English - Advance Access

Last Words

Smith, S. — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 05:17:05 PST

CITIES OF DREADFUL NAUGHT: PRIVATIVE EVIL IN HEART OF DARKNESS

Lindley, A. D. — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 23:46:47 PDT

The figuration of evil – whether in the person of Mr Kurtz or in the two cities, Brussels and London, that embody European civilization – in Heart of Darkness is ultimately derived from the doctrine of privative evil developed by St Augustine and absorbed by Conrad from his original and never fully renounced Catholicism. Kurtz and the imperial enterprise in Africa are consistently represented in terms of emptiness, non-entity, consuming greed and hunger, and the gravitational drift toward oblivion that Augustine calls nihilation. Marlow may see his world in Darwinian terms, but he judges it in Augustinian ones, even or especially in the absence of any belief in God that might counter the pervasive presence of evil. This essay explores the effects of that division. In the process, it places Heart of Darkness in the long tradition of Augustinian religious narrative that prominently includes two of its major sources, the Inferno and Faust.

BETWEEN PROVERBS AND LYRICS: CUSTOMIZATION PRACTICES IN LATE MEDIEVAL ENGLISH MORAL VERSE

Wicker, H. E. — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 22:54:20 PDT

Despite being extremely prevalent in the late medieval period, proverb-based moral verses are often considered inferior literature and have received very little critical study. This article seeks to problematise the marginal classification of this literature by investigating the processes by which proverbs inspired and were incorporated into lyrics, and how these verses were in turn reworked to produce different meanings. Using examples of proverbs and lyrics on deviant speech, it demonstrates how an increasingly literate public customised these verses as they recorded them in their personal books, producing varied and continually evolving transmission practices. As such, this article looks beyond how individuals learnt to read to examine how literacy enabled a growing cross-section of society to be involved in the making and remaking of moral values.

IN MEMORIAM: ON BEREAVEMENT AND THE WORK OF MOURNING

Brown, D. — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 22:54:20 PDT

In Memoriam is an elegy in the tradition of such great precedents as ‘Lycidas’ or ‘Adonais’. However, just as it incorporates the new worlds of scientific geology and evolutionary biology so, it is suggested, the poem embodies a new interest in subjective psychology which foreshadows and continues through the Freudian ‘revolution’ to our contemporary counselling culture. The focus is on bereavement and the reality of mourning, and the poem acts as both an ‘anatomy’ of the grieving process and a therapeutic programme for the reader-as-sufferer. By its journal-format, formal regularities of emotional ‘containment’, the persona in normative mourning-role and the construction of a worthy subject of loss (Arthur Hallam), together with other factors, In Memoriam has established itself as both a major Victorian poem and a foundational discourse in the understanding of radical loss and the work of mourning. It has become, then, a prime instance of poetry as aesthetic therapy as emphasised by this article.

The Poetry Toolkit: The Essential Guide to Studying Poetry

Williams, A. — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 23:52:25 PDT

LUCY HUTCHINSON AND GENESIS: PARAPHRASE, EPIC, ROMANCE

Wilcher, R. — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 21:53:15 PDT

This article examines how a self-consciously puritan author draws upon various generic resources in a verse rendering of the first thirty-two chapters of Genesis. It distinguishes between Lucy Hutchinson's strict adherence to the biblical narrative of the Creation and Fall in the five cantos that were published as Order and Disorder in 1679 and the greater imaginative freedom she permitted herself in the further fifteen cantos that remained in manuscript. While established methods of scriptural paraphrase and meditation, elevated here and there by epic conventions, are employed throughout the text, features of fictional romance – of a kind deliberately eschewed in the 1679 volume – become prominent in the narrative expansion of later episodes involving the experiences of such female characters as Sarah, Rebecca, and Rachel.

THE MODERN FIGURE OF THE AUTHOR, SARAH FIELDING, AND THE CASE OF THE HISTORIES OF SOME OF THE PENITENTS OF THE MAGDALEN HOUSE

Woodward, C. — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 21:53:14 PDT

In this article I posit that the modern figure of the author – single, original, and proprietary – has shadowed attempts to ascribe authorship to The Histories of Some of the Penitents of the Magdalen House (1760), a novel of interest both for the development of narrative style and because it was part of the propaganda efforts of the Magdalen Hospital for Repentant Prostitutes. I observe that a model of collaborative authorship was already in place in the eighteenth century, and I consider the role of speculation in matters of attribution when questions are murky, as they are regarding authorship of this text. Noting matters of biography and using internal evidence for my argument, I consider collaborative authorship for this text, with Sarah Fielding as one worker, likely Sarah Scott, and possibly including contributions from other writers. In closing, I note ways that thinking about collaborative authors for The Histories can lead to new research into the reform energies of the Bath community of women (Fielding and Scott among them), and I suggest that, particularly, we scholars who work on women writers move our attribution studies beyond the shadow of the single, original and proprietary figure of the modern author.

'FROM MIRRORED TRUTH THE LIKENESS OF THE TRUE': J. R. R. TOLKIEN AND REFLECTIONS OF JESUS CHRIST IN MIDDLE-EARTH

Padley, J., Padley, K. — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 02:38:19 PDT

In the last half-century, Christological imaging in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth mythos has been identified by many writers in greater or lesser detail and with varying degrees of success. Some have made piecemeal and general observations on the subject, in particular about the sacrificial nature of Frodo's quest, or the parallels between Gandalf's return and Jesus Christ's resurrection. One or two have attempted more systematic patterns of identification. Broadly, these various assessments fall into the traps of being either so general as to be trite, or too subjectively prescriptive to do justice to the splintering effect of Tolkien's numinous writing style. Accordingly, there is not yet a comprehensive review of the ways in which Christological imagery operates throughout Tolkien's central stories. This essay aims to address this perceived lack by examining Middle-earth's three most significant Christological loci: Gandalf, Frodo, and Aragorn. In it, we will explore elements of Christ's divine nature (with reference to Gandalf), Christ's humanity (with reference to Frodo), and Christ's quality of kingliness (with reference to Aragorn). These discussions will be prefaced by an analysis of Tolkien's own understanding of his relationship with the religious content of his writing to explicate how he himself would have perceived the presence of such imaging within his mythos.

Shakespearean Metaphysics (Continuum, 2008) * Shakespeare's Double Helix (Continuum, 2008)

Sewell, J. — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:32:48 PDT

BERNARD SPENCER'S 'BOAT POEM'

Robinson, P. — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 03:29:14 PDT

This essay, based on manuscripts of ‘Boat Poem’ preserved in Special Collections at the University of Reading, aims to highlight the enduring qualities of Bernard Spencer's neglected art. It focuses on the poet's idea, adapted from George Seferis, that poems are waiting to be met with in experience, and that it is the poet's task to recognize and portray them. I document the occasions of ‘Boat Poem’ in Ibiza, and in the poet's biography. His work on the poem is explored in detail to reveal how it links the objects in the seaport evocation and their meaning for a middle-aged man with a history of uncertain health about to marry a woman more than half his age. The essay argues for an understated and balanced truth to encountered occasion in Spencer's poetry, a non-appropriative poise between what the scene means and what it means to the poet. Furthermore, in the concluding section to the essay, these values are compared with the styles and cultural implications of two modernist boat poems (Eliot's ‘Marina’ and Seferis's ‘In the Manner of G. S.’), suggesting that Spencer's style works towards establishing another note in English poetry, a note concordant with the poet's experience as a representative of the British Council during the decades of decolonization, in which his country's literature and its writers had to find a different balance between themselves, their culture and traditions, and the places where they were posted, places with histories and values independent of their own.

WINNING, LOSING, AND LUCK IN THE ETHICS AND POLITICS OF DANIEL DERONDA

Newton, K. M. — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 03:41:00 PDT

Luck affects almost every aspect of ‘Daniel Deronda’, especially ethical and political issues. The formal innovations in which beginning and ending are destabilised create a context which highlights the role of luck. There is no fundamental distinction between major Jewish and non-Jewish characters as both tend to occupy separate mental worlds and are subject to luck, good or bad, though judgement as to what constitutes good or bad luck will always be open to derferment. Luck is especially fundamental to Deronda and he becomes an inadvertent gambler.

As luck inevitably creates winners and losers, it is morally problematic as there is no necessary relation between luck, good or bad, and desert.

Traditional forms of moral thinking which ignore luck are called into question. The novel's treatment of the relation between luck and the ethical anticipates the ethical philosophy of Bernard Williams and Jacques Derrida. Though the political dimension may seem unconnected with luck, Deronda's hope that Mordecai is an authentic visionary and that his ideal of Jewish nationhood is both practicable and will benefit humanity in the future is necessarily a gamble and dependent on luck.

The Grail, the Quest and the World of Arthur

Hopkins, A. — Mon, 04 May 2009 00:59:41 PDT