A literary analysis and summary of John Burnside’s poem “The Painter Fabritius Begins Work on the Lost Noli Me Tangere of 1652” (2,570 words)

Get tips on using the MLA International Bibliography to teach scholarly concepts and analytical skills.

For more than a hundred years the Modern Language Association, creator of the MLA International Bibliography, has worked to strengthen the study and teaching of language and literature. As part of that mission, the MLA has developed an online…[Read more]

The MLA International Bibliography is an essential tool for research in all aspects of modern languages and literature, but did you know that the MLAIB can be brought into the classroom and used as an effective teaching tool as well? Learn how the most powerful research tool in the humanities is being used in the virtual classroom to engage…[Read more]

Critics have characterized E.M. Forster as an advocate of what Jürgen Habermas calls the “secular public sphere.” Yet Forster was critical of liberalism’s insistence that religious experiences should be translated into the language of secular rationality. The discussion of the Clapham Sect in “Henry Thornton” (1939) suggests that eighteenth…[Read more]

The connection between philosophy and real or everyday language belongs to Wordsworth’s early poetic vision. My interest in Wordsworth’s dialogue with philosophical thinking leads me to turn neither to studies tracing the varied philosophic influences on his poetics nor to those examining the influence of his collaborator Coleridge on his ear…[Read more]

The argument in this essay is that Dickinson’s poetics of inner life makes us see anew the long-standing philosophical problem of expression. Dickinson’s poetry invests itself in an understanding of subjectivity that rearranges the anchors we often turn to in thinking about how lives and identities take on shape in expressive forms. Poetry for…[Read more]

The Cairo Genizah is a repository of texts spanning more than a millennium of Jewish history, including thousands of Hebrew and Judaeo-Arabic manuscripts now held in collections around the world. Among these are fragments from at least 25 separate Qur’an manuscripts in Arabic script, all of which lack any traces of Hebrew writing. Their…[Read more]

Gender roles in Shakespeare’s plays take on new meanings when they are embodied by Asian actors. Learning more about Asian approaches to performance not only enriches our worldview but also makes Asian cultures less abstract and Asian people more relatable as fellow human beings. Reflecting the idea that strength and empowerment can take many f…[Read more]

Since the nineteenth century, stage and film directors have mounted hundreds of adaptations of Shakespeare drawn on East Asian motifs, and by the late twentieth century, Shakespeare had become one of the most frequently performed playwrights in East Asia. There are five striking themes surrounding cultural, racial, and gender dynamics. Gender…[Read more]

Since the nineteenth century, stage and film directors have mounted hundreds of adaptations of Shakespeare drawn on East Asian motifs, and by the late twentieth century, Shakespeare had become one of the most frequently performed playwrights in East Asia. There are five striking themes surrounding cultural, racial, and gender dynamics. Gender…[Read more]

I briefly survey the function of books, written artifacts, literary criticism and connoisseurship/curation in apocalyptic literature from Mary Shelley to Malka Older (with a nod to the Book of Revelation) and in contemporary Young Adult fiction and “cli-fi” — science fiction and fantasy centered around climate change, such as Kim Stanley…[Read more]

Shakespeare’s As You Like It breathed abroad preserves Marlowe’s denouement in his tragedy of Leander from a Ganymede turned.

To suggest Shakespeare’s “As You Like It” breathed abroad includes two witnesses to Marlowe’s denouement something omitted when “Hero and Leander” is published in 1598 to “the gentle aire” of Walsingham’s “liking” and replaced in the subsequent publication of “Hero and Leander, An Amorous Poem” dedicated to Lady Audrey.

This is the UNEDITED PRE-PRINT of my section of the multi-authored article “Journal of a Plague Year: Six Voices from American Universities,” ed. Christa Jansohn, which appeared in _Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen_. The other authors were Andrew James Hartley, Jean Howard, Christoph Irmscher, Anthony Lioi, and Lisa S.…[Read more]

This is the UNEDITED PRE-PRINT of my section of the multi-authored article “Journal of a Plague Year: Six Voices from American Universities,” ed. Christa Jansohn, which appeared in _Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen_. The other authors were Andrew James Hartley, Jean Howard, Christoph Irmscher, Anthony Lioi, and Lisa S.…[Read more]