This is the Introduction to my new book, _Victorian Skin: Surface, Self, History_.

Sinclair Ross’s “As For Me and My House” as a (nefarious) safe-space whereby readers can subsume themselves within a locale that promises the sense of being taken care of, that they experienced within the maternal home but on one condition: ready willingness to defer; acquiesce to “mother’s” leadership. Written just before a culture pivoted from…[Read more]

A review of Stanley Kunitz’s poetry, emphasizing how he used his poetry to both explore and manage his relationship with his dominating mother. Argues that none of Kunitz’s elegies work as conventional elegies, or as we traditionally understand or expect them to work, but more as working their way to the direction Peter Sacks advocates, as…[Read more]

Explores Bertram Brooker’s “Think of the Earth” from Norman Holland’s perspective of literature as a “place” where unsavory wishes can be satisfied, without alarming super-ego censors. Explores the character Tavistock as built to lure many readers into situating themselves within him, for conveying characteristics that define him as both a prodigy…[Read more]

Explores Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott” as a space-world where anxious Victorians might place the perhaps exciting but also anxiety-producing New to subsume its affect of disequilibrium within the sturdy, assured and predictable.

Explores Maureen Folan, in Martin McDonagh’s “The Beauty Queen of Leenane,” as a psychological borderline, someone who is afraid to achieve a man she can have a relationship with, and so defaults to using him as simply another object she can use in warfare against a mother she is only yet capable of playing at being able to leave behind her.

Explores how Cormac McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian” encourages, more than identification with, but an impressing oneself within “the kid,” and makes all of his adventures with Glanton and his outriders a ride we thrill at, even if at times very much secretly — as with the slaughter of the indigenous camp. Glanton is a phallic “hero” for us; it is the…[Read more]

Explores how Cormac McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian” encourages, more than identification with, but an impressing oneself within “the kid,” and makes all of his adventures with Glanton and his outriders a ride we thrill at, even if at times very much secretly — as with the slaughter of the indigenous camp. Glanton is a phallic “hero” for us; it is the…[Read more]

Explores how Cormac McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian” encourages, more than identification with, but an impressing oneself within “the kid,” and makes all of his adventures with Glanton and his outriders a ride we thrill at, even if at times very much secretly — as with the slaughter of the indigenous camp. Glanton is a phallic “hero” for us; it is the…[Read more]

Explores how Cormac McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian” encourages, more than identification with, but an impressing oneself within “the kid,” and makes all of his adventures with Glanton and his outriders a ride we thrill at, even if at times very much secretly — as with the slaughter of the indigenous camp. Glanton is a phallic “hero” for us; it is the…[Read more]

Explores how Cormac McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian” encourages, more than identification with, but an impressing oneself within “the kid,” and makes all of his adventures with Glanton and his outriders a ride we thrill at, even if at times very much secretly — as with the slaughter of the indigenous camp. Glanton is a phallic “hero” for us; it is the…[Read more]

Explores how Cormac McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian” encourages, more than identification with, but an impressing oneself within “the kid,” and makes all of his adventures with Glanton and his outriders a ride we thrill at, even if at times very much secretly — as with the slaughter of the indigenous camp. Glanton is a phallic “hero” for us; it is the…[Read more]

Challenges Robinson Crusoe’s ability, in “Robinson Crusoe,” to be honest with himself about how much he was actually glad Fortune stepped into remove him out of his father’s grasp. And, as well, Gulliver’s presumption, In “Gulliver’s Travels,” that he would really have preferred Fortune had not stepped in and removed him from endless more days in…[Read more]

Compares Evelina, from Frances Burney’s “Evelina,” and Werther, from Goethe’s “Young Werther.” Argues that though they could readily be made to seem opposite to one another, as they seek company with such disparate groups of people, the difference is superficial, and their motivations, the same — namely, to make use of their associations with…[Read more]

Explores a particular passage of Anthony Burgess’s “Clockwork Orange,” illuminating how it shows the text draws our admiration for Alex.

Explores Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction” as if it were experienced by many viewers of a particular type — SCM’s: suburban, collegiate young men — as a feeling out of how they might contrive themselves so that their future development would not place them as identifiable as losers by he-men pulp figures they’d learned early represent…[Read more]

Explores Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction” as if it were experienced by many viewers of a particular type — SCM’s: suburban, collegiate young men — as a feeling out of how they might contrive themselves so that their future development would not place them as identifiable as losers by he-men pulp figures they’d learned early represent…[Read more]

Exemplaria review essay by Sarah Elliott Novacich of recent books by Simon Gaunt, Jonathan Hsy, and Shirin Khanmohamadi on medieval contact zones.