Digital Commons Network^™

Sweet Fooling: Ethical Humor In King Lear And Levinas, Kent R. Lehnhof

English Faculty Articles and Research

"In recent years, scholars have increasingly put the works of William Shakespeare (1564-1623) in dialogue with the ethical philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas (1905-1995)... The majority of these Shakespearean references are to Hamlet and Macbeth, but contemporary critics working in the vein of Levinas have tended to favor King Lear. No Shakespearean play has been subjected to Levinasian analysis more fully or more frequently.⁵ This critical proclivity is not unwarranted, for Shakespeare's tragic play and Levinas's ethical writings tell the same basic story: that of the egoist who heedlessly pursues his own interests until he is until he …

History, Cognition And Nostromo: Conrad’S Explorations Of Torture, Trauma, And The Human Rage For Order, Richard Ruppel

English Faculty Articles and Research

Focusing on Joseph Conrad’s Nostromo, this essay historicizes the treatment of what we now call post-traumatic stress disorder, demonstrating how Conrad anticipated our current understanding and treatment of the illness. The second part of the essay addresses Nostromo’s treatment of historiography. Part three is concerned with epistemology and the relationship between neurological discoveries concerning the gap between perception and consciousness, relating those discoveries to Conrad’s use of delayed decoding.

Review Of "The Origins Of English Revenge Tragedy. George Oppitz-Trotman. Edinburgh Critical Studies In Renaissance Culture. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019. Xiv + 258 Pp. £80.", Samantha Dressel

English Faculty Articles and Research

A book review of The Origins of English Revenge Tragedy by George Oppitz-Trotman.

Review Of Joseph Conrad: Slow Modernism, By Yael Levin, Richard Ruppel

English Faculty Articles and Research

A book review of Yael Levin's Joseph Conrad: Slow Modernism.

Twinship And Marriage In The Comedy Of Errors, Kent R. Lehnhof

English Faculty Articles and Research

This article proposes that Shakespeare uses twinship and marriage in The Comedy of Errors to reflect on the importance of individuality and interrelation in the formation of identity. Specifically, this article shows how The Comedy of Errors sets the twin relation against the marital relation, ultimately implying that marriage—imperfect, everyday marriage—has as much subjective impact as the extraordinary bond between identical twins. As amazing as it might be to see two persons sharing "one face, one voice, one habit," The Comedy of Errors suggests that the twin relation does not surpass in significance the equally marvelous relation whereby husband and …

Kinship And Twinship In Jacob And Esau, Kent R. Lehnhof

English Faculty Articles and Research

"The implications of these early stage directions are upheld and amplified elsewhere in the play. In what follows, I demonstrate this to be the case by reviewing some of the ways the interlude seeks to justify Jacob’s usurpation, most interestingly in its systematic and strategic deployment of kinship ties and familial terms. After explaining how the play leverages family relations to elevate Jacob and overthrow Esau, I concentrate on one family relation in particular: namely, the complicated bond between twin brothers. As I will make clear, the interlude’s treatment of twinship raises pressing questions about the way wealth, affection, and …

Flipping The Jane Austen Classroom, Lynda A. Hall

English Faculty Articles and Research

The contemporary Austen classroom might appreciate cultural and racial diversity, examine popular culture’s distortions of the original texts, and consider multimodal ways of reading. This paper reflects on a course that “flipped” the research process in order to “find” Austen and her works in the popular culture and to evaluate our understanding in the twenty-first century. Students discovered the commodification and distortion of “Jane Austen” and conducted research for creative projects to learn more about the social, cultural, and historical contexts of the written texts.

Review Of Conrad And Language, Richard Ruppel

English Faculty Articles and Research

A review of Conrad and Language, edited by Katherine Isobel Baxter and Robert Hampson.

Review Of Mansfield Park: An Annotated Edition, Lynda A. Hall

English Faculty Articles and Research

A review of Mansfield Park: An Annotated Edition, edited by Deidre Shauna Lynch.

Antitheatricality And Irrationality: An Alternative View, Kent Lehnhof

English Faculty Articles and Research

"Over the last three decades, antitheatrical authors like Stephen Gosson, Phillip Stubbes, and William Prynne have become increasingly visible in the literary and cultural studies of the early modern period. Even so, the tendency has been to treat these authors as ideological extremists: reactionary hacks whose opposition to stage plays originates in outrageous ideas of the self, impossible notions of right and wrong, and bizarre beliefs about humanity’s susceptibility to external suggestion. This characterization can be traced back to several of the pioneering studies in the field, including Jonas Barish’s The Antitheatrical Prejudice (1985) and Laura Levine’s Men in Women’s …

The Taboo Of Experience, Brian Glaser

English Faculty Articles and Research

A lyric essay discussing Henry James and cosmopolitanism
from the perspective of a scholar
visiting a German university.

Review Of Testimony On Trial: Conrad, James, And The Contest For Modernism, Richard Ruppel

English Faculty Articles and Research

A review of Brian Artese's Testimony on Trial: Conrad, James and the Contest for Modernism, published by University of Toronto Press.

Review Of Joseph Conrad’S Critical Reception, Richard Ruppel

English Faculty Articles and Research

A review of Joseph Conrad’s Critical Reception by John J. Peters.

Relation And Responsibility: A Levinasian Reading Of King Lear, Kent Lehnhof

English Faculty Articles and Research

Emmanuel Levinas’s ideas about intersubjectivity can change our reading of Shakespeare by putting philosophical pressure on Shakespeare’s dramatization of human relatedness in The Tragedy of King Lear (1607–8). Even though Levinas does not discuss Lear at length in any of his published work, this difficult philosopher and this difficult play have much to say to one another. Levinas can be fruitfully brought to bear on Shakespeare’s great tragedy, generating fresh and productive ideas about its most pivotal moments, its most perplexing questions, and its most popular interpretations. In addition, Levinas can provide a useful frame for discussing the nature of …

Ships That Do Not Sail: Antinauticalism, Antitheatricalism, And Irrationality In Stephen Gosson, Kent Lehnhof

English Faculty Articles and Research

Stephen Gosson's similes, particularly in 1579's The Schoole of Abuse, commend affective restraint, value stasis over motion, and idealize immobility. Combined with his Platonic mistrust of emotion and his dislike of stage plays for the emotional response they provoke, his criticisms can be seen to express a desire to slow cultural change and social mobility. The effect of this in The Schoole of Abuse is that it deprives objects and agents of their essential identify by removing the action that best defines them, implying that to become our best selves, we must give up the very qualities that define us.

Joseph Conrad's Critical Reception, Richard Ruppel

English Faculty Articles and Research

A review of John G. Peters' Joseph Conrad’s Critical Reception, published in 2013 by Cambridge University Press.

Review Of Everybody's Jane: Austen In The Popular Imagination, Lynda A. Hall

English Faculty Articles and Research

Book review of Everybody's Jane: Austen in the Popular Imagination, by Juliette Wells.

Acting, Integrity, And Gender In Coriolanus, Kent Lehnhof

English Faculty Articles and Research

Shakespeare's Coriolanus... anticipates and corroborates modern-day analyses emphasizing the sociopolitical dimensions and determinants of antitheatrical discourse. In the present essay, I would like to shift my focus from questions of class/status to questions of sex/gender, endeavoring to trace the links between Coriolanus’s antiperformative zeal and his ultra-masculine identity. For though it is true that Coriolanus opposes the dissimulation of others on political grounds (i.e., it creates social confusion), what causes him to reject play-acting in his own person is the sexualized fear that it will unman him (i.e., turn him into a squeaking virgin or crying boy). In this manner, …

A View From Confinement: Persuasion’S Resourceful Mrs. Smith, Lynda A. Hall

English Faculty Articles and Research

"Mrs. Smith is a unique character type in Austen’s fiction: the superfluous female. Austen uses this character to reflect on a possible tragic life for the heroine while highlighting the plight of the poor widow and her lack of perceived value in the society reflected in Persuasion."

Secret Sharing And Secret Keeping: Lucy Steele’S Triumph In Speculation, Lynda A. Hall

English Faculty Articles and Research

"By analyzing Lucy's character as a commodity on the marriage market, we can better understand Jane Austen's take on value: what might be perceived as valuable in the marketplace might not have real or intrinsic value. Lucy knows that her value is based on mere perception; in a consumer economy the skill of speculation may be necessary. "

Reassessing Whitman's Hegelian Affinities, Brian Glaser

English Faculty Articles and Research

This article explores Walt Whitman's Hegelian beliefs.

The Difficulties Of Teaching Non-Western Literature In The United States, Ian Barnard

English Faculty Articles and Research

"My goal in this article is to build on Priya Kandaswamy’s discussion of students’ response to difference in Radical Teacher #80 by unfolding the pitfalls of teaching and responding to “non-Western” literature in the United States as embodied in my own experience teaching non-Western literature to a group of racially and ethnically diverse, mainly working-class students at a large urban comprehensive public university."

Negotiating Cultural Identities Through Language: Academic English In Jordan, Anne-Marie Pedersen

English Faculty Articles and Research

This article discusses how a group of multilingual scholars in Jordan negotiate multiple linguistic and cultural affiliations. These writers' experiences demonstrate the varied ways English's global dominance affects individuals' lives. The scholars find both empowerment and disempowerment in English, viewing English as linked to Western hegemony in some situations and as de-nationalized and de-territorialized in others.

Twenty-First-Century Writing/Twentieth Century Teachers?, Ian Barnard

English Faculty Articles and Research

"My students are writing in their everyday lives—indeed, their everyday lives are written—but we (teachers—writing teachers, in particular--and education administrators, no doubt nudged by politicians and “the public”) have to a large extent failed miserably in embracing and capitalizing on that writing: email, text messaging, instant messaging, blogging, twittering, responding, video gaming, Second Lifeing. Andrea and Karen Lunsford’s recent longitudinal study of Stanford students has shown the lie to the given that students today don’t write as much as they used to (they are writing much more). Are we becoming the stodgy, ungenerous, rigid English teachers that we ourselves were …

Performing Masculinity In Paradise Lost, Kent Lehnhof

English Faculty Articles and Research

"In Female Masculinities, Judith Halberstam objects that critical and theoretical approaches to sex/gender systems have paid too much attention to anatomy. In particular, she faults studies of masculinity for focusing almost exclusively on the white male body and its effects. By delimiting masculinity in this way, Halberstam argues, we counterproductively confine ourselves to those manifestations of masculinity with which we are already intimately familiar. Urging an ampler vision, Halberstam calls for the examination of alternative masculinities, particularly those performed by agents who are not male by birth or biology.

When we read Milton with Halberstam in mind, we realize something …

Jane Fairfax’S Choice: The Sale Of Human Flesh Or Human Intellect, Lynda A. Hall

English Faculty Articles and Research

"It is Jane Fairfax’s story rather than Emma’s, however, that exposes the grim reality of life for many women of the nineteenth century: the attractive and accomplished but penniless young woman is not rescued by a good man. She marries a man who in Austen’s other novels would have been rewarded by a mindless flirt (Lydia Bennet) or an adulteress (Maria Rushworth). Through Jane Fairfax’s story—her life-defining choice between selling herself in the marriage market or the governess trade—Austen subtly exposes the grim reality of life for many women who were handsome, clever, but not rich. Jane Fairfax, perhaps even …

Scatology And The Sacred In Milton's Paradise Lost, Kent Lehnhof

English Faculty Articles and Research

In his classic study, "The Dialectics of Creation," Michael Lieb foregrounds the myriad ways in which Milton uses scatology throughout "Paradise Lost" to describe the depravity of the devil. But Satan is not the only character in the epic to be associated with excretion. Milton's angels and Milton's God are also implicated in the operations of the lower bodily stratum. In these instances, however, allusions to the evacuative functions attest to an exalted divinity rather than a disgusting diabolism. Evacuation in "Paradise Lost" is thus a highly complex signifier. Not simply a pejorative pointing inevitably at a damnable degradation, scatology …

Addressing Readerly Unease: Discovering The Gothic In Mansfield Park, Lynda A. Hall

English Faculty Articles and Research

"Many readers are uncomfortable vvith Mansfield Park since Jane Austen includes aspects of the sentimental novel and the fairy tale in a novel of manners, and because Fanny, who suffers and prospers, is an unusual heroine. This unease with Mansfield Park may come from the placement of gothic symbols and characters within the world of the English gentry. By under standing Mansfield Park's affinity with the gothic novels of the eighteenth century, we might also understand our discomfort with Fanny Price."

Incest And Empire In The Faerie Queene, Kent Lehnhof

English Faculty Articles and Research

"When considered in the context of Elizabeth's effort to silence all discussion of incest, Edmund Spenser's courtly epic aiming to cultivate favor with the monarch looks like a disastrous miscalculation, for incest appears throughout The Faerie Queene. Indeed, incest sits at the center (both literally and figuratively) of the Book of Chastity, the very book wherein Spenser encourages Elizabeth 'in mirrours more then one her selfe to see.' In the present essay, I investigate the apparently illogical and impolitic prominence afforded to incest in book three of The Faerie Queene, ultimately arguing that the imperialist logic underpinning the epic is …

Paradise Lost And The Concept Of Creation, Kent Lehnhof

English Faculty Articles and Research

On his visit to Eden, Raphael informs Adam and Eve that the universe was not created ex nihilo but rather de deo: everything was fashioned from out of the singular substance of God. This consubstantial connection to God proves universally ennobling by conferring upon each existent a divine origin and a divine composition. Milton's materialist monism, however, prevents him from participating in orthodox ideas of God that differentiate deity from all else on the basis of a divine ousia unique to him. Unable to locate God's divinity in a material difference, Milton sets God off from every other existent on …