English Language and Literature Commons^™

Postmortem Diagnoses Of Virginia Woolf's 'Madness': The Precarious Quest For Truth, Nancy Topping Bazin

English Faculty Publications

The reputation of British writer Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) is now well established. Her brilliance as a writer is seldom contested, and her place in the literary canon is assured. Whether interested in literary traditions, textual studies, applied feminism, or postmodern theory, most scholars and critics admire what she had to say and how she said it. The variety, volume, and quality of her writings are impressive; her skill as a writer is seen not only in her eight novels but also in her essays, diaries, letters, short stories, biographies and nonfictional works A Room of One's Own and Three Guineas …

The Making Of A Literary Map, Joyce Kinkead

English Faculty Publications

David Lee, fondly known in Utah as the "pig poet" for his collection The Porcine Canticles (1984), tells the story of his seventh-grade teacher's poetry assignment from a Texas childhood:

She sent us to the li-berry to find a pome. We were supposed to change some words to make it our pome. I came back with "Hell hath no fury like a sow with pigs." She gave me an F. (Magid 1993, 1)

Today, when David Lee reads one of his pig poems to audiences around the state, they chuckle and applaud.

Matriarchs, Doves, And Nymphos: Prevalent Images Of Black, Indian, And White Women In Caribbean Literature, Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

Universally, male writers have tended to create images of women which reveal the familiar male tendency to view women merely as functionaries whose role basically is determined by male needs, male motivations, male fears, and male fantasies. When woman is submissive, docile and pure, she is to be protected and revered; then, she is the virgin/goddess. When she is assertive and strong, she is to be avoided and despised; then, she is the bitch/shrew. When she is passionate and active, she is to be resisted and feared; she is the whore/temptress. While this genera] categorizing of women characters carries over …

Lovelock, Fred G. Leebron

English Faculty Publications

Presents a short story about Benjamin Scott, an ex-convict whose life turned a different course after a one-night stand with a retarded woman in Lovelock, Nevada. Promise of a job in San Francisco; Memories of traveling from state to state to get to his destination; Meeting Ana and her sister Lisa; Feelings of guilt for sleeping with Ana; Apologizing to the sisters; Decision to follow Ana to San Diego.

Résumé, Fred G. Leebron

English Faculty Publications

I sat at the back of a pale classroom and watched my father teach. "Creative Inspiration," my father lectured, "is what you have as soon as you are born and the doctor slaps you on your bottom. That first cry, because you're hungry or tired or just glad to be breathing, is your first creative inspiration." I leaned back in my chair to ease the heat rising in my face. "Incidentally," my father said, grinning at the under graduates, "I've read the Sexual Harassment pamphlet, and I want you all to know I don't slap bottoms." [excerpt]

Sidney's Astrophil And Stella, Sonnet 108, Jeffrey P. Cain

English Faculty Publications

Contends that although sonnet 108 is now considered to represent Sir Philip Sidney's final statement on the relationship of the two lovers, it remains largely ignored in most critical treatments of `Astrophil and Stella.' Need for a thorough understanding of its unique alchemical and emblematic imagery; Strong evocation of esoteric Renaissance science of alchemy; Sidney's reference to the `wretch'; Horizontal axis along which Stella's thoughts pass to Astrophil.

Ezra Pound's Encounter With Wang Wei: Toward The 'Ideogrammic Method' Of The Cantos, Zhaoming Qian

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Smith Wells: Stagecoach Inn On The Nine Mile Road, H. Bert Jenson

English Faculty Publications

By THE MIDDLE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY the forging furnaces of western expansionism had wrought a tough breed of pioneers who were making their way into the Uintah Basin of eastern Utah. As early as October 3, 1861, the date President Lincoln established the Uintah Indian Reservation in that area, some white settlers were circumscribed by reservation boundaries. Other whites followed to establish trading posts among the Utes and to perform government service in connection with the newly named Indian lands.

"Facing History" At South Boston High School, Thomas Klein

English Faculty Publications

Describes how the "Facing History" social studies curriculum (which moves students from literary and historical examples of genocide back to present-day experiences of intolerance and racism) is taught in an English class at South Boston High School. Describes various activities undertaken in the class related to this curriculum. Sketches the role and behavior of the classroom teacher.

Swift, Comedy, Evidentiality, Gene Washington

English Faculty Publications

Examines the relationship between the comedy of Swift's A Tale of a Tub, the role of the speaker and satire on modern literature. The point made is that speaker reliability depends directly on the sources of "evidence" h/s presents. To clarify what this entails the author uses the linguistic notion of "evidentiality."

Death Of The Blues, William Olsen

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Self And Other In Sf: Alien Encounters, Carl D. Malmgren

English Faculty Publications

Alien-encounter Science Fiction involves the introduction of sentient alien beings into the actantial system of the fictional universe; one or more of the actants are nonhuman or superhuman or subhuman. By staging a confrontation between an alien actant and a terran representative, alien-encounter Science Fiction broaches the question of Self and the Other. The reader recuperates this fiction by comparing human and alien entities, measuring the Self by examining the Other.  Alien encounters can be discriminated according to the extent to which the alien actant adheres to or departs from anthropocentric norms; in simple terms, we can distinguish between "human …

On Arrival, Fred G. Leebron

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

"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

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 .

Lyric Detachment: Two New Books Of Poetry, William Olsen

English Faculty Publications

Review of "Region of Unlik" by Jorie Graham and "Perdido" by Chase Twichell.

Dickinson's Dashes And The Limits Of Discourse, Paul Crumbley

English Faculty Publications

From their first publication in the 1890s until the present, Emily Dickinson's poems have been read and edited as though her stylistic innovations were imperfect attempts to convey the thoughts and feelings of speakers with fixed, unified identities. Because Dickinson's poetry consistently refuses to cooperate in this project, critics intent on imposing an aesthetics of coherence have tended to step back from Dickinson's work, blurring the details of individual poems while identifying familiar voices and dominant speaking selves in the corpus as a whole. As Margaret Dickie puts the critical situation in "Dickinson's Discontinuous Lyric Self," the apparent disjunction of …

J.D. Salinger, Alan Blackstock

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

An Interview Of Paule Marshall, Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

This Interview was conducted at the home of Paule Marshall in Richmond, Virginia, on June 14, 1991. Much of our discussion focused on Ms. Marshall's recently completed novel, Daughters, published this fall by Atheneum, which she characterizes here as "perhaps my most personal novel." There are, of course, frequent references to her earlier works, which include Brown Girl, Brownstones (1959), Soul Clap Hands and Sing (1961). The Chosen Place, the Timeless People (1969), Praisesong for the Widow (1983), and Reena and Other Stories (1983).

Love, Labor, And Sloth In Chaucer’S Troilus And Criseyde, Gregory M. Sadlek

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

"He's Long Gone": The Theme Of Escape In Black Folklore And Literature, Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

Throughout their experiences in this country, certain segments of the Black population have viewed themselves as enslaved, whether they were chattel owned by slaveowners prior to emancipation, whether they were impressed into peonage and forced to work on white plantations and in chain gangs after slavery, whether they were victims of sharecropping systems that virtually reenslaved them during the twentieth century, whether they were the repressed and disfranchised and persecuted in Southern Jim Crow towns throughout the first half of the twentieth century, whether they are those trapped by unemployment and poverty today, or whether they are among the Blacks …

Teasing Tales And Tit(Bit)S, Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

Collection of African-American folklore from Shuckin' and Jivin' by Daryl Dance.

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 …

The 'Vanity Fair' Of Nineteenth-Century England: Commerce, Women, And The East In The Ladies’ Bazaar, Gary Dyer

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Dandy And The Fogy: Thackeray And The Aesthetics/Ethics Of The Literary Pragmatist, Robert P. Fletcher

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Against Genre/Theory: The State Of Science Fiction Criticism, Carl D. Malmgren

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Laughter, Game, And Ambiguous Comedy In The South English Legendary, Gregory M. Sadlek

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The American Generational Autobiography: Malcolm Cowley And Michael Rossman, John D. Hazlett

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Virginia Woolf's Keen Sensitivity To War: It's Roots And It's Impact On Her Novels, Nancy Topping Bazin, Jane Hamovit Lauter

English Faculty Publications

(First paragraph) War InspIred Horror In Virginia Woolf. Her antipathy toward those who cause wars is evident in her two essays, A Room of One's Own and Three Guineas. The impact of war on her fiction expands from a portrayal of individuals as victims of war to a vision of war that encompasses the possible annihilation of civilization. Between the Acts, Woolf's final novel, is obviously an artistic response to the threat posed by World War II. However, a close examination of her works reveals, to a surprising degree, her early and persistent preoccupation with the consequences of war, …

Women And Revolution In Dystopian Fiction: Nadine Gordimer's July's People And Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Nancy Topping Bazin

English Faculty Publications

Nadine Gordimer's July's People (1981) and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (1985) are both dystopias, nightmare visions of the future. Both of the worlds depicted come into being because of revolutionary coups. However, in both cases, the revolutions were in progress long before the actual takeovers, and there were opportunities for citizens to have prevented these dystopian situations from coming to pass. Yet, because changing the direction of political events requires energy, solidarity, bravery or at least some self-sacrifice, most citizens are reluctant to become involved. Nadine Gordimer and Margaret Atwood understand this attitude because they have felt that way …