Romantic Tale Research Articles

The Most Wonderful Thing in the World by Vivian French (review)

Reviewed by: The Most Wonderful Thing in the World by Vivian French Jeannette Hulick French, Vivian The Most Wonderful Thing in the World; illus. by Angela Barrett. Candlewick, 2015 32p ISBN 978-0-7636-7501-1 $18.99 R* Gr. 3-5 A wise old man advises his king and queen that the best way to find a suitable husband for their daughter, Lucia, is to “find the young man who can show you the most wonderful thing in the world.” As a parade of suitors ensues, Lucia takes advantage of her parents’ distraction by would-be husbands to explore her city under the guidance of Wise Old Angelo’s grandson, Salvatore (who does not know her royal identity). While unsuitable suitors come and go, Lucia and Salvatore wander and fall in love, but after discovering Lucia’s parentage, Salvatore despairs at his chances of being with her. When he watches the king and queen interact with their daughter, though, the answer to the riddle comes to him—the most wonderful thing in the world is Lucia herself—and a happy wedding follows. According to information on the jacket flap, this is a retelling of a story that Barrett remembers from her youth, and French’s version is elegant and lyrical with touches of humor. Barrett’s refined watercolor illustrations evoke picturesque Italian vistas and Edwardian-era fashion, and the softening of the edges of the figures and backgrounds creates a dreamy mood that complements the romantic tale; the intricate detailing of the [End Page 303] scenes and the ornateness of the frames that surround both text and illustrations makes this best enjoyed at close range. This is a polished gem, to be savored and sighed over by fairy-tale lovers of all ages. Copyright © 2016 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

A Rose Blooms in Texas: Coming of Age in the Civil War Era by Carlos R. Hamilton (review)

Reviewed by: A Rose Blooms in Texas: Coming of Age in the Civil War Era by Carlos R. Hamilton James P. Bevill A Rose Blooms in Texas: Coming of Age in the Civil War Era. By Carlos R. Hamilton Jr. (Houston: Bright Sky Press, 2015. Pp. 448. Illustrations, appendices, bibliography.) Author Carlos Hamilton Jr. weaves an engaging tale of romance, drama, hardships, and the dangers that came with the secession of Texas from the United States and the war that followed in this piece of historical fiction. The central character of the story, Berta Smith, is a bright, talented and spirited young lady who travels with her family, their slaves, and her piano to a plantation in the piney woods near Crockett, Texas. One of the revelations in the book is how close some of the slaves are to the family and vice versa. The word pictures of the daily interactions of the main characters offer a unique picture of life in East Texas during this tumultuous period. In addition to Berta, readers are introduced to her brother Lucius, her parents Anna Jane and Major John Smith, a young man named John Wootters, and two household slaves, Hannah and her husband Oscar. Berta, an aspiring pianist, finds herself strongly attracted to Wootters who, like her brother Lucius, is compelled to join the Confederate army. The war and the political issues that caused it were widely debated in the home, at work, and in the newspapers. Although the sentiment in Texas was for secession rather than changes to the institution of slavery, the Smith family felt far removed from the headlines until the young men were called to duty. Rather than get mired in the details of the wartime experiences of Lucius Smith and John Wootters, Hamilton leaves a discussion of each man’s service and the horrors of the battlefield to a rather lengthy appendix. This includes notations in a family Bible, letters, obituaries, official war records, county histories, and a discussion of the bitter political partisanship which led to the war. Not only does this help keep the story moving, but the appendix also serves to put the central characters into their proper social and political context. After his Confederate service ends prematurely due to injury, Wootters [End Page 323] visits the Smith Plantation. Emotionally crushed by the death and destruction that he witnessed in battle, he is comforted by Hannah, the house slave, who tells him it would be good for him to stay close to his fellow soldiers. Her advice becomes part of his transition into a normal life following the war, when he works with other Confederate veterans who were also dealing with disabilities. There are many perspectives on the healing process in this book. Following the war, Berta teaches children (including former slaves) to read and write. Major Smith deeds a home site to Hannah and Oscar in exchange for ongoing services to his wife and daughter. The Smiths also make provisions for their ex-slaves that help them to form a church and school, which play an important role for the newly freed blacks. This is a real gem of a story that all readers can learn from and enjoy. James P. Bevill Houston, Texas Copyright © 2015 The Texas State Historical Association

Romance and Divorce between International Law and EU Law: Implications for European Competence on Direct Taxes

This article investigates European constitutional competence to harmonize those provisions of direct taxes of Member States which are incidental to the functioning of the single European market. Explicitly, the EU law, since its inception to date, does not confer powers to the Union to harmonize income taxation of Member States. The sole express reference to income taxes in EU law was an Article of the Treaty establishing the European Community (Article 293 EC) that was repealed during the Lisbon revision. The repealed provision urged the Member States to abolish double taxation by using tools of public international law, that is, outside the EU legal framework. The study explores the potential implications this repeal may have for EU tax mandate: (a) whether it implies an end to the EU tax powers at all in the realm of direct taxes? (b) Whether it is a neutral amendment with no consequences to what-so-ever EU tax authority was already put in place? Or, (c) whether the deletion of the sole income tax reference meant for Member States to proceed under the public international law in effect enhances implicit “federal” competence of the Union to intervene in national tax codes for establishment of a true European economic market? The article analyses the demise of the clause in a legal evolutionary paradigm at the interface of international law and EU law. In metaphor, I describe the changing evolutionary relationship between the European and international law regimes as a tale of romance and divorce. The two laws meet curiously during the 1950s; feelings grow and a bond develops between the two regimes; the romance between the two legal regimes attains its peak during the Maastricht phase; strains appear in their relationship after the Amsterdam revision; the split goes deeper after the Nice amendments and the two finally divorce at the Lisbon revision. Based on this ever-changing relationship framework between the two legal regimes, the article concludes (a) that the deletion of Article 293 EC indicates growing reliance of the integration project on European legal order rather than trusting inter-state treaties based on public international law and (b) an inherent growth in the European “federal” mandate to take broad-range actions to harmonize direct taxes in single market during the post-repeal period.

Idee genologiczne Mariana Maciejewskiego

The sketch is concerned with selected aspects of Marian Maciejewski's thought about theory of literature. Although the scholar was first of all a historian of literature, it is not hard to notice some inclination towards creative exploration of issues connected with theory of literature in his academic writings, at least to the degree needed to solve the historico-literary problems that appeared in the course of his research. Especially genological problems aroused Maciejewski's interest − some noteworthy propositions that he presented with respect to them, even if they do not form a universal theoretical conceptualization, still they do deserve to be approached in the categories of “genological ideas”. Ideas understood in this way include the way Maciejewski uses the category of image, in the meaning that is by no means limited to “poetical imagery”. Applied to Mickiewicz's Crimean Sonnets , as well as to his Lausanne lyrics, the image becomes a synonym of more broadly understood poetical vision, that, in turn − supported either by Wladyslaw Strzeminski's “theory of vision” (in the case of the Crimean series), or by traditions of mystical theology (in the case of the Lausanne poems) − gains operational utility, as a key analytical-interpretative category, at the same time forming often unexpectedly complex frames of reference. In the notional field of so understood image as a technical term both the “image of the author” and the genological issue are contained - both these aspects are joined in Maciejewski's discourse about the poetical novel and the Romantic tale. This is because in the scholar's approach not only a literary text, understood as activation and actualization of a defined system of rules may be the carrier of the image (in the individual-existential dimension as well as in the dimension of program ideas of a literary current): also the very literary genre may be the carrier. In other words, the semantics of the structure occurs not only on the side of the parole, but also on the side of the langue. The consequence of such an approach is the ssumption, made and applied especially in Maciejewski's studies of the tale, that in certain particular cases an individual work may realize genre norms in such a way that its meaning structure can be explained in the categories of a meta-genre discourse. It is exactly this assumption that is suggested by the very title of the treatise A Tale About the Tale ”. This tale about the tale is an introduction to an anthology, which is obvious; however, also Rzewuski's A Confererate Sermon appears to Maciejewski as a tale about the tale. Analogical premises have allowed the scholar to decide the question of the historico-literary status of Malczewski's Maria as of a text completely belonging to the Romantic epoch.

In the Bedroom of the King: Affective Politics in the Restoration Secret History

In 1709, Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, wrote a letter warning Queen Anne of rumors being spread about the queen's relationship with Abigail Masham, her current favorite, insinuating the Queen being a subject of gossip for her subjects, either orally or in print, was in itself a problem. What is interesting about Churchill's letter, which was prompted by the publication of Delarivier Manley's popular secret history, The New Atalantis, is how she links the problem of gossip about the Queen to the genre of the secret history itself, gesturing toward the low nature of Manley's text, which is not well written (Private Correspondence 1: 244). Churchill writes, that looks so much the worse, for it shews the notion is extensively spread among all sorts of people (1: 244, emphasis added).1 The idea subjects may be judging the queen and her counselors is clearly a notion troubles the Duchess, whose letter acknowledges the political potential of the community of brought together by the secret history text.Churchill's recognition of the potential problems inherent in this type of early novel has been noted by critics of early eighteenth-century secret histories: Nicola Parsons emphasizes Churchill's concern, arguing gossip, and its reiteration in the mediated form of the secret history could have serious material effects (Reading Gossip 56). Increased scholarly recognition of the political power of secret histories and their role in shaping reading practices in the early eighteenth century has renewed interest in a genre was too-often denigrated and overshadowed by a certain teleology of the history of the novel.2 What has been overlooked by critics interested in post-1688 secret histories is the political potential of the genre was being actively exploited in the name of factional politics well before Manley's text caused such concern at court. In the early 1680s, in the height of the Exclusion Crisis and its immediate aftermath, many texts-from John Dryden's well-known poem Absalom and Achitophel (1681) and Aphra Behn's novel Love Letters Between a Nobleman and his Sister (1684-87) to more obscure, anonymous works like The Perplex'd Prince ( 1682) and The Fugitive Statesman 1683)-intervened in the propaganda war surrounding the question of the succession.Although many of these texts operate solely on the level of factional propaganda, the secret histories use romance modes as their generic cover provide a more subtle, ideological slant to their propagandistic purposes.3 In contrast to post-1688 secret histories, which Rebecca Bullard forcefully argues encourage readers to believe their rulers are in league against them and encourage suspicion of Courts in general ( 4), the secret histories operate under the cover of romance narratives affectively lessen the distance between the reader and the monarch/hero. By bringing into their monarch's bedroom and by couching their political factionalism under the cover of a romance tale, these texts created an affective intimacy between Restoration subjects and their monarch. This affinity, I argue, temporarily enabled an illusory sense of power on the part of the subject, which acted as a perceived entitlement to sit in judgment over the behavior of the monarch. The illusory sense of power was intensified through communities in London's public spaces where socially oriented gathered to share their interpretations and to gossip over these popular texts. The interactions among secret histories and the communities of coalesced around them contributed to the contemporary ideological shifts concerning notions of who had the right to speak and to judge in political society.Focusing on two secret histories about Charles II-The Perplex'd Prince and Sebastien Bremond's Hattige: or the Amours of the King of Tatuaran ( originally published in French in 1676 and first translated into English in 1680)-I will demonstrate how these texts contributed to political shifts in England from 1660 through the 1688 revolution and after, and to the rise of party politics and parliamentary power in the eighteenth century. …

“RAMANUJAN’S CONGRUENCES AND DYSON’S CRANK”

In 1944, Freeman Dyson conjectured the existence of a “crank” function for partitions that would provide a combinatorial result of Ramanujan’s congruence modulo 11. In 1988, Andrews and Garvan stated such functions and described the celebrated result that the crank simultaneously explains the three Ramanujan congruences modulo 5, 7 and 11. Dyson wrote the article, titled Some Guesses in the theory of partitions, for Eureka, the undergraduate mathematics journal of Cambridge. He discovered the many conjectures in this article by attempting to find a combinatorial explanation of Ramanujan’s famous congruences for P (n), the number of partitions of n indeed, Ramanujan’s formulas lay unread until 1976 when Dyson found In the Trainty College Library of Cambridge University among papers from the estate of the late G.N.Watson. In 1986, F.Garvan wrote his Pennsylvania state Ph.D. Thesis Precisely on the formulas of Ramanujan relative to the crank. In view of this theoretical description, the story of the crank is a long romantic tale and the crank functions are intimately connected to all partitions congruences. In 2005, Mahlburg stated that the crank functions themselves obey Ramanujan type congruences.

The Fictitious World Traveller: The Swede on Timor and the Noble Savage Imagery

Travel writing soared in the Western world in the early-modern era with the widening geographical knowledge. This was accompanied by a genre of travel fiction. The present study analyses a short Swedish novella from 1815, Swensken på Timor (The Swede on Timor), “translated” by Christina Cronhjelm from a purported English account. It is a romantic tale of a Swedish sailor who is shipwrecked and is adopted by an indigenous group on the Southeast Asian island Timor, marrying a local woman and converting to Islam. The novella is remarkable for the positive portrayal of indigenous society and to some extent Islam. The article discusses the literary tropes influencing the account, and the partly accurate ethnographic and historical details.

Trade and romance

In Trade and Romance, Michael Murrin examines the complex relations between the expansion of trade in Asia and the production of heroic romance in Europe from the second half of the thirteenth century through the late seventeenth century. He shows how these tales of romance, ostensibly meant for the aristocracy, were important to the growing mercantile class as a way to gauge their own experiences in traveling to and trading in these exotic locales. Murrin also looks at the role that growing knowledge of geography played in the writing of the creative literature of the period, tracking how accurate, or inaccurate, these writers were in depicting far-flung destinations, from Iran and the Caspian Sea all the way to the Pacific. With reference to an impressive range of major works in several languages - including the works of Marco Polo, Geoffrey Chaucer, Matteo Maria Boiardo, Luis de Camoes, Fernao Mendes Pinto, Edmund Spenser, John Milton, and more - Murrin tracks numerous accounts by traders and merchants through the literature, first on the Silk Road, beginning in the mid-thirteenth century; then on the water route to India, Japan, and China via the Cape of Good Hope; and, finally, the overland route through Siberia to Beijing. All of these routes, originally used to exchange commodities, quickly became paths to knowledge as well, enabling information to pass, if sometimes vaguely and intermittently, between Europe and the Far East. These new tales of distant shores fired the imagination of Europe and made their way, with surprising accuracy, as Murrin shows, into the poetry of the period.

Played by Liz Fichera (review)

Reviewed by: Played by Liz Fichera Karen Coats Fichera, Liz Played. Harlequin Teen, 2014 [352p] Paper ed. ISBN 978-0-373-21094-7 $9.99 Reviewed from galleys Ad Gr. 9-12 Riley Berenger is thoroughly bored with her role as Designated Good Daughter, so she’s seeking ways to break her dork girl habits. Sam Tracy, a Native guy from the Gila River Indian Reservation, has big plans to do something to better his community. The two immediately hate each other, each mistaking the other’s reticence and introversion for arrogance. When they are forced to be partners on a leadership weekend, Riley falls into a ravine and Sam rescues her, staying with her through a stormy night, sharing secrets and keeping her warm with a combination of pine needles and naked body heat. Though no actual bodices are ripped here, Fichera writes almost entirely to the Harlequin romance script, at least until until Riley vows to repay Sam’s valiant gesture by giving him an extreme makeover and helping him attract the girl of his dreams, who is happily in love with Riley’s brother—though it turns out Sam is just denying his real feelings for Riley. Despite the piling on of clichéd plot points, Fichera writes a readable story about two teens chafing against identities that no longer fit them. Narration alternates between Riley and Sam, both of whom readers may remember from Fichera’s first novel, Hooked, which focused on Riley’s brother and Sam’s first crush. It’s a plus to see a Native character as protagonist in a contemporary story, and readers fond of traditional romance tales may find the formula here comforting. Copyright © 2014 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

The Story of “Stenka Razin,” and the East Sea Rim in the Modern Era - The Internal Design of Romance tales, and the role of the Media -

The Story of “Stenka Razin,” and the East Sea Rim in the Modern Era - The Internal Design of Romance tales, and the role of the Media -

Another 365 Days by K.E. Payne (review)

Reviewed by: Another 365 Days by K.E. Payne Karen Coats Payne, K.E. . Another 365 Days. Soliloquy/Bold Strokes, 2013. [264p]. Paper ed. ISBN 978-1-60282-775-2 $11.95 Reviewed from galleys Ad Gr. 9-12. In this sequel to 365 Days, young British teen Clemmie has found true love with Hannah, and she is blissed out despite niggling feelings that she really ought to tell her parents that she's gay. When a sexy new art teacher shows up at their school, however, Han starts spending more time in the studio and less with Clemmie, until finally Han suggests they spend some time apart. Devastated, Clemmie seeks comfort with her friend Alice, whom she knows has a major crush on her. Even though she doesn't reciprocate Alice's feelings, the two start to date, until Han decides she wants Clemmie back. To make matters more confusing for Clemmie, J, the first girl she ever fell in love with, returns to their school, and starts flirting with her. Clemmie is a mess, but through it all, the one thing she knows for sure is that she loves Han, and that's forever, if she can just make it all work. Given the diary format, the dense British slang, and the manic focus on relationships, this may evoke comparisons with Louise Rennison's Georgia Nicholson series (Angus, Thongs, and Full Frontal Snogging, BCCB 5/00, etc.), but the humor here is milder; it's also, unfortunately, often at Clemmie's own naïve expense, as she misunderstands cultural references and advanced vocabulary, forcing readers to laugh at her, not with her, if they get the joke. Mostly, though, this is a straightforward girl-meets-girl, [End Page 432] girl-loses-girl, girl-takes-advantage-of-rebound-girl, girl-gets-played, girl-gets-true-love-back romance tale, related as it unfolds in real time. The characters aren't deep, but the pleasures of undemanding superficiality aren't limited to the straight world, and readers may enjoy this light-hearted soap opera of various mismatched and matched romantic scenarios. Copyright © 2013 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

“E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Romantic Tale ‘Der Sandmann’ or The Pathology of a Migraine”

AbstractMuch critical literature on E.T.A. Hoffmann’s tale “Der Sandmann” centers around whether the young physics student Nathanael is suffering from some neurotic, psychological malady due to a childhood trauma, or whether a series of supernatural events have targeted him to lead a tortuous and ultimately tortured existence at the hands of the monstrous Coppelius, aka The Sandman. Other scholars analyze this Romantic tale as a reaction to an historical present rather than within abstract or strictly psychoanalytic principles, more specifically, the influence of Bamberg, a center of medical and psychiatric research and practice, on Hoffmann’s works. I wish to continue this line of inquiry by looking at the tale from a more modern medical perspective: Nathanael’s bouts of madness may have a physical or neurological rather than purely psychological basis which would have gone unnoticed during the early 1800s. I believe Hoffmann’s intricate narrative on Romantic conceptions of the artist, society, sickness and healing, outlines the pathology of a patient suffering from a variety of symptoms associated with “migraine with aura.”“Der Sandmann” should be included among works exhibiting descriptive evidence of migraine experience. This would provide a new contextual orientation for the tale and also further illustrate the progress and limitations of Romantic era psychiatric practices in its confrontations with reason, unreason, and madness.

Grunender Wald, gebannter Ort und Palast der Fee: Zum Verhaltnis zwischen Mensch und Natur in Franz Grillparzers Melusina

This article examines the relationship between humans and nature in Franz Grillparzer’s Melusina (1823). In contrast to the hunting forest, the aristocracy’s playground, untamed nature appears as a largely inaccessible and frequently hostile ‘otherworld,’ populated by mythological animals, such as the White Stag and the nymph, and comprised of topical places, such as the locus amoenus . Grillparzer uses nature elements integral to medieval tales of the Mahrtenehe and to early modern and romantic tales of Melusina —such as the hunting forest, the medieval wilder walt , as well as the locus amoenus and locus terribilis —to present his audience with a new view of nature. Most importantly, the nymph Melusina herself becomes the symbol and voice of untamed nature. Although impossible to control, nature can still become a victim of civilization. In the successful relationship between Raimund and Melusina Grillparzer demonstrates that the dichotomy between civilization and untamed nature can be overcome if humans accept nature on its own terms, much as the lover Raimund comes to accept Melusina. Raimund’s changed view of Melusina is a reflection of the growing movement to value and protect the natural world and thus of the emerging Naturschutzbewegung in 19th century Germany and Austria.

H. C. Andersen’s ‘Schiller Fairy Tale’ and the Post-Romantic Religion of Art

<p>In his story ‘Den gamle Kirkeklokke’ [‘The Old Church Bell’], Andersen transforms, reinterprets, and dissolves Schiller’s popular poem ‘Das Lied von der Glocke’ [‘The Song of the Bell’] into prose. Written for the Schiller celebrations in 1859, it re-establishes the Romantic cult of the artist under profoundly changed cultural conditions. The article examines Andersen’s complex relationship with the Weimar culture and reveals the hidden autobiographical patters in his Schiller narrative. By adopting Schiller’s role for himself and at the same time linking it to the biography of Thorvaldsen, Andersen manages to bridge the only recently developed national gap between Danish and German culture. He simultaneously arranges the story as a critical commentary on his own Romantic tale ‘Klokken’ [‘The Bell’]. Thus, ‘my Schiller fairy tale’ turns out to be a post-Romantic legend that succeeds Wackenroder’s and Tieck’s outdated ‘religion of art’ in a decidedly ‘prasaic’ mode.</p>

Postcolonial Science, Cyberpunk and The Calcutta Chromosome

Postcolonial Science, Cyberpunk and The Calcutta Chromosome Uppinder Mehan (bio) The pairing of science fiction and fantasy (sf&f) has always struck me as rather odd given the mutually opposing ontology and epistemology of each. While both science fiction and fantasy develop coherent and consistent story-worlds, the emphasis of science fiction is on technology and the rational; whereas, fantasy writing eschews technology (or keeps it at the pre-industrial level) and prefers the mystical. Although the continued pairing of sf&f may have more to do with the demands of publishers and booksellers, its literary roots may be in the parent genre of the adventure tale. According to an accepted genealogy, science fiction is essentially fantasy with lasers and spaceships in place of magic spells, and fantasy in turn is essentially the romance tale. Northrop Frye captures the lineage as well as any critic: “Science fiction frequently tries to imagine what life would be like on a plane as far above us as we are above savagery; its setting is often of a kind that appears to us technologically miraculous. It is thus a mode of romance with a strong tendency to myth” (49). Appropriately, science fiction writing has long been the domain of writers from developed industrialized (and more recently post-industrialized) countries while fantasy has attracted a more global authorship. Nalo Hopkinson’s Midnight Robber, and The Calcutta Chromosome by Amitav Ghosh, trouble all manner of genre distinctions and by doing so draw attention to the constellation of science, colonialism, and cultural production. Nalo Hopkinson writes science fiction and fantasy. That should be just a descriptive statement but given that she is only one of a handful of black writers writing sf&f and a member of an even smaller group of Caribbean writers doing so, it is also a value statement. As a writer of sf&f, Hopkinson is in the company of writers who often depend on various ethnographic and anthropological studies for their evocation of alien cultures. Even the more sophisticated writers frequently turn to various third-world cultures in creating their alien or extrapolated cultures. I suppose it should not be a matter of any great surprise to see sf writers (I don’t think I need to say “white” sf writers) appropriating somebody else’s culture and making it the basis of an extraterrestrial culture or the basis of a romantic critique of their own extrapolated culture. After all, they’ve been doing so for a long time. The difference has been in the degree of the visibility of the theft or borrowing. Writers such as Frank Herbert steal quite openly whereas those such as Ursula K. LeGuin do it much more subtly (or as in the case of LeGuin’s Always Coming Home, reverently). LeGuin and Herbert are a welcome [End Page 1] change, however, from the lesser sf&f novelists who in more ways than one continue with the tropes and biases of 19th century European travel writing or colonial adventure stories. Amitav Ghosh is a prize-winning writer born in Calcutta who has to date written seven novels, two works of non-fiction, and numerous essays. His work has breathed new life into old historical episodes, brought to awareness all but forgotten geographies, and focused attention on the connections between past and present. Although Ghosh has explored the varied trajectories between tradition and modernity in a number of his novels, The Calcutta Chromosome (1996) is his most sustained examination of the place of science and technology in colonial India. The colonialist understanding of the world in the last two centuries sees the colonies as devoid of any meaningful science and as the possessors of only ancient technologies. Such a colonialist view is sufficiently strong enough in even the mid-twentieth century to cause anti-colonialist reformers and revolutionaries to promote Western science education in the colonies. Sandra Harding suggests that if one uses a more inclusive definition of science then the relationship between Europe and the East is no longer one of modernity and development but of the interaction of different sciences. If one sees science not in its contemporary meaning but in its older meaning as natural...

The Legend of Jump Mountain: Narrative Dispossession of the Monacan in Postcolonial Virginia

In north central Virginia there is a local tale - The Legend of Jump Mountain, which purports to explain the origins of the Hayes Creek Indian Burial Mound. A highly romantic legend, it immortalizes post colonial intertribal warfare during the early nineteenth century while ignoring the antiquity of the mound and the local descendants of its aboriginal creators. It is not at all uncommon to find such romantic tales in Indian country where the Native people have become invisible and there remain significant tribal artifacts common to the landscape. However, the standing claim to authenticity remains a matter of significant concern. In this essay, the author considers the tale's effectiveness assessing Indian origins, local history and tribal heritages, as well as the implicit stereotypes and the romantic illusion that it may generate in the popular imagination.

Flow and Irony: Locating Literary Modernity in Hahn Moo-Sook's Retrospective Gazes

Before the twentieth century, the female presence in Korean literature was largely a construct of patriarchal imagination, with women held up merely as exemplars for all others to emulate. The twentieth century brought wider exposure to Western culture, and Korean feminists began laying a foundation for woman's social engagement and equality. Hahn Moo-Sook was born during the early waves of the feminist literary movement and lived to write through tumultuous times of war, division, and political upheavals. This essay discusses Hahn's literary world in terms of her egalitarian vision of history as witnessed by underprivileged class and gender; her early vision of modernity wavering between the world of the novel and of the romantic tale in And So Flows History ; and the flowering of her modernist style in several of her later works.

White American Style in Rhyme

What follows is an experiment in presenting data in a nontraditional way. Accounts of the intraracial experiences of White college women were adapted to various traditional forms of poetry including the villanelle, rondeau, and roundel. These traditional 16th-century French poetry forms featured pastoral verses or tales of romance that were often sung and accompanied by music. However, in following the lead of 19th- and 20th-century English and American poets, the author uses the poetry styles to address serious issues of racial identification, identity negotiation, and enactment. The author employs the principles of variation, alliteration, and rhyming to underscore the impact of various ethnicities and nationalities in making Whiteness visible within the United States.

Supernovas: The Dialectic of Celebrity in Society

Celebrity is manufactured in a society that has access to mass communications. But it still carries a mystique. Part of the appeal: romantic tales of discovery, fall, recovery and redemption.

From Genre Poetics to Structure: Nada Milošević-Djordjević's Contribution to Serbian Structural Folklore Studies

This paper looks at the structural analyses of the composition of several oral literary genres in Serbian literature performed by Prof. Nada Milošević-Đorđević. By analyzing romantic tales, religious tales, tales of fate and sagas, Milošević-Đorđević, a renowned Serbian folklore scholar, has made original contributions to narrative semiotics and syntagmatic analysis. Taking as her starting point the morphology of Vladimir Propp but also of some other semioticians, she revised his narrative scheme, adapting it to the specific characteristics of these literary genres and also proposing an entirely original scheme for religious tales and tales of fate, thus becoming one of the first literary folklorists in Serbia to apply structural analysis.