In the next seven minutes, I would like to convince you that real formalism and real historicism really are, or really should be, one and the same critical practice. Our idea of what counts as knowledge about early English literature will be enriched by integrating formalist and historicist methods. Those of us who work on prosody and poetics are…[Read more]

The essays I am posting on Humanities Commons are also on Librarything and Goodreads. These aren’t reviews. They are thoughts about the state of literary fiction, intended principally for writers and critics involved in seeing where literature might be able to go. Each one uses a book as an example of some current problem in writing.

Quantity matters in the meter of Beowulf and other early English poems. It matters in the form of a metrical principle known as resolution. Metrical resolution served alliterative poets as a way of counting; it can serve modern scholars as evidence for the cultural meanings of verse craft. This paper therefore has two sections: How it Works and…[Read more]

This is an essay on the relation of images and text. It is part of a larger research project online at writingwithimages.com. See that site for the context; the the project’s purpose is to theorize the possibilities of fiction and poetry that are presented alongside images.

This is an essay on the relation of images and text. It is part of a larger research project online at writingwithimages.com. See that site for the context; the the project’s purpose is to theorize the possibilities of fiction and poetry that are presented alongside images.

The essays I am posting on Humanities Commons are also on Librarything and Goodreads. These aren’t reviews. They are thoughts about the state of literary fiction, intended principally for writers and critics involved in seeing where literature might be able to go. Each one uses a book as an example of some current problem in writing.

Through the comparative study of non-Anglophone translations of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, we can achieve the progressive goals of Emily Apter’s “translational transnationalism” and Edward Said’s “cosmopolitan humanism.” Both translation and humanism were intrinsic to Chaucer’s initial composition of the Tales, and in turn, both shap…[Read more]

Since the early twentieth century, translators and critics of classical Chinese poetry have tended to focus on imagery and suggestion, balking at rhythm. It is commonly assumed that modern English and classical Chinese are too different, phonemically, for any of the aural qualities of one to translate into the other. My essay aims to overcome…[Read more]

Round Table on Diversity and Teaching Medieval Studies sponsored by Graduate Student Council. Session title: “Tearing Down Walls, Building Bridges:
Medieval Diversity and Cross-Cultural Encounters in Syllabus Design and Teaching.” This paper is about two courses that illustrate the principle “Diversity in Every Course Title” and several…[Read more]

PDF of slides for a panel presentation on Jane-Austen and Regency-themed video games.

Dany Laferrière’s first novel, Comment faire l’amour avec un Nègre was a literary sensation when it was first released in Quebec in the mid-80s. The author/narrator plays with reader’s expectations, presenting both a stereotypical image of the black man (sex-obsessed, white-hating) and one that contradicts and upsets their expectations. Influen…[Read more]

Dany Laferrière’s first novel, Comment faire l’amour avec un Nègre was a literary sensation when it was first released in Quebec in the mid-80s. The author/narrator plays with reader’s expectations, presenting both a stereotypical image of the black man (sex-obsessed, white-hating) and one that contradicts and upsets their expectations. Influen…[Read more]

An analysis of the collaboration between Peter Miller and Louis Dudek in the translation of Anne Hébert’s poem, The Tomb of Kings.

Although we have long discussed the rise of consumer culture and the increase of print in Restoration England (see Birth of a Consumer Society, 1982), comparatively little information exists on specific methods publishers used to advertise to audiences and what role they played in creating new markets. My project fills this gap by examining…[Read more]