Associated University Presses
The purple island and anatomy in early seventeenth-century literature, philosophy, and theology.
The "Isle of Man," the threshold character in The Purple Island, reflects not only the anatomy understood by the proficient in the seventeenth century, but also the ways in which metaphor and allegory were used to explain the natural world. Mitchell (English, U. of Wales) argues a close reading of The Purple Island leads to a better understanding of aesthetics, the figurative, rationality, purpose, method, morals and justifications intertwined with Renaissance anatomy; he finds evidence in the text of how intellectuals understood the world and developed natural philosophy. Mitchell is convincing, and he includes significant and interesting new material on the relation of the author of The Purple Island, Fletcher, to classical anatomists Banister and Harvey. Distributed by Associated University Presses. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Resisting alienation; the literary work of Enrique Lihn.
Lihn (1929-88) is considered by compatriots to be one of the best of the many Chilean poets, but unlike Neruda and Mistral, for example, he is relatively unknown to North Americans. Introducing his work to English speakers, Travis (Spanish and Latin American literature, Elmhurst College, Illinois) says he provided a model of true and honest expression and carved out a space for poets who refuse to ignore their own doubts, frustrations, fears, and anger at the government and at language alienated from self-expression. Distributed in the US by Associated University Presses. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Scotland, Ireland, and the romantic aesthetic.
Taking advantage of the recent accessibility of previously marginalized texts, British, Irish, and American scholars explore interconnections between Scottish, Irish, and English writing of the Romantic period, and trace manifestations of the Romantic aesthetic across a wide spectrum of genres and a variety of historical and cultural settings. Their topics include Robert Burns and national song, Thomas Moore as Irish satirist, Scott and Byron, and supernaturalism in the Irish public sphere. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Shakespeare's practical jokes; an introduction to the comic in his work.
Many volumes have been written about Shakespeare's comedies, but Ellis (emeritus English literature, U. of Kent-Canterbury) is concerned with what is actually funny. Among the categories of jokes and other humor are female victims and female jokers, the ideal victim, and the triumph over shame. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Shakespeare's Sonnets; with three hundred years of commentary.
Atkins has not burdened each sonnet — or the readers — with three centuries of commentary, but draws freely from that deep well as well as from his own insights into the meanings, features, and problems with the 154 poems. Distributed in the US by Associated University Presses. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Shakespeare studies; v.35.
English Cosmopolitanism and the Early Modern Moment is the special forum for this issue; the six essays consider such aspects as England's global transition and the cosmopolitans who made it possible, Shakespeare's Jewry, and foreign books. Two generic articles look at Hamlet, confession, and the extraction of interiority; and lives and letters in Antony and Cleopatra. Review articles and reviews of specific recent books follow, as usual. Only names are indexed. Distributed in the US by Associated University Presses. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Sidney and Junius on poetry and painting; from the margins to the center.
Franciscus Junius (1589-1677) is best known as the father of Germanic philology, but he also wrote the important treatise The Painting of the Ancients. Dundas (emerita English, U. of Illinois) explores the relationship between his account of ancient attitudes about visual art, his marginal annotations in the work of English poet Philip Sidney (1554-86), and other possible connections between the two. Distributed in the US by Associated University Presses. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Tragic passages; Jean Racine's art of the threshold.
French playwright Racine (1639-99) often places characters in positions between self and the other, offstage and onstage, existence and oblivion, the transcendent and the terrestrial, says Racevskis (French, U. of Iowa). It is not by chance, he argues, but an articulation of a unique vision of identity in suspension and of subjects trapped in the indefinite moment of becoming. Other scholars have looked at the feature in particular plays, but he thinks he is the first to trace it across all his tragedies. Distributed in the US by Associated University Presses. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Violence, the arts, and Willa Cather.
The introduction explores existential terror in the works of Nebraska-native writer Cather (1873-1947). The other 22 papers discuss such topics as the problem of family feeling in her late fiction, her cosmopolitan west, recessional objects and her materialism, and her Lena Lingard and William Faulkner's Lena Grove. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Working through memory; writing and remembrance in contemporary Spanish narrative.
To get from a dictatorship to a democracy without bloodshed, Spain had to conveniently forget a few significant historical occurrences, such as the Spanish Civil War, fascism and its associations, and 35 years of oppression. Ferrán (Spanish and Portuguese studies, U. of Minnesota) examines a range of works of contemporary Spanish literature, primarily to locate the voices of history's victims. Starting with texts from the 1960s through the 1990s, Ferrán applies a variety of theories about memory and trauma as she analyzes significant works by Jorge Semprún, Juan Benet, Mariá Teresa León, Monserrat Rog and Antonio Muñoz Molina, finding how each presents a meta-narrativ reflection of the process of memory, especially in the case of narratives previously repressed. The narratives therefore comment on the nature of memory itself and how it functions, particularly in the case of the formation of identity. Distributed by Associated University Presses. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Writing places; sixteenth-century city culture and the Des Roches salon.
Tarte (French, Wake Forest U.) explores the literary scene in Poitier during the 1570s, which pivoted on the salons and publications of mother and daughter poets Madeleine (1520-87) and Catherine (1542-87) Des Roches. Her emphasis is on the connection between particular texts and particular places, but also through those to the connection between texts and places generally. Quotations are in French with English translation. Distributed in the US by Associated University Presses. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
