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

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.

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]

The belief that Francis Bacon was, from the start, a stalwart defender of royal absolutism has prevailed in scholarship despite occasional comments about Bacon’s pluralist or collaborative legal and political imagination. Building on recent revisionist work, this article questions the standard historiography. It argues that Bacon’s jur…[Read more]

The belief that Francis Bacon was, from the start, a stalwart defender of royal absolutism has prevailed in scholarship despite occasional comments about Bacon’s pluralist or collaborative legal and political imagination. Building on recent revisionist work, this article questions the standard historiography. It argues that Bacon’s jur…[Read more]

Explores a passage of Angela Carter’s “The Company of Wolves.” Delineates how Carter makes play with such things as the dialogue between the subconsciously experienced meanings of actual words ostensibly serving as only overt alphabetic components within words, to dramatize the fitfulness of the protagonist’s emergence at the finish of the story…[Read more]

Explores a passage of Angela Carter’s “The Company of Wolves.” Delineates how Carter makes play with such things as the dialogue between the subconsciously experienced meanings of actual words ostensibly serving as only overt alphabetic components within words, to dramatize the fitfulness of the protagonist’s emergence at the finish of the story…[Read more]

How in at least one instance Adam, in John Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” relentlessly pursues his desires — ostensibly against God’s will; and certainly in face of Raphael’s increasing disquiet — without experiencing a fall.

Daphne Marlatt’s “Healing” as a poem about re-cooperating from the infliction of a triggering, caustic word upon one’s mental composition, using efficacy, experience in knowing composure and competency, as a rebutting counter.

Argues that the way in which Marlow is presented, ensures that Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” is vulnerable as a text that ostensibly helps justify the maintenance of separate spheres between men and women; argues that Marlow’s successful agency is more about his being craftily evasive, a man who doesn’t impose but dodges.

Alfonso de Toledo (15th century) was, indeed, a curious guy. But he was doing something with his curiosity. He was researching and translating. He was focusing on particular themes and institutions, and giving a legal and juridical reading of them –he, as he confesses, has very little theology to forget, so even theological inventions are, for h…[Read more]

This chapter examines narratives that reflect the impact of epistemologies of otherness upon our understanding of race. Race intersects with other social factors such as class, cultural citizenship, and gender. This chapter draws on case studies of artists in exile or diaspora who interrogate their own identities, because exile brings racial…[Read more]

Exploration of how “Silas Marner” is George Eliot’s means to distinguish herself from those who are truly guilty of abandoning parental mores… ancestors, parents, themselves. An argument is made that the reason for the text is as provision for the author to temporarily relieve herself of guilt.