Reading Of Literary Texts Research Articles

Romanticism and the Question of the Stranger by David Simpson

David Simpson. Romanticism and the Question of the Stranger. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012. Pp. 288. $31. Stunning in its breadth and bold in its implications, David Simpson's Romanticism and the Question of the Stranger tracks the figure of the and the strangeness of figurative language--and of literature more generally-- in and beyond British Romanticism. In both the Romantic period and our own, Simpson diagnoses an attitude he calls the the primary symptom of which is a pervasive ambivalence toward the stranger, foreigner, or intruder. Following the logic of Derrida's pharmakon--the medicine that may poison, and the poison that may heal--the describes a continuous dialectic in which the is both desired and abjected, loved and feared, welcomed and yet always suspect. It is an inexhaustible oscillation between hospitality and hostility that reminds us never to conceive of kindness and cruelty as utterly (229). Divided into three movements, the book shifts with impressive ease from author-centered chapters to chapters focusing on literary techniques of estrangement and translation, to chapters organized typologically around the figures of the slave and the woman who exemplify the way we abject most the strangers we most need. Even more striking, though, is the bold agility with which Simpson moves between close readings of literary texts from the Romantic period and overt criticism of the political and ethical contradictions of our contemporary culture. In the former he finds that (and its dispersion of both troops and refugees), revolution, the Terror, the abolition movement, and the constitution and reconstitution of nation states put enormous pressure on acts and attitudes of hospitality, causing a distinct ramping up of the depth and scope of the syndrome (10). Likewise, he finds our own everywhere in the U.S. after 9/11, and he is startlingly explicit, without being heavy-handed, about its detrimental effects on our culture. The book is thus a compelling reminder of the political relevance of work in the humanities, as Simpson explores contemporary attitudes in the U.S. toward immigration and refugees, the legitimacy of violence and the state of exception, welfare and the poverty crisis, sexual violence, and the decision to go to in Iraq (which Simpson approaches through a reading of Donald Rumsfeld's warmongering tongue twister about known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns [3]). In Romantic literature, Simpson finds not the source of our latter-day syndrome, but rather a resource for understanding and articulating our own contradictions and ambivalences. Simpson's juxtaposition of the Romantic period with our own goes beyond the familiar connection between the post-revolutionary Terror and post 9/11 war on terror, since he identifies terror as but one of many ways that the logic of the pharmakon shapes the period's political and ethical life. Both today and in the 1790s, terror works by doing double duty as friend and enemy, as that which protects the state and that which the state most fears and must suppress (2). But terror is only one instance of this logic among an extraordinary list of (sometimes unlikely) strangers in Romantic texts: pineapple, woman, discharged soldier, footnote, slave, opium, Jew, glossed word, tea, chocolate, Arab, textile, albatross, metaphor, enemy. The force of Simpson's book comes from the strangeness of these juxtapositions. Indeed, the risk of such a heterogeneous list might be that the term stranger would become so ubiquitous (as the title to his introduction After 9/11: The Ubiquity of Others suggests) as to lose its meaning; yet Simpson's precise historical research and careful close readings allow him to move effortlessly from pineapple to enemy without losing either specificity or rigor. The book's introduction provides an impressive, expansive account of the philosophy of the (who is not necessarily foreign) in a range of thinkers, including Freud, Habermas, Husserl, Levinas, Schmitt, and Ricoeur. …

Reading Theory Now: An ABC of Good Reading with J. Hillis Miller

Reading Theory Now: An ABC of Good Reading with J. Hillis Miller

Sensing Being-Such As Emptiness through Literary Reading: Jean Luc-Nancy’s Aesthetics and Mahayana Buddhist Philosophy

This essay discusses how Nancy’s thought and writing style is, to a great degree, similar to Buddhist philosophy and can be used as a means to develop to step into the discourse on the dimension of genuine spirituality by turning to Buddhism and Taoism. It first examines that what Nancy means by “the sense of the world” and “Truth” as “being-such.” The sense of the world is the sense of the real self as it is called in Buddhist philosophy and Levinasian ethics which has no room for the abstraction. N?g?rjuna’s thought on the real self as the full emptiness is explored. That is, the Truth as being-such is the perfect emptiness. These ideas of Nancy comprize his aesthetics that I make use of for the purpose of reading literary texts. Nancy’s notion of the sublime subject and his aesthetic view in The Muses and The Muses II show that the text as a fragment that is equal to the whole opens “sense as such” and leads us to infinity, the exterior. Practical reading strategies are discussed with the notions of “koan,” and “Hua-yen” in the Avatamsaka S?tra in view of the reading of literary texts to reach the dimension beyond the language of the literary text.

Autobiografia perdida

Analysis of the novel Dias perdidos, published by Lucio Cardoso in 1943, based on the fact pointed out by the author that this was an autobiographical novel. Lúcio Cardoso, Lucio Cardoso, whose birth centenary, is completed in 2012, is known for his taste to create failed characters that are in critical moments of their lives. From the idea of covenant fantasy developed by Philippe Lejeune, the concept of life writing, developed by Ruth Silviano Brandão, the concept of archive fever, from Jacques Derrida and self writing, by Michel Foucault this article tries to catch the writer in his work, showing how the writing and life mingle in the case of Lucio Cardoso. Will also be presented ideas and notions of the writer from a literature search in its collection contained in the Casa de Rui Barbosa Foundation, in Rio de Janeiro. This collection of research has demonstrated extremely important for the perception of new keys reading of literary texts.

Communicational Criticism: Studies in Literature as Dialogue by Roger D. Sell (review)

Reviewed by: Communicational Criticism: Studies in Literature as Dialogue by Roger D. Sell David Stromberg Roger D. Sell , Communicational Criticism: Studies in Literature as Dialogue. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2011. 392 pp. Roger Sell of the Åbo Akademi in Turku, Finland, has spent the past decade articulating an interdisciplinary critical approach that attempts to reintroduce what might be termed the "human element" into literary criticism. He began with Literature as Communication (2000), in which he laid the foundations for what he called "mediating criticism" — the title of a 2001 book that developed a notion suggesting the critic's role as a mediator between author and reader. Communicational Criticism is the next major step in his comprehensive project, a theory of literary appreciation and criticism in post-postmodern times. The book develops the various threads of this theory in applied analyses of English literary works from Shakespeare to Pinter, with chapters on, among others, Pope, Wordsworth, Dickens, T. S. Eliot, Churchill, Orwell, and Lynne Reid Banks. To understand the background to Sell's notion of communicational criticism, it is helpful to return to Literature as Communication for his notion of communication as a semiotic process of negotiating a view shared by two parties of some third "real, hypothetical, or fictional" entity (2000:3). For Sell, "the writing, transmission and reading of literary texts . . . are human deeds, with a fully interpersonal valency" (22). This happens in a phenomenal world that writers and readers both occupy, even if not at one and the same moment, since this valency continues "across time and space" (107). Indeed, "literature's world [is] the world within which literature itself operates . . . the real world" (44). And while Sell relates to literature's ability to communicate some notion of "truth," the truth is not necessarily literal: "At the price of episodic or specific truth, the writer may be able to implicate truth of some other kind" (33-34). Such an approach is actually associated with an Aristotelian notion of the universal truth of poetry or the Wordsworthian moral feeling. Taking literature to be a form of communication, one which can take place "directly or indirectly" (3), Sell argues that the role of the critic is to "mediate" between writer and reader. In Communicational Criticism Roger Sell goes on to explore different kinds of communication as ways of re-describing some of the qualities that make a text literary. He argues that one of the most important aspects in assessing communication pertains to the conditions of dialogue: "In most literature which readers have felt worthy of the name, the invitation extended by any fictional elements to a truly dialogical comparing of notes is very powerful" (2011: 13). Yet the notion of dialogue is itself tied up with non-textual moral considerations: "if communication is to be genuine and effective . . . [w]hat must also come into play are ethical considerations of human equality, of truthfulness, of trust, of fairness, of cooperativeness, and of situational appropriateness" (18). A connection is drawn between a text's formal aspects and its ethical significance. [End Page 337] Sell's notion of communicational criticism is bound up with the distinction between genuine and distorted communication, and his critical approach assesses the kind(s) of communication specific texts offer. Distorted communication is the kind that "does not involve a fair-minded mutual respect, but is skewed by some assumed disparity between the participants" (22); genuine communication, by contrast, is the kind in which "different parties respect each other's human autonomy" (23). Rather than merely prioritizing one over the other, the study points to a "polarity between distorted and genuine communication [that] can help to shape a literary work's entire structure" (28). Once literary critics have responded to the work's oscillation between these two poles, their commentary can "move outwards" to discuss "character portrayal, narratological structures, and thematic significances" (32). Sell's argument that, consciously or not, readers first latch on to a literary work's way of communicating implies that this is also the place where critics might, perhaps, begin their exploration of literary works. In his chapter on Pinter, Sell describes this kind of communicational oscillation in the playwright's oeuvre, pointing out that...

Postcolonial literature and challenges for the new millennium

This special issue is concerned with readings of literary texts that reposition and reinvigorate postcolonial studies in the twenty-first century. If, after 9/11, the war against terror dominates g...

James Kearney, The Incarnate Text: Imagining the Book in Reformation EnglandThe Incarnate Text: Imagining the Book in Reformation England. James Kearney. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009. Pp. ix+312.

Scholars like Jesse Gellrich, Seth Lerer, and Peter Stallybrass have examined the codex as an organizing metaphor for knowledge preservation and transmission in the Middle Ages and early modern era. James Kearney similarly addresses the book as an idea, examining how it was imagined in the context of the Reformation’s crisis in representation and language. The central problematic on which this book rests has always been at the heart of Christianity. Given the inevitable roles of human mediation and the fallen world of materiality in Christian practice, they paradoxically become necessary for their own overcoming. Scripture is a crucial case in point: the materiality of the book, and of language itself, poses difficulties for Christianity’s emphasis on transcendence. Kearney effectively uncovers this history, and shows how this age-old problematic was heightened during the Reformation, with its emphasis on Bible-reading pitted against putatively idolatrous worship characterized by ritual, images, and sacred space. Kearney’s first chapter examines the relevance of this crisis to central figures in the early Reformation like Erasmus, Thomas More, and William Tyndale. He examines how Erasmus simultaneously belittled shrines, pilgrimages, and relics for their material particularity, while valorizing the biblical text recovered by scholarly labor as the only means to obtain a properly transcendent access to the divine; according to Kearney, in spite of himself Erasmus cannot avoid affirming the inescapably material dimensions of language and text. In contrast to Carlos Eire’s work on Erasmus, Kearney obscures the consequential differences, regardless of shared materiality, between writing and the physical accoutrements of devotion. This analysis would have been strengthened by a more nuanced theorization of materiality; along these lines, the differences between the materiality of the book and of spoken language are sometimes collapsed here. Kearney proceeds to examine how this Erasmian dilemma unfolded in the More-Tyndale debate over the relationship between church and scripture. Little about the Reformation conflicts over textuality and materiality that Kearney discusses will be unfamiliar to scholars of the period, and much of their relevance for Erasmus, More, and Tyndale has been extensively treated by Brian Cummings, James Simpson, and others. Moreover, at times Kearney ironically fetishizes the ‘‘crisis of the book’’ at the expense of the underlying social causes making this crisis meaningful, in contrast to Cummings’s examination of the political stakes at the heart of the Reformation contest over modes of signification. Kearney’s contribution resides primarily in his astute readings of literary texts that engage this crisis of the book in complex ways. In chapter 3, Kearney explores how Doctor Faustus offers a parody of conversion through reading. Faustus reifies language and has a generally idolatrous attitude to texts — exemplified when he fetishizes his Satanic contract — but Kearney incisively argues that the play 341 REVIEWS

Patterns of Association Among Multiple Motivations and Aspects of Achievement in Reading

The present study investigated the multivariate relationships between several aspects of motivation and achievement in reading. Canonical correlation analysis was used to examine patterns of associations for reading information texts in Phase I and for reading literary texts in Phase II. The samples were 923 and 225 seventh graders, respectively. Results revealed three multivariate patterns for information text, whereas one pattern was observed for literary text. An explanation for the difference between reading motivation for information text and literary text is provided based on distinctions between these genres. Additionally, findings showed that undermining motivations predicted students’ reading achievement more strongly than affirming motivations. The theoretical and practical implications of the study are discussed.

A Study of the Effects of Intertextuality Awareness on Reading Literary Texts: The Case of Short Stories

Intertextuality can be generally defined as the influence and presence of previous texts in the construction of the present one; it shows the internal relations of a text with all other relating texts (Booker, 1996; Halliday, 2003). The consensus is that no text is a complete creation of its author; rather, it is constructed through the process of interconnections of textual elements of the relating texts and the author’s creativity. In literary texts, intertextuality plays crucial roles (Abrams, 1993: 185-6; Peck and Coyle, 2002: 143). The author, un/consciously appeals to intertextual elements, elaborates them in his artistic career and creativity to create the intended text—prose/poetry. Accordingly, in reading literature, being aware of intertextuality seems to be important in better understanding of the text. The present paper studies possible effects of intertextuality awareness on reading literary texts—short stories. To this end, a group of 25 homogeneous students of English literature at Arak University, Iran, were asked to take part in the study. Two short stories, as tasks of elicitation, were first given to them as pretest to read and answer the questions. Then, after 6 sessions of treatments relating to intertextuality, its features and examples, they were given the same stories, as posttest, to read and answer the questions. Their answers in both pre- and post tests were scored by two raters, and then compared. The results revealed strong effects of intertextuality awareness on reading the texts. Possible causes of the results along with the implications of the findings are discussed. DOI: 10.5901/jesr.2013.v3n2p155

The Place of the Nation in Camilla Collett’s Amtmandens Døttre

The year 2013 marks the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of Camilla Collett. At this juncture, is safe to say that her position in the Norwegian canon is secure, but there is still much that remains unexplored in her writing, even--as the following analysis will demonstrate--in her most widely known work, the novel AmtmandensDettre (1855; The District Governor's Daughters). Much of the scholarship dedicated to D0ttre has focused on the symbolic locus of Sophie Ramm's grotto--the cave to which the young protagonist retreats as she attempts to define her identity as a woman in an oppressively patriarchal society. Major studies of the novel have treated the grotto as a key to explaining the text, yet the fact remains that there other symbolically productive loci in this complex novel, and that a reading that focuses on these places brings to light entirely different concerns than the feminist struggle to find a voice that has almost universally been accepted as the singular message of the text.1 Without at all undermining the centrality and urgency of Collett's feminist critique, in this analysis I propose that Dottre is also, in important and ambivalent ways, a novel concerned with identity. My evidence for considering AmtmandensDettre to be a novel springs from a reading of three specific loci in the topography of the novel, namely the Ramm family's seter (shieling or summer dairy), the hytte (cabin or cottage) belonging to fisherman Anders, and Pastor Rein's prestegard (vicarage), which becomes Sophie's home at the end of the novel. In the book Topographies from 1995, J. Hillis Miller argues that, contrary to popular belief, the actions that take place in novels are not so much placed against the background of a scene as generated by it (Miller 1995, 18). He argues further that [n]o account of a novel would be complete without a careful interpretation of the function of landscape (or cityscape) within it (Miller 1995, 16). Miller's study has paved the way for topographical readings of literary texts, such as the one I undertake here. In the opening of Dottre, the narrative perspective lies with Georg Cold. While at first appears that Collett presents her readers with an urbanite's first meeting with the countryside, we later learn that Cold has a rural origin, as the only son of a wealthy mine owner (Collett 1855, Vol. 1, 41-2). Liv Bliksrud claims: Amtmandens Dottre apner med en lansering av et av romanens hovedmotiver, nemlig reisen (Bliksrud 1993, 85; emphasis in the original) [The District Governor's Daughters opens with a presentation of one of the novel's main motifs, namely the journey]. In my reading of the novel, is not the journey in itself that is a key motif, but rather is the notion of what Edward S. Casey calls re-implacement--the establishment of a place of belonging at the end of a displacing journey (Casey 1993, 291). The search for a place in which one might authentically belong lies at the heart of the novel, and--metaphorically at least--parallels Collett's critique of patriarchal disregard for women's emotional needs because re-implacement for Sophie is inextricably linked to marriage. After a brief overview of theories of the national novel, I will give an explication of these three places that demonstrates their semiotic power in relation to broader nineteenth-century Norwegian discourses on identity construction. I will argue that the seter, the cabin, and the vicarage every bit as pregnant with meaning as Sophie's grotto, but that modern readers have tended to take such loci at face value only, and have thus unintentionally erased an important discourse level from the novel. THE NATIONAL ROMANCE Camilla Collett's Dottre is the first major novel by a Norwegian author, and holds a special place in the Norwegian canon, both because of its high quality and because of the social criticism that raises. …

Claude Langlois's Vision of Nineteenth-Century French Catholicism

This article examines some of Langlois's major works on nineteenth-century French Catholicism, which taken together suggest a vision langloisienne defined by three central, intimately interrelated insights. First, for Langlois a chronology of French Catholicism based on an assumption of an ineluctable process of dechristianization needs to be replaced by a more nuanced and contingent understanding of the evolution of belief and practice. Second, a revised chronology illuminates important sectors of creative vitality within Catholicism, particularly with regard to female religious congregations. Third, historians of religion must be willing to use a variety of methods in exploring their subject; social scientific approaches are crucial, but they complement rather than replace traditional narrative, biography, and a close reading of literary texts. The article concludes with reflections on the normative posture that is implicit in Langlois's historical writing, a position based on his commitment to the values of toleration and equality.

Novel Interdisciplinary Rhetoric

A truly interdisdplinary approach to the topic of human enhancement requires input not only from the natural and social sciences, but also from the humanities. This interaction involves the reading of literary texts that raise retevant questions. H. G. Wells' The Island of Doctor Moreau is a text that artistically explores interspecies experimentation for the creation of chimeras. By examining the novel in relation to chimeras of ancient literary myth and their correlative scientific manifestations, important questions arid fresh insights may be gained, contributing to the conversation at large. Interdisciplinary aporoaches receive affirmatton increasingly among supporters of higher education, scientific experimentatton, and human enhancement, including Nick Bostrom, a leader in the transhumanist movement However, Brostom's rhetoric betrays itself and highlights the relevance of an authentic interdisciplinary interface drawing on the humanities and even science fiction.

THE USE OF SNOWBALLING STRATEGY IN TEACHING READING LITERARY TEXTS (SHORT STORIES)

Reading texts for literary experience is different from reading them for information. Actually, there are two general stances (efferent and aesthetic stances) readers may choose when constructing meaning and responding to literature. In the efferent stance the reader’s purpose is primarily to gain information and analyze the author technique. The emphasis is on recalling, paraphrasing, and analyzing details. In the aesthetic stance the reader’s purpose is primarily to “live through” the experience presented in the text and to associate the text with personal experience and feelings. The emphasis is on personally connecting with the text as one reads, developing deeper insights into the human experience and responding thoughtfully to the ideas and insights presented. Thus, it is necessary to apply a strategy in teaching reading literary texts. One of useful strategies for comprehending and discussing literary selections is a snowballing strategy. To apply the strategy in teaching reading literary texts, action research is used as a research methodology. This research is carried out in one of the 4 th semester classes, literature study program, Semarang State University.

Kulturelles Gedachtnis als topographische Selbstartikulation

In contrast to theories according to which urban memory is merely an arbitrary projection of historical meanings on architectural surfaces devoid of any inherent meaning, high-modernist writers like Kafka, Benjamin, Kracauer, and Rilke conceive of memory as networks of historical voices, traces, and echoes that are being articulated by material urban topographies figuring as quasi-subjects. In analogy to the hermeneutic act of reading (literary) texts, these topographic self-articulations are translated through various media and discourses—exemplified here by the novel, the essay, and poetry—into social discourses. Memory, then, is not only a temporal process but also a spatially located act of resisting modernity's hyper-acceleration. Reconstructing aspects of this aesthetic tradition opens up new ways of authentic interrogations of the past that may be of significant methodological value for intermedial cultural studies.

Edward Said and the Margins

Edward Said was the quintessential intellectual of the last quarter of the twentieth century. Commonly celebrated as the founding figure of postcolonialism, his critical oeuvre spans varied terrain. The very strength of his critique lies in these diverse tributaries of thought. Crossing borders and boundaries incessantly, Said’s intellectual project celebrates the culture of resistance while opposing doctrinaire rhetoric. The paper tries to journey along the multifarious “margins” of discourses that crop up in Said. “In-between” spaces have to be investigated for their radical potential, while daring to “transgress” has its own dangers. Said unmasks the unholy nexus between knowledge and power in the mapping of the “Orient” that abetted the colonial enterprise. His contrapuntal readings of literary texts reveal the ubiquitous presence of imperial empire. Consequently, voices from the margins spur counter narratives and “writing back” in the postcolonial condition. Intellectuals in exile tend to be “marginal” and this location helps in looking at the two or even three sides of an issue. Questions of identity, selfhood, nationality, politics, memory, history, representation, geography, homeland, anxieties of influence are dealt with in the paper. The intertwining of the personal and the political occurs in Said. “Memory” is the only hope for resuscitating a “lost world” and battling the accompanying sense of “loss” and “despair” infused in both individuals and communities alike. The paper tries to address how “border crossing” and the “coalescing of margins” create an interdisciplinary breadth in Said, which resist categorization. The “centre/margin” binary is problematized by acknowledging the presence of “many voices,” “polyphony” being a favourite concept of Said. Music gave to him metaphors for human emancipation, while “transgression” was vital. His acknowledgement and assimilation of fellow critics is also mentioned. Beyond enunciating insider-outsider distinctions, Said tried to cultivate knowledge as a bridge between different interests and locations.

Developing cultural awareness through reading literary texts

This paper investigates the use of literature in ESL reading classes and its role in developing cultural awareness. The theoretical part focuses on the role of understanding students’ own culture as the fundamental step in developing cultural awareness. Thus, reading literary texts is understood here as text interpretation from native and foreign linguistic and cultural perspectives, defined by Kramsch as “third space”. The study presented in the second part of the paper attempts to verify the effectiveness of Hanauer’s (2001) method of Focus-on-Cultural Understanding in developing cultural awareness, focusing on gender perception, as one of the most fundamental aspects of culture. The study describes 1st year English philology students’ work with selected extracts from the novel Japanland: a year in search of wa by Karin Muller. It aims at identifying students’ perception of gender roles in their own culture and comparing and contrasting them with those dominating in other cultures, namely Japan and the United States. Firstly, students’ attitudes concerning gender roles within their own culture are measured by a pre-questionnaire. Then, after reading the selected extracts and expert’s interpretations, students’ attitudes are investigated again in order to verify the effectiveness of the tested method in cultural awareness education. Despite its limitations, the study showed that the application of Hanauer’s method Focus-on-cultural-understanding increased students’ cultural awareness, especially in respect to gender-related issues, and led to their reflexivity on their own native culture.

Flexibility in reading literature

Previous research has shown that adolescent readers differ in their ‘online’ processing of literary texts. Differences were found in the extent to which these readers performed certain (meta)cognitive and affective activities while reading literary texts. However, readers might also differ in flexibility; that is, in the extent to which they vary their activities during reading. In this study we examined whether good and poor adolescent readers differ in flexibility. Nineteen Dutch students (ten known as good, nine known as poor literature readers) each read five stories while thinking aloud. Think aloud transcripts were analysed for the reading activities students performed. We used a multilevel model to estimate the mean changes in occurrence of activities during reading, as well as the variances between readers and stories. Results indicated that good readers were more flexible: they tended to change their reading activities both within and between stories, whereas poor readers showed more static patterns of response.

CIES Bibliography 2011

CIES Bibliography 2011

Teaching Literary Criticism to Iranian University Students: Some Cultural Obstacles

Literary criticism is one of the most challenging courses, if not the most problematic course, to teach on the curriculum of Literature in Iranian universities. This course has in fact been designed to familiarise students with a variety of critical approaches to literature. As such, faculty members who teach this course are required to cover a range of theories that often negate or dialectically complete each other. Each of these theories offers certain possibilities but also has some limitations in the critical reading of literary texts. In this paper I argue that teaching literary theory and criticism to Iranian students is often a disappointing and unsuccessful undertaking mainly because they cannot think of the critical reading of texts as an act that can be performed through various conflicting discourses. What our audience at Iranian universities seeks is the assurance of an “ultimate word” in literary theory and criticism, an approach which offers them a “complete” strategy for decoding every aspect of texts. Even when introduced to an easily applicable approach, students typically do not show much enthusiasm for engaging in a critical reading of texts but prefer their teachers to “reveal” to them the “secrets” of a text or its supposed “message”. It is argued in this paper that the difficulty of teaching literary criticism at Iranian universities stems from an undemocratic mentality which believes in the authority of a single voice and, therefore, is unable to grasp the pluralism of critical approaches. I conclude that no significant improvement can be envisaged in the current condition of teaching literary criticism in Iranian universities unless there is a change of attitude towards criticism and cultural plurality, both on the part of students and faculty members.

Beyond Romantic Ecocriticism: Toward Urbanatural Roosting (review)

Nichols, Ashton. 2011. Beyond Romantic Ecocriticism: Toward Urbanatural Roosting. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. $85.00. hc. xxiii + 230 pp.In recent years ecological literary criticism has moved from the margins of the academy to become an increasingly mainstream mode of analysis, nowhere more so than in Romanticist circles. Early new historicist scholarship in the 1980s tended to view Romantic writing about nature as evading fields of social, economic, and political struggle. Beginning in the 1990s, Jonathan Bate, Karl Kroeber, Lawrence Buell, James McKusick, and others sought to reassert the primacy of nature in the Romantic enterprise and to retrieve Romantic environmental thought as a foundation for a new ecopolitics appropriate to the age of global warming. Yet Romantic ecocriticism risked becoming as rigid as the new historicist skepticism it displaced, giving us a version of the Romantics that largely echoes twenty-first-century ecological sensibilities, and so inviting a new wave of critical and revisionary accounts. The most prominent recent intervention in Romantic ecocriticism has been led by Timothy Morton, who in a pair of influential books-Ecology Without (2007) and The Ecological Thought (2010)-challenged the basic assumptions of virtually all ecological thought, mainstream and radical, of the last two centuries. Morton argues that the concept of is an aestheticized abstraction that feeds into anthropocentric fantasies of domination, and has done more ecological harm than good.Ashton Nichols's Beyond Romantic Ecocriticism enters this contested terrain with a call for an environmental criticism grounded in what he calls urbanature. Although Nichols's book is less iconoclastic towards mainstream ecocriticism than Morton's work, the two authors share a suspicion towards the concept of Nature as it has traditionally been applied. The conventional view of nature denotes wilderness; spaces are to the extent that they are uninhabited, or unaffected, by human beings, and correspondingly spaces that have been cultivated or transformed by human activity are unnatural. In accord with much recent ecocritical work, Nichols rejects this view of nature as something apart from and inherently imperiled by human civilization, and instead uses the term urbanature to articulate the idea that human beings are never cut offfrom wild nature by human culture (xv). Where Morton argues that ecocriticism needs to cast offthe concept of nature altogether, Nichols argues for expanding our sense of nature to encompass human beings and the spaces we cultivate and developWhile Beyond Romantic Ecocriticism is certainly invested in these theoretical debates, it is less a polemical work than, in some ways, a reflective memoir, structured around Nichols's own lyrical, essayistic observations and musings on his encounters with nature over the course of a year. It is divided into four principal sections of three chapters each, corresponding to the seasons and months of the year, and begins and ends with the coming of spring in March. The close attention to natural description and to the author's situatedness in and around nature has become a familiar trope in ecocritical scholarship, as a sort of corrective to the tendency to divorce scholarship from embodied experience. In Nichols's hands, though, this technique never feels cliched. Rather, the more coloristic passages of natural writing flow seamlessly into his readings of literary texts and material history, echoing Wordsworth's claim that our two great spiritual teachers are books and nature.Like many works of ecocriticism, Beyond Romantic Ecocriticism is really two books in one: a descriptive cultural-historical study of the evolution of ideas about nature over the course of the nineteenth century, and a normative argument about what lessons these works offer in framing a social and political response to our current ecological crisis. …