Secondary Narrative Research Articles

Thinking with Kleist: Michael Kohlhaas and Moral Luck

The concept of moral luck comprises four aspects of acts of the Kantian will that are beyond the control of the agent and yet, paradoxically, can affect her moral appraisal. The challenge posed to Kantian moral theory by moral luck was identified by Schleiermacher in his critical review of Kant's Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht, and evidence suggests that Kleist was familiar with Kant's relevant writings while composing Michael Kohlhaas, a novella in which the various kinds of moral luck play a significant role. I extend the concept of moral luck by discussing two further versions of it in the novella, which I call interpretive moral luck and—drawing on Max Weber—proxy moral luck. In tracing these categories, I show how Kleist dramatized paradoxical consequences of Kant's theory that Kant himself acknowledged. Lastly, I interpret the secondary narrative of the gypsy woman and her prophecy as a further critique of Kantian morality.

City Botany: Reading Urban Ecologies in China through Amitav Ghosh’s River of Smoke

City Botany: Reading Urban Ecologies in China through Amitav Ghosh’s River of Smoke Kanika Batra (bio) Amitav Ghosh’s second novel in the Ibis trilogy about the opium trade to China in the early nineteenth century is also a sustained meditation on the economics of botany. The cultivation of poppy flowers and the processing of seeds into opium in India and its sale in China by British, American, and Indian traders is the most obvious aspect of economic botany. The secondary narrative of the search for an elusive flower from China, the golden camellia, is another goal of the mercantile explorations undertaken by the British in the nineteenth century. My interest is in examining these botanical endeavors through the lens of urban studies. Ghosh’s representation of Chinese flora and fauna is emblematic of what I call “city botany,” the cultivation and trade of plants within cities, specifically Canton, center of the illicit opium trade and the site of British defeat of the Chinese in the first Opium Wars (1839–1842). In detailing colonial expeditions in search of exotic plants that somehow wend their way from, towards, and around the city, Ghosh suggests a move away from Orientalist notions of “pure” uncultivated nature. Cultivated nature, its bounty, and the transportation of this bounty across the seas is the governing trope in the first two novels of the trilogy: Sea of Poppies (2008) and River of Smoke (2011). Examining contemporary implications of such tropology, this article places environmental and [End Page 322] urban studies in dialogue with postcolonial studies to argue that Ghosh’s historical perspective illuminates contemporary global concerns about urban spatial economy, built versus natural environments, and the profitability of the trade in plants, which often take China as the epicenter of these concerns. The novel, like the cities depicted in it, advances a postmodern historiography that gestures toward the present even while it describes the past. It allows for an analysis of a strand in postmodernist discussions of urban ecologies, embodied in particular by David Harvey’s recent writings, where some cities are understood as epitomes of unequal development and governmental apathy toward its citizens. Such an approach inadvertently contributes to the discourse emerging from Western policy studies that takes developing nations to task for not preserving environmental standards or biological resources in the rapid drive towards urbanization.1 My claims resonate with those made by Cara Cilano and Elizabeth DeLoughery in their essay “Against Authenticity” that “a vital aspect of postcolonial ecocriticism refuses the nostalgia of pure landscape even while it grapples with the best ways of addressing the representation of the nonhuman environment” (79). I understand Cilano and DeLoughery’s reference to “nonhuman environment” as indicating natural and built environments. The city and the garden are two obvious examples of such built environments.2 The following questions addressed in this article derive from my reading of Ghosh’s novel: If botany has always been pressed in the service of economic interests, and cities have served as the loci of these interests, then should developing nations be held especially culpable for not keeping in mind sustainable development in imagining and creating cities for the new millennium? Further, are developing nations any more culpable than developed ones for not preserving their biological resources in natural habitats? There are no easy answers, particularly since China (like many other Asian countries) is witnessing unprecedented migration from rural to urban locations, which puts pressure on existing natural and built environments. Ghosh has pointed to the connections between the historical setting of the novel and contemporary relations between China and Western nations in an interview with Tom Ashbrook. The parallels between nineteenth-century Euro-American advocates of Free Trade in the novel and neoliberal policies in the present as well as the inverse balance of payments crisis are too obvious to be missed. The opium trade was directly responsible for draining the Chinese economy much as the current situation is leading to a US balance of payments deficit. In both cases state protectionism to curb the excesses of the trade imbalance is seen as a way out of the current crisis. In Ghosh’s novel when Governor Lin confiscates the opium...

Image repair discourse of Chilean companies facing a scandal

This study examines the construction of a positive corporate image in public statements issued by 12 Chilean companies facing a crisis in the period January 2008 to July 2010. Drawing on repair image theory (Benoit, 1997), narrative theory (Labov and Waletsky, 1967), and argumentation theory (Aristotle), this article aims to investigate which discursive strategies and which linguistic structures have been instrumental in this construction. Three analytical categories were investigated in this study, namely, image repair strategies, construction of ethos, and narratives. In each of these categories, special attention is paid to lexico-grammatical features (e.g. active voice/passive voice, grammatical metaphor, etc.) and socio-pragmatic strategies (e.g. redundancy). The analysis shows that the core image repair strategy is denial, which is accomplished through a highly rhetorical language. It also demonstrates how the public statements create a secondary narrative of the companies’ good sense, good moral character, and goodwill, through the use and abuse of linguistic and pragmatic devices.

The perils of plausibility in Balzac’s “Facino Cane"

LIKE many early nineteenth century French novelists, Honore de Balzac is a difficult writer to classify. Though he is often heralded as the father of French realism, his attachment to scientific exactitude and narrative objectivity is occasionally counterbalanced by a taste for mystical spirituality and a penchant for the fantastically improbable. (1) But nowhere are the competing tugs of romantic escapism and objectivity more prominently in evidence than in the short story Often read as a semi-autobiographical account, Cane teeters maddeningly along the precipice between a commitment to scrupulous objectivity and outright surrender to melodramatic implausibility. In this frame story, two very distinct characters, a young student of science and a blind and aging musician, narrate texts that are radically different in tone, texture, and style. The framing narrative, recounted by the student, respects the overriding values of the tradition and center-stages the toil and subsistence of working class characters. The secondary narrative, on the other hand, relates the swashbuckling adventures of a former Italian noble, Facino Cane. Although the text ultimately triumphs in the end, it is a Pyrrhic victory in that a major casualty of the battle for textual supremacy is the plaisir du texte. Facino Cane's quest to recover the lost treasure may strain the limits of credibility, but even the most jaded reader hopes nonetheless for a most improbable ending: that the two protagonists will manage somehow to locate the lost fortune and live wealthier ever after. Pulmonary disease brings about a very ordinary end to Cane's extraordinary life, but in so doing, it demonstrates a truth with which writers were routinely obliged to grapple. Unalloyed hardships make for disappointing narratives. Fantastic adventures, on the other hand, such as those recounted by Facino Cane, beckon the reader into an irresistible world of unlimited possibilities, one far more compelling than the realm of humdrum banality offered by writers committed to a mimetic representation of dreary reality. (2) The fact that both narrators make reference to Arabian Nights, a work that epitomizes even today the ne plus ultra of fantastic exoticism, demonstrates how anchored in the fabulous and the fantastic is the art of narrative production. (3) For Facino Cane, the reference is metaphorical. The treasure he promises to locate is as vast as that depicted in the Arabian fable (Voulez-vous me mener a Venise, m'y conduire, voulez vous avoir foi en moi? vous serez plus riche que ne le sont les dix maisons les plus riches d'Amsterdam ou de Londres, plus riche que les Rothschild, enfin riche comme Les Mille et Une Nuits). (4) For the primary narrator, on the other hand, the link is metatextual rather than metaphorical. He likens himself to one of the fictional dervishes in Arabian Nights because like a dervish, he has the power to control others in fictional constructs he creates: Chez moi l'observation etait deja devenue intuitive, elle penetrait l'ame sans negliger le corps; ou plutot elle saisissait si bien les details exterieurs, qu'elle allait sur-le-champ audela; elle me donnait la faculte de vivre de la vie de l'individu sur laquelle elle s'exercait en me permettant de me substituer a lui comme le derviche des Mille et Une Nuits prenait le corps des personnes sur lesquelles il prononcait certaines paroles. (1019) Like Scheherazade herself, then, the primary narrator betrays an uncanny talent for story-telling. Unlike the tales in Arabian Nights, however, his texts are anchored solidly in the familiar milieu of his lower-class neighborhood, and are, therefore, aligned with realist narratives of the time. Similarities between the narrator's texts and texts abound. To begin with, his attachment to scientific inquiry betrays his positivistic leanings. He spends much of his time hunched over tomes in a nearby library, breaking away occasionally to indulge in his favorite pastime of people-watching. …

Secondary narratives in the aftermath of crime: Defining family members’ relationships with prisoners

In the research presented here, we apply the storyline framework of the criminal event to the secondary narrative of prisoners’ relationships with family members before and during incarceration, and their plans for life upon release from prison. Analyzing 29 in-depth interviews from 13 inmate/family dyads and one inmate/family triad, we examine multiple views of the impact of incarceration and its consequences for the incarcerated individual, the family member, and their connections to each other. We demonstrate that these relationships follow three distinct yet intersecting secondary narratives – disrupted, transforming, and precarious – characterized by different qualities of pre-incarceration relationships, impacts on family members’ lives, and plans for the future. Defining the characteristics of these narratives is important because each narrative has specific implications for the family member's willingness and capacity to support the prisoner and potentially limit future offending behavior.

Jean-Luc Godard: The Cinema in Doubt

Jean-Luc Godard: The Cinema in Doubt

Dreams and Dream-like Imagery in Cancer Patients' Narratives

The present article concentrates on the dreams and dream imagery described in Finnish cancer patients' written narratives. The aim is to analyse the significance of dreams as primary narratives when they occur within cancer narratives, which are treated in this context as secondary narratives, and to emphasise the use, meaning and function of dream narratives within the discourse on a particular socioculturally stigmatised illness, namely cancer. The article demonstrates how personal dream experience becomes verbalised and constructed as narrative, and how these experiences are employed to communicate emotionally challenging and socioculturally marginal issues.

Troos as unieke uitkoms in ‘n pastoraal-narratiewe benadering tot rousmart

Consolation as a unique outcome within a pastoral-narrative approach to griefThe pastoral counselling of those who grieve poses new challenges to pastoral care. Because of the shift away from a modernist paradigm, the grief process is now seen as an open-ended process, rather than a closed process that focuses on the mastering of the so-called tasks of mourning, and the avoidance of grief pathology. Recent grief theory suggests that the grief process cannot reach a point of closure. Grief counselling should therefore rather embark on a process of generating new meaning to the problem-saturated discourses surrounding death and loss. Narrative therapy is suggested as a means of grief counselling, as it makes use of the story analogy, which supports the notion of an open end to the grief process. In this study, the narrative is explored within the framework of Practical Theology. Both the master story of God and the grief-saturated stories of people are combined in a pastoral approach that envisages consolation as the unique outcome of the therapeutic process. Consolation is regarded as one of the secondary narratives in the greater narrative of God, as well as in the reformed theological vocabulary. It is suggested that a pastoralnarrative approach to grief will generate the consolation needed by the grief-stricken on their lifelong journey of coming to terms with their loss.

Nature as Non-terrestrial

A complex process of place-making by Vedic and Purānic primary narratives and localized oral secondary narratives shows how nature in India is perceived from a deeply humanized worldview. Some form of cosmic descent from other place-worlds or lokas are used to account for the sacredness of a landscape in the primary narrative called stala purāna, while secondary narratives, called stala māhātmya, recount the human experience of the sacred. I suggest that sacred geography is not geography of “terrestrial” but of implaced otherworldly materials––rivers, mountains or forests. An ecological ethics based on sacred geography must therefore take into account the sacred aspects of such narratives and encourage normative values that could apply to both the sacred and the ecological for such places

Comings Out: Secrecy, Sexuality, and Murder in Michael Nava’s <i>Rag and Bone</i>

Mystery novels featuring gay sleuths constitute ideal forum for writers to explore homosexuality, for in seeking knowledge required to solve a crime, gay detective also finds himself confronting epistemological questions raised by his own sexual identity. One novelist who has successfully capitalized on analogies between enigmas posed by murder and homosexual desire is Michael Nava, author of a seven-novel starring gay Chicano defense attorney Henry Rios. (1) In a 1999 interview with Philip Gambone, Nava admits that his series, published between 1986 and 2001, closely adheres to various conventions of American hard-boiled murder mystery, a genre in which are certain mechanical requirements: ... you have to produce a dead body at some point, and you have to produce suspects, and then you have to produce killer (131). Within these parameters, though, there are many opportunities for innovation. One way Nava defies expectations about frequently homophobic hard-boiled genre is by drawing parallels between his novels' central murder mysteries and secondary narratives in which Henry openly confronts what Drewey Wayne Gunn calls the ultimate mystery every gay man must face at some point in his life: his difference from his family and general into which he has been born (3-4). Indeed, Henry's criminal investigations frequently lead him to reflect on nature of his homosexual desire and gay subjectivity. This essay examines how aspects of a criminal case parallel matters concerning homosexuality in final Henry Rios mystery, Rag and Bone (2001). (2) Taking my cue from Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's analysis of homosexual closet in Epistemology of Closet (1990), I explore how Nava's novel addresses issues of secrecy and disclosure pertaining to how gay and bisexual Chicanos negotiate closet, and to how a murder witness divulges information about crime. Just as men who experience homosexual desire must constantly decide to conceal or reveal their sexuality in varying social situations, witness makes judgments about whether to disclose information about murder to different individuals. In both cases, characters' choices about how to manage privileged information--and even their personal agency to make such decisions in first place--are intimately bound in a web of power relations shaped by hierarchies of socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and sexuality. Sedgwick's theoretical observations about closet open new possibilities for critical work on Henry Rios mysteries. Until now, scholars have situated Nava's novels in context of fiction written by gay Chicanos, gay detective fiction, and Chicano detective fiction? Studies tend to discuss as a whole and point out recurrent themes such as Henry's doubly marginalized social status as an ethnic minority in a predominately Anglo culture, and as a gay person in a mainly heterosexual society (Lopez 77); his struggles with homophobia and AIDS epidemic; and his effort to form a nontraditional family with another man. (4) Gunn also identifies closet and coming out as important themes, noting that [c]oming out of safety of closet is another terror treated throughout series (50). Although several other critics mention moments of sexual self-identification in Nava's series, they fail to consider relationship between epistemological issues raised on one hand by individual's revelation of his or her homosexual desire and on other by search for knowledge that forms basis of criminal investigation in any conventional murder mystery? An examination of principal arguments in Epistemology of Closet constitutes first step toward correcting this oversight. According to Sedgwick, Western cultures structure meaning around a of binary oppositions, some of which are master terms that leave their traces on other, seemingly unrelated pairs (11). …

Merck's Open Letters and the Teaching of Ethos

In fall 2004, Merck faced a significant threat to the company's public image because of the withdrawal of VIOXX, and Merck executives were forced to defend the company's actions, its motivation for those actions, and its reputation. Confronted with enormous rhetorical challenges, Merck tried to generate public goodwill toward the company by creating a personalized image of a corporate giant worthy of understanding, sympathy, and trust. Open letters released during the initial response to the VIOXX crisis rely on the intimacy of interpersonal communication and demonstrate to students of business communication arguments based on ethos. The syntax and diction of these documents are analyzed to demonstrate how they create a secondary narrative of Merck's good sense, good moral character, and goodwill. Finally, the study presents apparently contradictory narratives of this pharmaceutical giant's responsibility, narratives that summarize the arguments in the VIOXX litigation. Analysis of Merck's open letters underscores the relevance of many concepts covered in the business communications classroom.

On the presence and significance of metaphorical micro-texts in Dante's De vulgari eloquentia

In this paper I intend to focus upon the use of metaphor in the De vulgari eloquentia with the intention of proving that certain recurring metaphorical tropes inscribe a complex subtextual mechanism of rhetorical argumentation on the text. It is, furthermore, my contention that the ultimate purpose of these ‘metaphorical microtexts’, a concept which I shall shortly define, is to promote the fundamental, though artfully concealed, purpose of the work, which, following trends in recent scholarship, I take to be the conferral of authority upon the author and his vernacular works. Central to this interpretation is the commonly accepted notion that Dante’s exile from his native Florence constituted such a fundamental and traumatic upheaval within his world-view that it initiated a radical shift in ‘the moral and philosophical dimension of his poetics’. 1 Subsequent to exile, it is suggested, the poet’s thought had no other recourse but to travel beyond the localised arena of Florentine society and politics, and engage in ‘a global, or at least peninsular, activity as a cosmopolitan man of culture’ (Ascoli, p. 47). Concurrent with this interpretation of the impact of Dante’s exile, I am implicitly following the view that the authority-giving ‘subtext’ of the De vulgari eloquentia emerges via the facility for the stated purpose of the text (a work of literary theory) to pursue ‘a complex rhetorical strategy that must collapse the opposition between “vernacular” and “grammar”, Dante and the Latin auctores […] in order to satisfy Dante’s desire for personal authority’ (Ascoli, p. 60). Indeed, I hope to be able to contribute in some small measure to the concept of subtextual authorisation in the De vulgari eloquentia by extending it into the domain of metaphor. It is apposite at this point to provide a definition of ‘metaphorical micro-texts’. The term ‘micro-texts’ in particular is potentially misleading, with its implication of reading a secondary narrative. This is emphatically not the purpose of this essay. One might just as easily name these rarely remarked metaphorical repetitions ‘syntagmatic chains’ or ‘metaphorical fields’, since by ‘reading’ these ‘micro-texts’ all we hope to do is to evaluate the significance of metaphor, and specifically of recurring metaphorical tropes, within the over-arching concerns of the treatise. My aims, consequently, are threefold in this inquiry. Firstly, I must establish the existence

In the spirit of Bevan-Brown

This paper has two interwoven layers. The primary narrative pays tribute to C.M. Bevan-Brown, who catalysed the beginnings of the New Zealand Association of Psychotherapists in 1947. The secondary narrative picks up two elements from among his formidable array of interests and activities and, using them as a mirror, attempts to provoke awareness for readers in 2003 of some forces shaping our assumptions and behaviours. In particular, we look at our relationship to 'the establishment', the effects of post-modernism, the interface between psychotherapy and medicine, and psychotherapy's relative neglect of the body and embodiment.

Homer beside Himself: Para-Narratives in the Iliad

Students reading the Iliad for the first time are often bewildered by the sheer volume of information on apparently unrelated subjects contained in it. The central narrative seems to unfold very slowly, and to be complicated by long speeches containing stories which might be interesting in themselves, but which seem to have no relevance to anything else. In this book Dr Alden offers advice on how to read the Iliad through the relationship of major paradigms to the events of the main narrative. The first section offers the first full-length study in English of the paradigmatic functions of secondary narratives and minor-key episodes in the Iliad. None of these are irrelevant or merely ornamental: rather each is carefully selected and altered if necessary, to reflect on significant episodes of the main narrative and act as guides to its interpretation. The second section offers a general reading of the Iliad arising out of Phoenix's advice to Achilles in Book 9. The allegory of the Prayers illustrates the dire consequences of rejecting prayers, and the paradigm of Meleager presents us with an instance of an angry hero to whom prayers and entreaties are addressed, whilst the primary narrative confines this motif of prayers and entreaties in ascending scale of affection to Achilles and Hector and contrasts their responses. Both heroes suffer terribly for their rejection of entreaties.

Translative Performance in Documentary Film: Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson's Facing the Music

Facing the Music (2001) is a film that performs at many levels. While its primary narrative is about the effects of government funding cuts to universities, and specifically the effect on the University of Sydney's Music Department, the film also weaves other more generic stories about people and how they interact with each other. Connolly's and Anderson's complex and confronting style of observational film-making is examined in the context of this film for the ways in which it ‘assumes' that film can ‘translate’ the details of people's everyday lives into a broad discussion of particular social issues and conflicts. As with all translations, however, some meanings inadvertently are lost and others added. Drawing on Walter Benjamin's idea of ‘translatability’ and Brecht's concept of gest, this paper describes how particular cultural meanings which are embedded within the documentary film, Facing the Music, can be accessed through the ways in which the audiovisual text ‘melodramatically’ presents people and profilmic events. Thomas Elsaesser's definition of classic fictional melodrama, as a ‘closed’ world of ‘inner’ violence where ‘characters are acted upon’, becomes a guide to understanding the film's secondary narratives about the operation of particular stereotypical, binary representations: men and women; artists and ‘the rest of the world’; academics (‘gown’) and other people (‘town’). Using Laura Mulvey's further distinction of ‘matriarchal’ and ‘patriarchal’ melodramas. Facing the Music is described as a ‘matriarchal’ documentary melodrama. The film's selective translation of how people live their lives in a particular social situation is thereby discussed as a further translation into the broader discourses of gender and power relations in a society.

Part two: reflections on the sequel

What do Paradise Regained and Terminator 2 have in common? They are both sequels, both chronological extensions of narratives that were originally envisioned as closed and complete works. Part Two explores the phenomenon of secondary narrative by studying the conditions that determine its production and reception. The volume encompasses works of poetry, drama, prose, and films, moving from Homer to Hollywood. Each piece is grounded in a specific genre or period and while engaging a broader historical or theoretical perspective.

’n Tekslingulstlese anallse van die gebruik van <i>en</i>

A text-linguistic analysis of the use of the Afrikaans conjunction en (Englisti: and)The occurrence of the Afrikaans subordinating conjunction en is investigated as conjunction marker, discourse marker and structure marker, as well as its role with regard to cohesion and coherence. This analysis of the functional occurrences of the subordinating conjunction is conducted within the context of the narrative “Oorlidde Pa en die by” (Spies, 1994:29). The narrative consists of a primary narrative in which a secondary narrative is embedded. The secondary narrative is related by one of the characters in the primary narration It has been established that the use of en, in this narrative, occurs according to a definite discourse plan. As a discourse marker en is used in a discourse organisational connection. The use of en is more frequent in the recounting of the events in the secondary narrative. Its use is less obvious where the narrator is recounting the primary narrative. With regard to the structuring of the narrative en is used functionally. In the section of plot development where the actions follow rapidly on each other, en occurs more frequently than in the other sections, for example in the orientation and coda. The frequent use of en lends a firm cohesive structure and results in rapid progression with regard to action in this narrative. The absence or presence of en also serves to indicate emphasis. In the narrative which was investigated, the use of the subordinating conjunction en plays an important role in creating cohesion and coherence in the text.

Deephaven: Sarah Orne Jewett's Exploratory Metafiction

DEEPHAVEN: SARAH ORNE JEWETT'S EXPLORATORY METAFICTION Judith Bryant Wittenberg Hood College Sarah Orne Jewett and her critics have made relatively modest claims for the importance of Deephaven, her first book, which she published in 1877 after William Dean Howells suggested that she pull together a collection of her magazine sketches. Less than comfortable with the process of producing it, Jewett was also, retrospectively , less than positive about the result, although it includes several memorable episodes and makes effective use of the unifying device of a narrator-observer. She modestly referred to it as "little Deephaven"1 and deprecated it in her preface to the 1893 edition, noting the work's "youthfulness," admitting it contained "sentences which make her feel as if she were the grandmother of the author of 'Deephaven' and her heroines," and inviting readers to "smile with her" at its "callow" quality.2 Nevertheless, although critics have overlooked these authorial judgments and have paid tribute to the work's strengths,3 many have found it of interest primarily as a precursor to Jewett's masterpiece, The Country of the Pointed Firs.4 However, what also makes Deephaven significant is its status as a metafiction, a work in which the author overtly considers various aspects of her narrative craft, exploring such basic artistic issues as the posture of the writer vis-à-vis her material and the psychosocial function of narrative. As Michael Holstein points out, the first issue, that of writerly "stance," lies behind what he calls the "secondary narrative" in Jewett's culminating 1896 work,5 yet in the much earlier Deephaven one can see her contemplating not only this but several other metafictive topics. In this regard, Jewett's inaugural work has special implications for all of her subsequent fiction; at the same time, it anticipates important twentieth-century American novels that also investigate the process of fictional creation. To be sure, the most obvious intentions of Deephaven are delineated by the author in her 1893 preface, where she expresses her wish to ensure that the growing numbers of summer visitors to the seaside communities of Maine and the year-round inhabitants learn to "understand one another" and "to profit by their new relationship " (p. 3). They are also evident in the text itself, where the narrator asserts that even in small towns such as Deephaven "romance and tragedy and adventure" may be discerned by those who are willing "to study life and character" and who "find pleasure in thought 154Judith Bryant Wittenberg and observation of simple things" (pp. 75—76). Nonetheless, from the outset it is apparent that the narrator, Helen Denis, and her close friend, Kate Lancaster, not only function as visitors attempting to comprehend the local mores and to perceive the excitement and pathos evident behind the quiet routines of many townspeople but also, in their quest to ferret out and to reconstitute the various human stories available in Deephaven and its environs, serve as authorsurrogates . Indeed, because Kate has family ties to the town while Helen is thoroughly an outsider, at least one critic has suggested that Kate and Helen constitute Jewett's "splitting" of her self into two parts, the appreciative returned native and the objective working writer.6 Certainly, the double-voiced and implicitly authorial discourse of the young women, examined in conjunction with a number of other provocative elements in the work, tends to suggest that Deephaven constitutes an investigation of crucial aspects of the writerly endeavor. To begin with, there are the several narratorial references to other writers that to some degree "frame" Deephaven and somehow imply that the work is being consciously inserted into the literary tradition. In the opening section, a tale of Kate's reminds Helen "of the story of a Chinese procession which I had read in one of Marryat's novels" and Kate's song is "from one of Jean Ingelow's verses" (pp. 12—13), while the closing pages cite an eclectic array of literary works all listed under the rubric of the young women's "pet books," everything from children's stories to volumes of sermons to William Shakespeare, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and William Thackeray (pp. 297-98). Thus establishing the...

Yang Kuei-Fei as the Hsi Wang Mu: Secondary Narrative in Two T'ang Poems

Yang Kuei-Fei as the Hsi Wang Mu: Secondary Narrative in Two T'ang Poems

The Battle of Actium

The true history of Antony and Cleopatra will probably never be known; it is buried too deep beneath the version of the victors. But here and there a few broken words of the under-writing can, with care, be deciphered; and as regards the battle of Actium, chance has made it possible to get at something approaching the truth, provided that we follow the elementary rule of starting from the contemporary evidence and not from the secondary narratives. Except for Ferrabino's study, every historian known to me has drawn his account of Actium solely from the secondary writers—Plutarch, Dio, the epitomators of Livy—in varying proportions; and I have not found that their accounts convey any real meaning to me. My own conclusions, I imagine, may seem strange to some readers; but the method here followed is the right one, whatever be the imperfections in my handling of it.