Associated University Presses

Burning interiors; David Shapiro's poetry and poetics.

Scholars of English and fellow writers discuss the work of contemporary American poet Shapiro from such perspectives as his After a Lost Original, his comedic poetics and its limits, his collaborative poetry, mannerist similes and the body, and House Blown Apart. Distributed in the US by Associated University Presses. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

A canon of empty fathers; paternity in Portuguese narrative.

Once the progenitor of an empire, then a silent witness to the empires acquired by others, Portugal gained too much too soon and then lost it all. This element of Portuguese history has informed its myths, its national identity and its literature, but, according to Rothwell (Portuguese, Rutgers U.) the primary effect is the creation of a very peculiar father figure in a variety of narrative forms across five centuries. Taking his cue from Lacan, Rothwell describes the concept of "empty paternity" to describe this father figure, and gives as evidence descriptions of historical figures from Dom Sebastiao to Salazar, with readings from Ferro, de Queiros, Garrett and others. The figure Rothwell delineates is desexualized, warped, overpowering and oppressive, the embodiment of the dark side of Portuguese identity and that of other former empires. A figure better abandoned than allowed to continue to make irrational demands on the modern psyche. Distributed by Associated University Presses. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Central at the margin; five Brazilian women writers.

Wasserman (English and comparative literature, Wayne State U.) chose the five 20th-century writers because they are or were well known, because they made a career of writing, and because their works have historical or aesthetic interest or both. She establishes a series of conversations between them and between them and the centers of literary and political power in Brazil. Some of the essays have been published previously. Distributed in the US by Associated University Presses. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The comic world of the Marx Brothers' movies; "anything further father?"

Charney (Rutger's U.) takes a look at all 15 of the films of Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Zeppo Marx through the lens of comedic theory and form. The first four chapters offer relevant biographical information about the Marx Brothers vaudeville beginnings, along with exploring themes such as the satirizing of social respectability, methods of character development, and nonsense and non sequitur jokes. The remaining chapters delve into each of their films — from The Cocoanuts to A Night in Casablanca — detailing the comedic techniques that drive each one. The last chapter discusses Marx Brothers movies in context with other comedies of the day. This book is distributed by Associated University Presses. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Economic and political integration in immigrant neighborhoods; trajectories of virtuous and vicious cycles.

This study by Frederking (political science, U. of Portland) challenges conventional generalized claims about the way culture and structural environments foster different patterns of economic and political organization amongst immigrant communities by highlighting divergent patterns amongst mostly Hindu Gujaratis and mostly Muslim Punjabis who have settled in London, UK, and Chicago, US. Her analysis points to the need to understand the interactive effects of structural and cultural characteristics to account for variations in economic and political organization. Distributed in the US by Associated University Presses. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

English versions of Roman satire in the earlier eighteenth century.

Roaming freely among obscure works of famous writers and obscure writers, Kupersmith (English, U. of Iowa) examines imitations of the satires of Horace and Juvenal published in English during the first half of the 18th century. The known poets include Jonathon Swift, Alexander Pope, Henry Fielding, and Christopher Smart. Distributed in the US by Associated University Presses. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Facing the late Victorians; portraits of writers and artists from the Mark Samuels Lasner collection.

Stetz curated Beyond Oscar Wilde, an exhibition focusing on the surge of interest in portraits of writers and artists in Victorian Britain, for the U. of Delaware's University Gallery. This volume expands on that exhibition, detailing how Victorians "read" the faces of public figures and why such portraits became ubiquitous. Approximately 110 b&w reproductions of drawings, paintings, photographs, and lithographs are each accompanied by a brief analysis of how the portraitist meant to depict their subject. Among the figures portrayed are Wilde, Sir John Irving, Rudyard Kipling, Caroline Blanche, Robert Browning, Tennyson, and James McNeill Whistler. This book is distributed by Associated University Presses. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

From sacred to secular; visual images in early American publications.

Contextualizing the images to demonstrate their link with religious and political thought of the time, this text describes and analyzes Puritan ideas as expressed in imagery found in broadsides, caricatures, political portraiture, representations of women, religious tracts, primers, and chapbooks, among other media. Published in an oversized format (8.75x11.25 inches), the images are presented in clear b&w plates. Distributed by Associated University Presses. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The gaze on the past; popular culture and history in Antonio Munoz Molina's novels.

Examining the intersection of popular culture and history in the fictional works of Spanish writer Antonio Muñoz Molina, López-Valero Colbert (Spanish, Southern Methodist U.) argues that his presentation of popular culture functions as a means to represent Spanish social experiences of silence, fear, isolation, claustrophobia, and exclusion during the years of Francoism and silence, oblivion, and disillusionment during the post-Franco transition years. His study focuses on the novels Beatus Ille, El invierno en Lisboa, Beltenbros, and El jinete polaco and their treatment of visual media, film noir, the Gothic novel, exile (in connection to music), and voice media technology. Distributed in the US by Associated University Presses. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Interference patterns; literary study, scientific knowledge, and disciplinary autonomy.

Adams (popular science writing, London School of Economics) supports the concept of a science of literary criticism, and wants it situated within a broader philosophical history as practiced by Putnam, Fish and Rorty. He examines the debates between critics who are scientific realists and those who are cultural relativists, finding a disciplinary identity that dissolves the argument, and examines the work of writers who are exploring the possibilities of science. The result is a fresh look at why twentieth-century literary criticism seemed to implode so often under its own weight of anxiety and insecurity about its being scientific enough, why efforts to make it into a science may be its damnation or its salvation, and why the leading edges of speculative writing seem to run parallel to the leading edges of speculative science. Distributed by Associated University Presses. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Monument, moment, and memory; Monet's cathedral in fin de siécle France.

Bernier (art history, Wilkes U., Pennsylvania) examines the critical responses of Claude Monet's contemporaries to his paintings of Rouen Cathedral, a departure from his natural subjects that better suited the widespread discourse on instantaneity and temporality. Among other things, the author relates how these themes translated (and how they didn't) in the opinion of nineteenth-century critics when the impressionist's subject changed from transient nature to a monument of history and nation. Oversize: 8.5x11.25 inches. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The myth of Sisyphus; renaissance theories of human perfectibility.

Simon (English, U. of Haifa, Israel) provides a comprehensive survey of how European Renaissance thinkers interpreted the myth of Sisyphus in relation to aspirations of human perfectability without the consolation of achievement. Through readings of such diverse figures as Lactantius Fulgentius, Giovanni Bocaccio, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus, Martin Luther, Thomas More, Francis Bacon, Prancesco Petrarch, Edmund Spenser, and over a dozen others, he examines representations of Sisyphus as astral magician, humanist, lover, and hero. Distributed in the US by Associated University Presses. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Nests of the gentry; family, estate, and local loyalties in provincial Russia.

Revising her Ph.D. dissertation for the University of Michigan, (no date cited) Cavender (modern European history, Ohio State U.) argues that during the period 1820-60, a segment of the Russian gentry actually preferred life in the countryside — their estates, peasants, and neighbors — and were not merely hiding out there because they were too dull to make it in the high society of the capital cities. She focuses on the province of Tver, north of Moscow, to examine the cultural identity of the provincial nobility. Distributed in the US by Associated University Presses. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Notes of conversations, 1848-1875; Amos Bronson Alcott.

Alcott's fame came primarily from his work in philosophy and pedagogy, but he was also a skilled lecturer on social issues and, judging from the collection here, an interesting conversationalist. English (American literature and American studies, San José State U.) ably edits this collection of notes of public "conversations," actually lectures, on such topics as man's history, resources and expectations, mysteries of human life, the mind and education (with Emerson), the spirit of reform, Plato and personal theism (to a women's club), social ideals, the ideal, and, rightly enough, on conversation. Transcription was generally done by women, of whom Alcott had many devotés, and they seem to have been good at it, as the voices of Alcott and his partners ring through. The result is a fascinating look at what Alcott and those like him thought, and how they described what they thought to each other. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

On second thought; updating the eighteenth-century text.

Scholars of English literature, most from the US, explore how and question why certain 18th-century texts have been updated, revised, and expanded or extended since their original appearance. Their topics include when and why once is not enough, Sarah Fielding's Familiar Letters and the limits of the 18th-century sequel, remaking Crusoe in Derek Walcott's Pantomime, and sequels to novels of sensibility by Jane Austen and another lady. Distributed in the US by Associated University Presses. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Past performance; American theatre and the historical imagination.

Bechtel (theater, Miami U., Ohio) is concerned here with the growing number of theatrical representations that demand historical reflection, yet attenuate their referential connection to actual historical incidents. The six examples he describes require both scholars and audiences to think about exactly how they engage history, because it is very different than for conventional historical drama. Some of the material has appeared in theater journals. Distributed in the US by Associated University Presses. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The persistence of hope; a true story.

Visual artist and art teacher Alcalay (b. 1917) shares his memories of a childhood in Europe, capture and persecution as a Jew during World War II, and move to the US in 1951. He includes excerpts from his father's war-time diary. Distributed in the US by Associated University Presses. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Performing the "everyday"; the culture of genre in the eighteenth century.

With 9 essays contributed by academics in art history, music and English in the U.S., Canada, Israel, and Australia, this volume offers a range of examples and analysis of the popular style in art, literature, and music, especially in France and Britain. Many of the essays are concerned with issues of gender. Published in an oversized format (8.5x11.25 inches), the volume is well illustrated with b&w plates. Distributed by Associated University Presses. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Powerful connections; the poetics of patronage in the age of Louis XIII.

Shoemaker (French, The Catholic U. of America) digs deeply behind our assumptions about the patronage system, and finds it much more complex and delicate than we had thought. He analyzes rhetoric to discern patterns of the effects of patronage on content, using works from such as de Balzac, de Viau, Sorel and Corneille, and in doing so fundamentally changes what we know about absolutist culture, especially that having to do with private and public segments of that culture and the interplay of the political and the personal in creative relationships. Distributed by Associated University Presses. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Queer people; negotiations and expressions of homosexuality, 1700-1800.

These 14 essays describe how homosexuality was perceived, identified and performed during the era most closely associated with Enlightenment. Those based upon social constructivism cover the role of class in representation and performance of homosexuality, material culture, performance space, and the queering (or not) of Boswell and Defoe. Those based upon essentialist historicism cover the clash between rhetoric and practice amongst London's homosexuals in the eighteenth century, the assignment of deviousness to homosexuality, the pastoral patronage system, love between men in Handel's Saul, Penelope Aubin's commentary, Oxford's warning, and the engineering and etiquette of the Enlightenment-era menage-'a-trois. Distributed by Associated University Presses. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)