguistic metaphor, Akcan calls what transpired from the mid-1920s to the mid-1940s “architecture in translation.” The author’s insight that the modern house and housing are two of the most contested constructs of German and Turkish architecture, and the way she locates architecture within the linguistic debates concerning translation in Turkey at the time, are brilliant. The historical material presented in this book, the extensive archival work, and the author’s ambition to devise a theory of translation, make it indispensable reading for anyone interested in the international experience of the modern movement. The first phase of “translations” traced in this book began when Hermann Jansen, a professor of architecture in Berlin, won the competition for the master plan of Turkey’s new capital. Jansen’s plan for Ankara amounted to a German reincarnation of the English garden city. Ankara’s modern layout, functional infrastructure, and hygienic green spaces were meant to highlight the Turkish Republic’s project for radical modernization and “Westernization.” In providing a new history of this episode, Akcan is attentive to the discrepancy in the perceptions of the garden city in Germany and in Turkey. Although it may have appeared outlandish to a Turkish audience in 1929, Jansen’s garden city offered a politically conservative alternative to Weimar Germany’s modernist social housing projects ( Siedlungen ). The German professor had an inclination to design suburban communities, inspired by the local vernacular, even when his Turkish clients demanded a “cubic” architecture to showcase their own modernity. A clear pattern emerges in these years: The Turkish bureaucrats recruited figures of professional authority in Germany, Austria, and France. Many of the new capital’s most representative buildings were commissioned to the Austrian professor Clemens …

Authoring War: The Literary Representation of War from the Iliad to Iraq by Kate McLoughlin (review)

Reviewed by: Authoring War: The Literary Representation of War from the Iliad to Iraq by Kate McLoughlin Roy Scranton Kate McLoughlin , Authoring War: The Literary Representation of War from the Iliad to Iraq. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. ix + 221 pp. Kate McLoughlin's ranging, acrobatic, erudite, perspicacious, and occasionally flawed rhetorical analysis of war literature, Authoring War, aims to describe a handful of literary strategies that characterize writing about war from ancient Greece to contemporary Mesopotamia. The book does not quite pay out these global ambitions. In fact, her book is mostly concerned with British and American literature from the sixteenth century on, though she does address a few examples in translation, most notably War and Peace. McLoughlin structures Authoring War thematically, with chapters on "Credentials," "Details," "Zones," "Duration," "Diversions," and "Laughter." Each chapter takes up a range of texts and brings a variety of theoretical approaches to elucidate that chapter's theme. Chapter 2, for example, on "Details," includes discussion and digressions on Henry V and 1 Henry VI, Paradise Lost, Byron's Don Juan, and Dalton Trumbo's novel Johnny Got His Gun, along with selected poems by Robert Southey, Cecil Day Lewis, George Orwell, Siegfried Sassoon, and Keith Douglas; it brings Bakhtin, Barthes, Benjamin, de Man, Derrida, Freud, the Gothic body, Jakobson, Kant, the Greek concept of kleos, David Lodge, W. J. T. Mitchell, and much else to bear on these texts and on the theorization of name-tallying versus synecdoche in war literature. Thirty-one pages take us from the Hundred Years War to 1938, from drama to epic to lyric to novel, and yet, despite the fact that this chapter is specifically about the problem of "how to frame the huge scale of war for human comprehension," the frame remains distinctly limited: the texts dealt with are predominantly within an Anglo-American literary tradition and the approach securely inside the boundaries of post-structuralist literary theory (52). [End Page 350] The most significant trouble with Authoring War is that McLoughlin's main arguments are not just about war literature, but about war itself. McLoughlin's central argument opens with and builds upon the claim that war "resists depiction, and does so in multifarious ways" (6-7). This idea, adapted from trauma theory, is an unstable foundation on which to build an analysis. The first problem with this claim is that "war" is an abstraction, a concept, a category of complex human endeavor (like "marriage," "justice," "capitalism," or "religion"). In asserting that "war" resists depiction, McLoughlin begs the question of how we "depict" abstraction in the first place, and specifically the question of what the relation is between a literary example and the abstract concept it supposedly exemplifies. Certainly Aeschylus's Agamemnon depicts marriage, but so do The Tale of Genji, Jane Eyre, and The Waste Land. At what point are we justified in making essentialist, transhistorical claims about "marriage" and its depiction? The second problem is the implicit presumption that war is special or singular in its being "impossible" to represent. Without delving into the age-old problems of mimesis, the status of language vis-à-vis its referents, or phenomenologies of reading, it must be clear to anyone who thinks about linguistic representation at all that reality itself "resists depiction." Translating lived experience, material being, and sense data into nouns, verbs, and syntactical relations is a vexingly difficult task, and it is a near miracle that we do it with such aplomb, day after day. If it is true that war resists depiction, war is no different from countless other aspects of human existence, such as "the self," Spain, going to the grocery store, society, consciousness, eating an apple, swimming, and love. Alternatively, if the statement that war "resists depiction" means that "war is specially charged because huge in scale, devastating in impact and encompassing of human behaviour in its greatest trials and intimacies" and that this is precisely "what makes war impossible or very difficult to write about" (8-9), then this claim is demonstrably wrong. As McLoughlin herself points out (using the terms "conflict" and "war" somewhat interchangeably), "depiction of conflict is ubiquitous and of ancient standing" (7). That is, writing about...

Tipografia ‘desconstrucionista’ e o modelo triádico de Peirce

A teoria literria ps-estruturalista de Jacques Derrida influenciou toda uma gerao de designers grficos na dcada de (19)80, inicialmente na Califrnia, Estados Unidos, promovendo uma alternativa a tendncia em voga at aquele momento: o Estilo Internacional. Desta confluncia de idias surge um novo conceito no mbito do design grfico: a tipografia desconstrucionista. Entretanto, sob um olhar semitico, a tipografia configura-se em um sistema de signos que extrapola a esfera lingstica. Neste artigo, a tipografia desconstrucionista analisada luz do modelo semitico proposto por Charles Sanders Peirce. [ Download ]

Positioning Oneself Within an Epistemology: Refining Our Thinking About Integrative Approaches

Integrative approaches seem to be paramount in the current climate of family therapy and other psychotherapies. However, integration between and among theories and practices can only occur within a specific epistemology. This article makes a distinction between three different epistemologies: individualizing, systems, and poststructural. It then makes the argument that one can integrate theories within epistemologies and one can adopt practices and some theoretical concepts across theories and across epistemologies, but that it is impossible to integrate theories across epistemologies. It further states that although social constructionism has influenced much of contemporary psychological thinking, because of the divergence between a structural and a poststructural approach, constructionism looks different depending upon one's epistemological stance. Examples of integration within epistemologies and of what looks like integration across epistemologies (but is not) further illustrate these important distinctions. The conclusions reached here are crucial to our philosophical considerations, our pedagogical assumptions, and implications for both research and a reflexive clinical practice.

Die Dinge und die Zeichen: Dimensionen des Realistischen in der Erzählliteratur des 19. Jahrhunderts. Für Helmut Pfotenhauer ed. by Sabine Schneider, Barbara Hunfeld

594 Reviews through a personally chosen conceptual prism; and responses to this approach will depend rather on what the reader wants. Personally, I did not feelparticularly enlightened. The lengthydiscussions which the book offers of these few lyrics become oddly fixated on isolated words or phrases?in Heimkehr 44 'unbewufit', 'Scherz', 'ich', inHeimkehr 20 the word 'Graus\ in the 'Vorrede zur dritten Auflage' the superlatives 'jungfraulichst' and 'ehrlichst', inHeimkehr 57 gelogen', inHeimkehr 53 'Mund'?and the method is to ransack these for their associations, with some repetition and to the frus trating exclusion of the text'swider statement, invocations, or rhetorical effects. The meanings that are elicited seem at bottom a little unremarkable?that the 'Vorrede zur dritten Auflage' concerns the loss of authenticity and immediacy, that Heimkehr 44 articulates amodern brokenness of the self, that the 'Doppelganger' poem, Heimkehr 20, presents a multiple revelation of artifice, and so on. These conclusions seem almost interchangeable. I was also made uncomfortable by a striking fondness for conditional formulations ('Aus einer etwas anderen Perspek tive konnte es in [. . .] auch um [. . .] gehen'). But this is in a sense representative of how the book should be responded to.We are told that 'Der Doppelganger declares itselfas the 'Text eines Textes', reveals itsown meaninglessness, opens its reception to an infinitude of possibilities ofmaking meaning, and thus confronts us, graus[ig]\ with the unattainability of secure identity, presence, reality, and truth. This is a way of saying that the poem is nihilistic, which is not in itself remarkable. But if the point is not so much novelties about Buch der Lieder as a kind of thought-experiment in how to subsume famous texts under a certain kind of preformed analytical approach, then we could say that this is achieved. The book is less interesting as a source of sheer surprises about Heine than as a concerted exercise inhow post-structuralist literary theory (to echo the subtitle of a work towhich Sousa frequently adverts) might be applied to him. Perhaps such conditionality could have been more firmly stated, but it iswhat the book is about. University of Sheffield Michael Perraudin Die Dinge und die Zeichen: Dimensionen des Realistischen inder Erzdhlliteratur des 19. Jahrhunderts. Fiir Helmut Pfotenhauer. Ed. by Sabine Schneider and Barbara Hunfeld. Wurzburg: Konigshausen & Neumann. 2008. 412 pp. 48. ISBN 978-3-8260-3717-7 This substantial volume of critical studies presents a range of freshperspectives on the complex subject of nineteenth-century realism and pays worthy tribute to its dedicatee. The twenty-two contributions, many of them by prominent scholars in the field, are the proceedings of an international conference held at theUniversity of Wurzburg inOctober 2006. Despite the daunting nature of their task, the editors have constructed a cohesive collection of high-quality material: while focusing largely on the canonical giants such as Fontane, Stifter,Keller, and Raabe, they have also brought some writers back into the spotlight who, though neglected by modern scholarship, were influential literaryfigures in their day. MLR, 105.2, 2010 595 The volume is divided into four sections, the first ofwhich is entitled 'Durch kreuzungen/Strukturen der Darstellung'. Here Christian Begemann considers mimesis and the construction of reality in German realism with particular re ference to Stifterand Keller; JulianeVogel theorizes on the notion of'bars' ('Gitter') in thework of Stifter;Claudia Ohlschlager analyses framing techniques in Fon tanel Unwiederbringlich; Wolfgang Riedel examines German realism's relationship with the irrational as exemplified inDroste-Hulshoff, Gotthelf, Keller, and Storm; and Uwe Japp reflects on the place of the aesthetic in Stifter'sbrand of realism. 'Semiotik der Dinge' is the title of the second and largest section of the volume, which includes chapters by Franziska Frei Gerlach on the significance of sand in Stifter;by Barbara Hunfeld on the use of irony in references to the starry sky in Stifter,Keller, and Raabe; by Elsbeth Dangel-Pelloquin on the synthesis of purity and eroticism inKeller's and Stifter's references towhite undergarments; by Sabine Schneider on thepreoccupation inGerman realist prose with thehabit of collecting valueless objects; by Harald Tausch on the humorous reminiscence technique in Raabe's PfistersMuhle; byUrsula Renner on August Strindberg's interest in recon ciling science and art; by Ernst Osterkamp...

The Pleasure of the Eighteenth-Century Texts: The Conflation of Literary and Critical Discourse in the Early Novelistic Tradition

The Pleasure of the Eighteenth-Century Texts: The Conflation of Literary and Critical Discourse in the Early Novelistic Tradition One of the prominent characteristics of contemporary literature is its assimilation to critical discourse. The self-reflexivity in literature, which transforms literary texts into acts of criticism, is paralleled by theory's tendency to encroach on the literary domain. One of the findings of the poststructuralist literary theory is that descriptions of reading experience elude scientific language and are more aptly conveyed by metaphors. (A good example is Roland Barthes' The pleasure of the text.) The conflation of literary and critical discourse is not, however, peculiar to postmodernity only. The same phenomenon is observable in the eighteenth-century writings. It turns out that the self-reflexivity evident at the times of the proclaimed "death of the novel" is manifest also in the times of its birth. The aim of my paper is to analyse the metafictional reflection on readerly pleasure incorporated in early novelistic texts.

Elusive '68: The Challenge to Pedagogy

Teaching ′68 presents pedagogical challenges far greater than assembling a set of workable classroom materials. Divisive controversies that were the hallmark of the time—e.g., the debate over the nature and appropriate use of violence—are with us still, though in a somewhat different form. Further, the instructor′s own politics and positionality can hardly be ignored—as they will certainly not be overlooked by our students. Additionally, this essay argues that fundamental terms (such as who qualifies as a ′68er) remain problematic; that the instrumentalization of the Holocaust by the German New Left continues to affect political decisions down to the present; that our investment as teachers in poststructuralist literary theory may—perhaps inadvertently—affect the way we view and therefore teach ′68; and, finally, that there is a pressing need, despite a recent explosion in Germany of publications celebrating the fortieth anniversary of ′68, for a didacticized reader designed for the North American German Studies classroom.

Literary hypertext in the foreign language classroom: a case study report

Literary hypertext has often been acknowledged as the embodiment of poststructuralist literary theory (e.g. Coover, 1992; Landow, 1997; Bolter, 2001). The only literary medium that is produced, edited, published and received electronically, it encourages readings that defy the conventionally linear decoding process. With respect to text production, it opens up alternative ways of organising semantic structures in individualised, associative ways, which invites constructivist teaching approaches in the foreign language classroom. This article provides a general introduction to definitions, formal criteria, major theories and historical developments. It portrays a selection of existing structural and cognitive linguistic approaches, such as textuality, coherence, communication and learning psychology. A variety of teaching approaches are outlined to convey to what extent hypertext has entered the primary and secondary school syllabus. At the heart of this investigation lies a case study report describing one possible method of implementing literary hypertext in the communicative foreign language classroom. An output-based approach was adopted, vindicating writing as a major tool for grammar and vocabulary learning. A group of post-A level undergraduate language students collaborated on literary hypertexts over a period of ten weeks. Learners were formally taught literary forms and techniques which they applied in a variety of creative writing activities, either individually or in small groups. The classroom environment was kept pressure-free, with the intention to stimulate creativity, collaborative learning and peer feedback. Linguistic performance data was obtained from written output as well as tape-recorded interviews and, following the habits of action research, videoed classroom activities. The data was analysed with regard to students' discourse and autonomous learning strategies, error frequency and distribution as well as eloquence in style and lexicon. Results show that collaborative, creative writing in hypertext format stimulates motivation, confidence, and autonomy, as well as helping to improve grammatical competence, particularly amongst intermediate and advanced learners. Student responses further suggest using literary hypertext receptively and productively at school level, as it combines linguistic, IT, and literary skills.

Theory Is Dead--Like a Zombie

Theory's Empire: An Anthology of Dissent, edited by Daphne Patai and Will H. Corral; ix & 725 pp. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005. $72.50 cloth, $29.50 paper. Looking for an Argument: Critical Encounters with the New Approaches to the Criticism of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, by Richard Levin; 309 pp. Teaneck, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2003. $49.50. Are we "after Theory"? And if so, then where are we? Seven years after Post-Theory (1996) came Reading After Theory (2002) and then After Theory (2003).1 Students inducted into the mysteries of Theory by an aging professoriate can no longer feel the zeal their teachers themselves have mostly long since lost. Theory's own leaders point out its failings.2 Like Queen Anne, Theory is surely dead. Or is it? In 1982 Jonathan Culler argued that post-structuralist literary theory should be called just Theory and that Theorists should play the "central role" in intellectual life (TE, pp. 26, 215). What now sounds hubristic seemed heady in the expansionist days of Theory's empire. But less than two decades later it could be pointed out in print that "everyone knows that if you want to locate the laughingstock on your local campus these days, your best bet is to stop by the English department" (TE, p. 315). So was theory dead by this point, five years after the start of the Bad Writing Contest and three years after the Sokal hoax? Not at all. The year of the "laughingstock" remark, David Scott Kastan's Shakespeare After [End Page 289] Theory (1999) claimed that we are "after theory" "not because theory's claims have been shown to be intellectually bankrupt but because its claims have been accepted as both useful and productive." A reviewer could demur: "As formulated the claim may be overstated—it sometimes seems that Shakespeare studies is insufficiently theorized."3 But that was seven years ago. Surely things are different now, ten years after the Sokal hoax? Yes and no. After Reading After Theory and After Theory, a literature professor at the top of his field, Louis Menand, can (1) bemoan the sickness of the humanities and (2) deplore the culture of conformity in their Theorized students, and at the same time still (3) offer thanks that Theory "rescued" literature departments from "the literary" and (4) urge that despite their unhealthy state the Theorized humanities should resolve not "to retrench" but "to colonize."4 So again, are we after Theory or not, and where are we, if we are? Are reports of the death of Theory exaggerated? Or is Theory dead in a special way, one of the Undead, a zombie or a vampire? There have been many blows driven through the heart of Theory in the last thirty years, but if Theory is at least dying now it is not because of blows from outside but only from its own terminal internal tedium. It has "always already" been immune to criticism because it refused to listen to critical arguments, treating them as so much unfriendly fire, proof of the enemy's perfidy, all the more reason to close ranks. I described Menand as at the top of his field because he belongs to the Harvard English Department, is a star essayist for the New Yorker and a Pulitzer Prize winner, and was speaking to the 2004 MLA convention. There he wished some young Turks would stand up to challenge his generation, and tell them "You got it all wrong." But critics have been doing this cogently for decades. His generation has paid only enough heed to dismiss such criticism as proof that reactionary forces needed to be resolutely resisted. And the potential young Turks are simply too scared to speak up. Among all the many indictments of Theory collected in Theory's Empire, one of the most chilling indices of the betrayal of intellectual freedom and honesty in the Theorized humanities comes from a junior faculty...

The Book of Psalms Through the Lens of Intertextuality (review)

Reviewed by: The Book of Psalms Through the Lens of Intertextuality Duane L. Christensen, (retired) The Book of Psalms Through the Lens of Intertextuality, by Beth LaNeel Tanner. Studies in Biblical Literature 26. New York: Peter Lang, 2001. 207 pp. $54.95. As a revision of her doctoral dissertation at Princeton Theological Seminary, this book displays the usual limitations of that genre. Though a bit trendy in nature, the book reflects a significant personal journey into the larger field of literary criticism. It is a serious attempt to move beyond the methodology of form criticism, which has dominated the study of the Psalms for some time. Tanner explores the Psalms in relation to other texts within the Bible as a whole, in the light of current discussions of intertextuality in secular literature. Tanner anchors her study in the post-structuralist literary theory of Julia Kristeva, who focuses on the text as “a mosaic of quotations,” which absorb and transform other texts. She does not limit herself to Kristeva’s system of literary criticism, however. Rather she places Kristeva’s work within a larger context, which includes the writing of Harold Bloom, Roland Barthes, Michael Riffaterre, Jonathan Culler, and Gérard Genette. Though this methodological decision provides the occasion for the writing of the book, it brings problems of its own. Kristeva’s definition of a text as “a zone of marks and intervals whose decentered inscription puts into practice a polyvalence that cannot be reduced to a unity” (p. 6) is so abstract as to be useless in this particular study. Moreover, the concept of “bricolage” does not add much that is not already conveyed in more familiar terminology concerning themes or motifs presented as “a mix of materials” (p. 53). The Psalms are not the product of a primitive writer who lacks tools “conceptualized and procured specifically for his project,” as the term bricoleur suggests. The Psalms are carefully contrived numerical and musical compositions of a highly sophisticated nature. The appearance of what Tanner describes as “a disorganized tangle of disassociated poems” (p. 54) says more about the sorry state of affairs on the part of modern interpreters of this body of literature than it does about the literature itself. The study consists of a discussion of the Psalms as a whole (chapter 2), which is followed by four exegetical studies: Psalm 90 (chapter 3); the Yahweh-Malak Psalms (47, 93, and 95–99) (chapter 4); Psalm 112 in relation to Proverbs 31:10–31 (chapter 5); and Psalm 88 in relation to Judges 19 (chapter 6). The last two chapters present a welcome contribution of “feminine investigation” to the study of the Psalms. In her discussion of the Psalms as a whole, Tanner makes her case for intertextual study of the Psalms. In the first place, “the metaphorical imagery makes the text open to multiple interpretations by the reader” (p. 50). In particular, it is useful to set the poems here “side-by-side with narratives either in the Bible or in the life of the ancient or modern reader” (p. 52). As Tanner observes, the superscriptions of approximately 77 percent of the Psalms invite the reader to explore such a relationship, in spite of the fact that these comments were apparently added by the hand of a later editor. A second type of intertextuality within the biblical text is the use of the Psalms within the New [End Page 147] Testament. Here Psalm 22 provides a particularly useful example in relation to the passion narrative in the Gospel of Mark. In like manner, Psalms 8 and 110 are explored in relation to 1 Cor 15:12–34 and Eph 1:2–23. Tanner carries the discussion still further in terms of Paul’s use of Psalm 19 and the catena of quotations from the Psalms in Romans 3:10–18. Although Tanner criticizes those who “make connections in random readings of texts” in their attempts to explore the intertextual process (p. 72), she does not avoid that problem altogether in her own study of the specific psalms she has selected. Tanner’s study of Psalm 90 is the strongest chapter in her book. Starting with a poem...

Metaphor and narrative

The paper examines linguistic, cognitive, communicative approaches to metaphor and its functioning in the narrative text. Special attention is paid to the problem of iconicity and the Wingensteinian notion of "aspect seeing" as relevant to the metaphor srudies. It is shown that the extended understanding of metaphor as "trope" or "figure" in the post-structuralist literary theory allows to see metaphor as a textual "interpretation machine". In the process of interaction of narrative and figurative patterns, metaphor functions as a means of perspectivization, i.e. representation of consciousness. In the literary text, perspective changes permanently and the subsequent configurations have an impact on the previous ones: there occurs a permanent "feedback" and correlation.

The end of first amendment theory? Stanley fish and freedom of expression

This article explores the work of literary and legal theorist Stanley Fish, with a special emphasis on the relation of Fish's work to First Amendment theory. Fish has become an influential legal commentator by bringing his notions of poststructuralist literary theory to bear on law. Fish's work challenges classic First Amendment theory in three fundamental ways. First, Fish's theory of “interpretive communities”; undermines the autonomous selfhood presumed by free speech theory. Second, Fish contends that theory is irrelevant to practice, thus eliminating any constructive role for First Amendment theory. Finally, Fish argues that the First Amendment cannot create a neutral realm, uninfected by politics, for free expression. The article critiques Fish's claims and suggests that free speech theory is not as problematic as Fish contends.

Readers of Oz: Young and Old, Old and New Historicist

Readers of Oz:Young and Old, Old and New Historicist M. David Westbrook (bio) Before he published his first Oz book in 1900, L. Frank Baum spent much of his working life in sales. At various times during his pre-Oz career he ran a retail outlet for his father's "Oil Works," owned a five and dime in the Dakota territory, worked as a traveling salesman, and published a professional journal for window dressers (Baum and MacFall 53, 59, 79, 93). It is not surprising, then, that much of the academic writing on Baum highlights his consistent concern with economic issues and with the culture of consumption. Henry Littlefield and Hugh Rockoff have each developed interpretations of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz as a populist allegory that uses the images of the yellow brick road and the Emerald City to address the debate between advocates of the gold standard and advocates of "greenbacks." William Leach, in turn, has discussed Baum as a theorist of consumer culture. Focusing on Baum's professed ambition to write "a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heartaches and nightmares are left out" (Wizard Introduction), Leach reads this goal as an attempt to counter the Puritan work ethic with a philosophy more appropriate to the pleasures of consumer culture (251). These approaches to the economic subtext of the Oz books could safely be classified as "historicist"; Littlefield, Rockoff, and Leach all use Oz to shed light on the economic philosophies and commercial cultures of turn-of-the-century America, devoting little attention to the questions of language or narrative form that might characterize a more "literary" approach. Thus while they perform the admirable work of placing Oz in a historical context, these authors run the risk of ignoring what is unique about Oz in particular and narrative more generally as a cultural form. Trends in the literary criticism of the last two decades ostensibly offer an antidote to the dangers of purely historicist use of literature. Drawing on poststructuralist literary theory, the tradition of twentieth-century radical critique, and the historian's breadth of contextual knowledge, new historicists portray literature's relation to a broader cultural history as a complex encounter between diverse but interwoven texts and discourses. While trying to avoid the ahistoricism of formalist new criticism, new historicists have generally attended not only to problems of language in literature, but also to the "literary" language (metaphor, rhetorical figures, plot, and so on) in nonliterary texts in an effort to bridge the gap between the literary and the historical. Oz has its own new historicist treatments, including two excellent articles by Stuart Culver entitled "What Manikins Want" and "Growing Up in Oz." Like some of the "old historicist" approaches to Oz, these treatments focus on the economic dimension of Baum's fantasies. Rather than viewing the Oz books as transparent reflections of history or doctrine, however, Culver shows Baum synthesizing contemporaneous discourses in order to construct narrative sense and forms of subjectivity appropriate to his position within a consumer economy. I would like to suggest, however, that a new historicist approach such as Culver's does not offer the only or the best solution to the problem of bridging the gap between the disciplines of history and literary studies. Nor does such an approach fully equip us to deal with the special issues and problems raised by children's literature. Through a critique of the first of Culver's two essays and through my own analysis of the economic subtext in Baum's stories, I hope to show that Culver's distinctly new historicist habit of stitching together economic discourse and Baum's own narrative discourse actually works to obscure the literary economy of the Oz books. With our critical gaze focused more closely on the local specificity of Baum's writing than on a textuality that encompasses all economy, we can see that Baum was exploring the discourses that shaped the specific industry in which he made his living—the business of producing and reproducing texts. In this context, Baum's characteristic plots and metaphors appear as literary forms that have material effects. In using his...

The poetics of fascism: Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Paul de Man

Morrison examines the modernist poetics of Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot, and traces their influence on the current crisis in post-structuralist literary theory. He concludes with a provocative analysis of deconstruction and the work of Paul de Man.

From Translation to Appropriation: Poetic Cross-Breeding in Early Twentieth-Century Iran

T HE CONCEPT OF literary hybridization, a relatively recent addition to the increasingly metaphorical language of poststructuralist literary theory, is already being applied to a staggering variety of activities cutting across traditions and languages, as well as formal, generic, and thematic divides.' It is used on the one hand in reference to a variety of modelling activities, ranging from creative plagiarism to all manner of literary borrowing. On the other, it embraces numerous acts of imitatio. In this essay, I use the concept and the terms that express it in reference to a specific activity, and I illustrate that activity through two poems in the literary culture of Iran in the early decades of the twentieth century. These texts are considered major esthetic statements of a new style in Persian poetry. Although they owe their existence to their authors' contact with certain identifiable texts of foreign origin, they have been classified in their own linguistic culture neither as verse translations of those foreign texts, nor as imitations in any sense. Instead, wherever possible such texts are invariably judged as superior to their foreign counterparts. Examining them in relation to their parent texts and within their generative ambience may

In the Public Eye: A History of Reading in Modern France, 1800-1940.

Robert Darnton, Roger Chartier, and others have written much on the history of reading the Old Regime, but this is the first broad study of reading to focus on the period after 1800. How and why did people understand texts as they did modern France? In answering this question, James Allen moves easily from one framework to another and draws on a wide range of sources--novels, diaries, censor reports, critical reviews, artistic images, accounts of public and private readings, and the letters that readers sent to authors about their books. As he analyzes reading in the public eye, the author explores the formation of interpretive communities during the years when reading silently and alone gradually became more common than reading aloud a group. In the Public Eye discusses printing, publishing, literacy, schooling, criticism, and censorship, to study the social, cultural, economic, and political forces that shaped French practice. Examining the art and act of reading by different audiences, it discloses the mentalities of literate people for whom few other historical records exist. The book will be essential reading for those interested modern French history, post-structuralist literary theory and criticism, reader-response theory and criticism, and social and intellectual history general.Originally published 1991.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding 1905.

In the public eye: a history of reading in modern France, 1800-1940

Robert Darnton, Roger Chartier, and others have written much on the history of reading the Old Regime, but this is the first broad study of reading to focus on the period after 1800. How and why did people understand texts as they did modern France? In answering this question, James Allen moves easily from one framework to another and draws on a wide range of sources--novels, diaries, censor reports, critical reviews, artistic images, accounts of public and private readings, and the letters that readers sent to authors about their books. As he analyzes reading in the public eye, the author explores the formation of interpretive communities during the years when reading silently and alone gradually became more common than reading aloud a group. In the Public Eye discusses printing, publishing, literacy, schooling, criticism, and censorship, to study the social, cultural, economic, and political forces that shaped French practice. Examining the art and act of reading by different audiences, it discloses the mentalities of literate people for whom few other historical records exist. The book will be essential reading for those interested modern French history, post-structuralist literary theory and criticism, reader-response theory and criticism, and social and intellectual history general.

Fear and Temptation: The Image of the Indigene in Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand Literatures by Terry Goldie

REVIEWS Terry Goldie, Fear and Temptation: The Image of the Indigene in Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand Literatures (Montreal and London: McGillQueen ’s University Press, 1989). ix, 271. $29.95 cloth. This wide-ranging study, supported by voluminous documentation, is learned and thorough. As the cover blurb indicates, Goldie’s book is an “attempt to examine the literary indigene in the light of structuralist and post-structuralist literary theory and practice.” The language of that theory and practice dom­ inates his own text. Fear and Temptation sets out to show how literary images of native peoples (in the travel narratives, fiction, and poetry written by the white explorersconquerors -settlers-colonizers in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) have a remarkably coherent and consistent history. Goldie argues that the pat­ terns of those images depicting native peoples, and the expectations both catered to and aroused by those patterns, influence subsequent literary pre­ sentations of native people. The power of the by now predictable set of lit­ erary perceptions has resulted in white readers and writers reacting to and reproducing that pattern of responses rather than approaching a “reality” outside the well-established round of literary image and expectation. Goldie’s own terms are more elaborate than this, however. His language reflects both his theoretical framework and his political platform. “The his­ tory of invasion and oppression is essential to the present study,” he writes, “truly of the essence, although the details and even the central events of the conquest are not major factors in the image of the indigene. The over­ whelming fact of the oppression awarded semiotic control to the invaders, and since then the image of ‘them’ has been ‘ours’ ” (5). It is on the im­ age itself, and not on the peoples represented by those images, that Goldie wishes to concentrate: “This study finds its synchronic character both in its intent and in the object of its discussion. It would certainly be possible to demonstrate how historical change, the diachronic, has affected the image of the indigene, but the focus of this examination is to show the uniformity of that ongoing semiotic control and the power of that image. Because the study is about the image rather than the people the image claims to repreE n g l i s h St u d i e s in C a n a d a , x v i i , i , M a r c h 1991 sent, I use that synchronic designation of conquest, ‘Indian,’ throughout in reference to Canadian native peoples” (5-6). In his final chapter, Goldie himself abandons an insistence on image per se to make a political plea that grows from his textual study but which is itself well outside the realm of the literary text: “This analysis of the literary images which both reflect and mold those societies is part of aching toward a system which is tenable,” because the “process of colonization has left us, the white inheritors, with a legacy of untenable power structures in our societies” (221). And this embodies the political message behind his analysis: “The attempt by indigenous peoples to seek sovereignty within white-dominated federal states has led me to believe that the impossibility of deviating from racial stereotypes must be recognized and then joined with the need to overcome the impossibility” (221). “Synchronic” as Goldie’s study may be, the historical moment has, surely, some effect on a cri de coeur such as this? The final paragraph explicitly combines a current political imperative with an assessment of the situation “at present” : “If self can be viewed as a collective, as manifest nation, then the indigene at present is most assuredly not-self, politically, economically, ideologically. The indigene as not-self must become self if the country is to be won ideologically, if there is to be a completion to the need not only for individuation but for indigenization” (222). These exhortations inform the concluding chapter, entitled “A Polemical Conclusion.” In the main body of his study, Goldie has dealt chapter by chapter with themes that recur in the literary representation of native peo­ ples. The chapter headings indicate the range of his investigation: “The Natural,” “Sexuality,” “Violence,” “Orality...

Socialist-Feminist American Women's History

Socialist-Feminist American Women's History' Elizabeth Fox-Genovese Socialist-feminist history has, during the past two decades, arguably moved "from margin to center," from the pages of Feminist Studies to those of the Journal of American History. Today, it dominates American women's history, if only by setting the terms of many of the main debates, and is increasingly making its influence felt in American history in general.1 Yet its very success has tended to obscure the boundaries between socialist-feminist and mainstream women's history. The problems of identification and definition have become murky. Who, precisely, defines herself as a socialistfeminist historian?2 What, in these times of the triumph of poststructuralist literary theory and the related but incomparably more important collapse of the world socialist movement, does socialist feminism mean? Navigating uneasily between the establishment mainstream and a rising tide of postmodernism , which themselves are showing signs of merging, socialistfeminist history is losing its distinct identity.3 Contemporary American socialist feminism, which originated in the late 1960s and early 1970s, embodied the attempt to resolve the tensions between second wave feminism and marxism. It stands, according to Alison Jaggar, as "the most adequate of the feminist theories formulated to date,"4 but also, in many respects, "the most questionable" of feminist paradigms, primarily because of the difficulty in distinguishing it from radical feminism on the one hand and marxism on the other.5 For Jaggar, socialist feminism differs from radical feminism in resisting the temptations of idealism and biologism and from marxism by fundamentally revising the entirety of traditional marxist analysis "from domestic labor to imperialism."6 Socialist feminism shares with marxism a basic conception of "human nature as created historically through the dialectical interrelation between human biology, human society and the physical environment," as "mediated by human labor or praxis."7 But more than marxism, it emphasizes the psychological as well as the physical differences between women and men and remains primarily committed to overcoming "all forms of alienation but especially those that are specific to women."8 This commitment has led socialist-feminists to argue that (men's) control of the productive resources of society has always included "a struggle to control the reproductive capacity of women" and has resulted not merely in struggles among classes but in struggles among women and men. In this perspective, "the conceptual tool of the sexual division of labor" figures as central to socialist-feminist political and economic theory, which ©1990 Journal of Women's H istory, Vol. l No. 3 (Winter)__________________ * For help and encouragement, warmest thanks to Lou Ferleger, Linda Gordon, Ginger Gould, Lisa Greenwald, Joan Hoff-Wilson, Sharon McCoy, Fabienne McPhail, John Merriman, and Christie Farnham. 182 JOURNAL OF WOMEN'S HISTORY WINTER views women's subordination as a structural feature of society rather than simply one aspect of the broader social relations of production, notably contemporary capitalism.9 Socialist feminism, thus, "enlarges the domain of political economy" challenges, especially the distinction between public and private.10 Trying to synthesize "the insights of radical feminism with those of traditional marxism," socialist-feminists have postulated two systems of production—the capitalist and the "patriarchal domestic"—and two systems of domination—class and gender. Notwithstanding persisting theoretical problems, socialist-feminists combine allegiances to feminism with allegiances to historical materialism as central to any understanding of women's oppression.11 The problems deriving from the tension inherent in a "dual systems theory" that attempts to give equal weight to sex-gender and class relations as sources of women's oppression and which, according to Iris Young, plague socialist-feminist theory in general have, not surprisingly, also bedeviled socialist-feminist history, which has, during the last two decades, developed in tandem with it.I2 Beginning with a concern to provide historical explanations for the situation of women in the 1960s, socialist-feminist history initially focused on the status and consciousness of white middleclass women, implicitly taken to represent the experience of the American woman in general, with some independent attention to working-class women. The political developments of the 1980s, including the vicissitudes of feminism, have, however, gradually prompted socialist-feminist historians to more complex considerations of the...