An analysis of criticism of Charles Dickens by his contemporaries G. H. Lewes and Hippolyte Taine. Both assessments address Dickens’s popularity by relying on commonplace concepts from Victorian anthropology. However, Lewes argues for a new form of critical practice addressed to popular fiction and addresses the inadequacy of existing critical…[Read more]

An analysis of criticism of Charles Dickens by his contemporaries G. H. Lewes and Hippolyte Taine. Both assessments address Dickens’s popularity by relying on commonplace concepts from Victorian anthropology. However, Lewes argues for a new form of critical practice addressed to popular fiction and addresses the inadequacy of existing critical…[Read more]

This essay surveys Thoreau’s antislavery writings from across his career and demonstrates the ecological concerns central to Thoreau’s abolitionist commitment.

In a 1972 poem about Vancouver Island, Mexican writer José Emilio Pacheco wonders, “Acaso fue el Aztlán de las mexicas / De allí partieron siete tribus.” Though Pacheco spent several years living in Vancouver during the late 1960s and early 1970s—and was published in a 1971 anthology of poetry “From Canada’s Unofficial Languages”—h…[Read more]

Our student populations are more complex and diverse than ever before, and if English departments seek to serve these students, they will need to commit to transformative learning experiences that meet students where they are and invest in their possibilities for growth. Many of our students have, like me, quietly suffered oppressive forces that…[Read more]

A contribution to a forum on Martin Delany, Blake; Or the Huts of America, ed. Jerome Mcgann.

Why has the 1985 Air India Kanishka bombing not claimed a more prominent place in Canadian history and public memory?

In the summer of 1864, fourteen-year-old Jacob Stroyer was sent to work in Fort Sumter. He did not go willingly. Stroyer was a slave owned by the wealthy Mrs. Matthew R. Singleton and was sent from the large Kensington plantation outside Columbia, SC to labor for the Confederate cause. The Confederate Corps of Engineers called upon slave owners to…[Read more]

Arrested for treason against the British Crown and deported to the penal colonies of Australia, the Irish revolutionary John Boyle O’Reilly managed to escape to the United States and within a few years became one of Boston’s most prominent political and literary figures, one of the best known Irish immigrants in the United States and one of the…[Read more]

This article explores editorial practice in the British and North American periodicals between c.1800 and c.1850. The article uses a Transatlantic studies approach.

This article explores editorial practice in the British and North American periodicals between c.1800 and c.1850. The article uses a Transatlantic studies approach.

This sample chapter is a pre-copy edited version, in accordance with copyright and open access regulations.

ABSTRACT OF SCOTT, BYRON AND THE POETICS OF CULTURAL ENCOUNTER:
Scott, Byron and the Poetics of Cultural Encounter is an innovative study of Scott’s and Byron’s poetical engagement with borders (actual and metaphorical) and the people…[Read more]