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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Theresa M. Kelley, Clandestine Marriage: Botany And Romantic Culture. A Review By James C. Mckusick, James C. Mckusick
Theresa M. Kelley, Clandestine Marriage: Botany And Romantic Culture. A Review By James C. Mckusick, James C. Mckusick
English Faculty Publications
Book review by James C. McKusick. Truly encyclopedic in scope, Clandestine Marriage traces the efflorescence of botanical discourse in the long Romantic period, from the foundation of the Linnaean system of classification in Systema Naturae (1735) through the first publication of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species (1859). Kelley offers a comprehensive historical view of botany as a distinct nexus of interaction between literature and science, showing how the characteristic certainties of Enlightenment science broke down under the pressure of newly-discovered plant specimens from distant parts of the world, new ways of understanding the taxonomic relationships among various plant species, and …
John Evelyn: The Forestry Of Imagination, James C. Mckusick
John Evelyn: The Forestry Of Imagination, James C. Mckusick
English Faculty Publications
John Evelyn was appointed as a founding member of the Royal Society in 1662, and in this capacity he published Sylva, or a Discourse of Forest-Trees, and the Propagation of Timber (1664). Evelyn's Sylva foreshadows the development of a conservationist ethic in the management of forests and wildlands throughout the English-speaking world. In this treatise, Evelyn advocates the replanting of woodlands that had been devastated during the English Civil War as a means of restoring the nation's defenses, particularly its navy and merchant marine. The book describes the various kinds of trees, their cultivation, and the best use for each …
Harriet Ritvo, The Dawn Of Green: Manchester, Thirlmere, And Modern Environmentalism, James C. Mckusick
Harriet Ritvo, The Dawn Of Green: Manchester, Thirlmere, And Modern Environmentalism, James C. Mckusick
English Faculty Publications
A Review by James C. McKusick. In The Dawn of Green: Manchester, Thirlmere, and Modern Environmentalism, Harriet Ritvo describes how Thirlmere became a site of major conflict between the forces of industrial progress and the advocates of natural preservation.
Book Review: Virginia Zimmerman. Excavating Victorians, John Glendening
Book Review: Virginia Zimmerman. Excavating Victorians, John Glendening
English Faculty Publications
No abstract provided.
Susan Manly. Language, Custom And Nation In The 1790s: Locke, Tooke, Wordsworth, Edgeworth, James C. Mckusick
Susan Manly. Language, Custom And Nation In The 1790s: Locke, Tooke, Wordsworth, Edgeworth, James C. Mckusick
English Faculty Publications
A Review by James C. McKusick. In Language, Custom and Nation in the 1790s, Susan Manly demonstrates how a populist and materialist philosophy of language contributed to the radical politics and poetics of the British Romantic period. The distinctive scholarly contribution of Language, Custom and Nation, in the 1790s is to show how a Lockean theory of language provided a conceptual framework for some of the most radical and transformative political ideas of the 1790s.
Steven E. Jones. Against Technology: From The Luddites To Neo-Luddism., James C. Mckusick
Steven E. Jones. Against Technology: From The Luddites To Neo-Luddism., James C. Mckusick
English Faculty Publications
A Review by James C. McKusick. In Against Technology: From the Luddites to Neo-Luddism, Steven E. Jones offers a cultural history of the Luddite movement and an account of how it was ultimately transformed into contemporary neo-Luddism. Against Technology highlights essential differences between the historical Luddite movement and modern neo-Luddism while still elucidating important continuities in the beliefs and attitudes of those who have stubbornly resisted the encroachment of technology into everyday life.
The Return Of The Nightingale, James C. Mckusick
The Return Of The Nightingale, James C. Mckusick
English Faculty Publications
In Ecological Literary Criticism (1994), Karl Kroeber advocated a bold new approach to the study of literature. More than just another routine method of textual analysis, ecological literary criticism seeks to bridge the gap between the natural sciences and the humanities. Such an approach incorporates theoretical advances in the science of environmental biology while it adapts to the changing social and political circumstances of contemporary criticism.
Onno Oerlemans, Romanticism And The Materiality Of Nature, James C. Mckusick
Onno Oerlemans, Romanticism And The Materiality Of Nature, James C. Mckusick
English Faculty Publications
A Review by James C. McKusick. In Romanticism and the Materiality of Nature, Onno Oerlemans embarks upon an ambitious project to re-situate Romantic poetry in the hard, physical reality of the material world. This study endeavors to place several of the Romantic poets, especially Wordsworth and Shelley, within the larger intellectual and material contexts of their period, attending not only to the social and cultural currents that shape poetic discourse, but also to the concrete physical substrate of poetic production.
Introduction: New Directions John Clare Studies, James C. Mckusick
Introduction: New Directions John Clare Studies, James C. Mckusick
English Faculty Publications
The John Clare Conference, organized by the John Clare Society of North America, March 21-22, 2003, was held at the Belmont Conference Center. The program explored new directions in Clare scholarship and celebrated the completion of the Oxford English Text edition of John Clare's poetry.
Medieval Lyric: Genres In Historical Context By William D. Paden, Ashby Kinch
Medieval Lyric: Genres In Historical Context By William D. Paden, Ashby Kinch
English Faculty Publications
No abstract provided.
"Green Confusion": Evolution And Entanglement In H.G. Wells's The Island Of Doctor Moreau, John Glendening
"Green Confusion": Evolution And Entanglement In H.G. Wells's The Island Of Doctor Moreau, John Glendening
English Faculty Publications
No abstract provided.
Travels, Explorations And Empires: Writings From The Era Of Imperial Expansion, 1770-1835, Ed. Tim Fulford And Peter J. Kitson, 4 Vols (Pickering & Chatto Publishers, 2001)., James C. Mckusick
English Faculty Publications
A Review by James C. McKusick. Some of the best recent scholarship in our field has been concerned with the political and geographic contexts (and subtexts) of Romantic literature. In particular, several recent books have addressed the relationship between Romanticism as a literary field and the new economic, geographic, and social realities that emerged in consequence of British imperial expansion on a global scale. Two recent collections of essays are exemplary in the scope and sophistication of their approach to these new geopolitical realities: Romanticism, Race, and Imperial Culture (1996), edited by Alan Richardson and Sonia Hofkosh, and Romanticism and …
Review Of Hardy's Literary Language And Victorian Philology. Dennis Taylor., James C. Mckusick
Review Of Hardy's Literary Language And Victorian Philology. Dennis Taylor., James C. Mckusick
English Faculty Publications
This is a book review of Hardy's Literary Language and Victorian Philology by Dennis Taylor.
"Living Words": Samuel Taylor Coleridge And The Genesis Of The Oed, James C. Mckusick
"Living Words": Samuel Taylor Coleridge And The Genesis Of The Oed, James C. Mckusick
English Faculty Publications
Today we are at a crucial moment in the evolution of the Oxford English Dictionary, as the dog-eared volumes are withdrawn from library shelves and replaced by the sleek second edition of 1989. This new OED bears witness to the continuing relevance and utility of the "New English Dictionary on Historical Principles" for the current generation of literary scholars. The event of its publication provides an opportunity for a fresh historical perspective on the circumstances surrounding the production of the original OED, which was published between 1884 and 1928 in a series of 125 fascicles and bound up into those …
The Politics Of Language In Byron's The Island, James C. Mckusick
The Politics Of Language In Byron's The Island, James C. Mckusick
English Faculty Publications
Byron's late poem The Island: or, Christian and His Comrades (1823) has not proven especially congenial to modern sensibility; relatively little has been written about it, and most critics have tended to dismiss it as a regrettable episode in the Romantic idealization of the Noble Savage .
William Blake And The Language Of Adam By Robert N. Essick, James C. Mckusick
William Blake And The Language Of Adam By Robert N. Essick, James C. Mckusick
English Faculty Publications
Review by James C. McKusick. William Blake and the Language of Adam is a welcome addition to our knowledge of the Romantic preoccupation with the mystery of linguistic origins, and it seems destined to become a model of bold, incisive, and carefully researched scholarly analysis of literary and artistic creation from a broad interdisciplinary perspective. Essick's impeccable command of Blake's poetry and visual art is complemented by an extensive knowledge of the history of linguistics and an open-minded (yet critical) understanding of current issues in semiotics, phenomenology, and post-structuralist literary theory. William Blake and the Language of Adam provides an …
Reviewed Works: The Philosophy Of Language In Britain: Major Theories From Hobbes To Thomas Reid. By Stephen K. Land; The Figural And The Literal: Problems Of Language In The History Of Science And Philosophy, 1630-1800. By Andrew E. Benjamin; Geoffrey N. Cantor; John R. R. Christie, James C. Mckusick
English Faculty Publications
Review by James C. McKusick. The Philosophy of Language in Britain: Major Theories From Hobbes to Thomas Reid. by Stephen K. Land; The Figural and the Literal: Problems of Language in the History of Science and Philosophy, 1630-1800. by Andrew E. Benjamin; Geoffrey N. Cantor; John R. R. Christie. Some of the most interesting and important recent work in the intellectual history of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has concerned itself with the philosophy of language in relation to science and literature. This kind of work promises a fresh understanding of the linguistic and figural basis of the …
A New Poem By Samuel Taylor Coleridge, James C. Mckusick
A New Poem By Samuel Taylor Coleridge, James C. Mckusick
English Faculty Publications
The poem published here is transcribed from an original holograph manuscript in the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library. The poem is a fragmentary verse translation of the Song of Deborah (from Judges 5). Its existence has been known to Coleridge scholars for several years, and its authenticity seems unquestionable. Kathleen Coburn mentions it in her edition of Coleridge's Notebooks: "The ms was with Coleridge's 'German Journal' of 1798-9 on acquisition by the library, but whether only accidentally there is not known. It appears to be fairly early." To this remark I can add my own observation that …