In this article I investigate the portrayal role of the Aztecs, indigeneous peoples and movements in the writings of Carlos Fuentes.

In this article I investigate the portrayal role of the Aztecs, indigeneous peoples and movements in the writings of Carlos Fuentes.

Within the context of an increasingly dystopian sense of global crisis, how can the idea of Utopia help us galvanise political literary readings? This special session will present a roundtable discussion in which panelists consider how we can use utopian methods to understand different kinds of literary texts, reflecting upon the importance of the…[Read more]

This is a syllabus for Renata Kobetts Miller’s capstone research course on Melodrama at the City College of New York in Spring 2019. It is built on the Cambridge Companion to English Melodrama, edited by Carolyn Williams (2018). The syllabus includes the final assignment sequence for scaffolded research.

What T. S. Eliot called the “mythic method,” even in its modern form, was not an invention of Modernism. A significant precursor is Thomas Hardy, whose Mayor of Casterbridge has long been appreciated for its mythological structure and wealth of allusion. Here I suggest a new addition to mythological interpretation of the novel: the Greco-Roman dei…[Read more]

This panel examines the paradoxical centrality of marginal elements in nineteenth-century aesthetics, to trace how they revitalize the conceptual and cultural impact of form. Abstracts forthcoming shortly.

Abstracts for the panel “Graphic Atwood” proposed by the Margaret Atwood Society for the 2020 MLA Convention.

The journal ‘English Literature: Theories, Interpretations, Contexts’, published at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, invites scholars to send article proposals on the topic of
‘Fictions, Facts and “Effects of Reality”: Questioning the Mimetic in the Nineteenth-Century Novel’.
We shall be happy to consider essays that address and probl…[Read more]

The journal ‘English Literature: Theories, Interpretations, Contexts’, published at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, invites scholars to send article proposals on the topic of
‘Fictions, Facts and “Effects of Reality”: Questioning the Mimetic in the Nineteenth-Century Novel’.
We shall be happy to consider essays that address and probl…[Read more]

The journal ‘English Literature: Theories, Interpretations, Contexts’, published at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, invites scholars to send article proposals on the topic of
‘Fictions, Facts and “Effects of Reality”: Questioning the Mimetic in the Nineteenth-Century Novel’.
We shall be happy to consider essays that address and probl…[Read more]

Full collection of four essays on J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings,” comprising “Lord of the Rings: the anti-adventure,” “Reader’s Guide to the Fellowship of the Ring,” “Reader’s Guide to the Two Towers,” and “The (True) Lord of the Ring.” Emphasis throughout is to suggest that it is not just wise but essential to encounter very, very…[Read more]

This essay serves as a guardian, as a true friend of the reader, encouraging them to recognize that if they identify with the hobbits in this book, to be wary of the text trains the reader to become someone who would mistake their actual proud moments of self-decision, self-realization… of bravery, of the genuine kind, for something evil or bad,…[Read more]

Argues that J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” is an adventure in reverse, an “argument” for “your” regression. Rather than play with your ability to maybe succeed in threatening environments, it confirms your worst suspicions about yourself, lending you in mood to cling to others in a master-slave relationship, so long as they’ll agree to…[Read more]

George Walker’s “The Good Fight” as arguing for means towards self-growth which aren’t merely acting out; which aren’t simply signs of perversity, of mental illness. Argues that rather than delineating the key differences between the downtrodden — those stepped on — and the rich — those (gleefully) doing the stomping down — it is truly more…[Read more]

Exploring several key scholarly explorations on the culture of sensibility in the British 18th-century, this article draws attention to what the current manner of accessing the people who invoked and participated in it are deemed to have been like, and to how this has exposed them to being invested in protecting people of, ostensibly actually,…[Read more]

Explores how Max Vigne, from Andrea Barrett’s “Servants of the Map,” makes use of the dangerous Himalayan mountain environment as almost as Winnicottian “play space,” in which to recover from being requited to a life of obligation, rather than real-self discovery, after his mother’s death.