Explores how “Ode to a Grecian Urn” reads as a discovery of the discovery for the poet of the importance of an object, not primarily as something he might master, but something he submits to. Story of the withdrawal of status, and re-projection of “art,” status, onto an object, after brief experience of the effects of being abandoned its authority.

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.

Explores how Henry James’s “The Beast in the Jungle” reads exactly as the sort of clinging back to a projected mother-figure, after freedom began to spell feelings of abandonment that psychically were proving increasingly intolerable, that object relations therapists finds in patients. Delineates how much of the story amounts to a tussle between…[Read more]

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]

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.

What is the relevance of Bruno Latour’s work for literary studies?

How might ANT help us rethink questions of comparison and translation?

Exploration of how Elizabeth Gaskell uses her textual creation, “Cranford,” to insert a male “bomb” into specifically delineated memories of her pre-adult life, thereby effecting displaced matricide.

Analysis of how Jo creates her own femininity, apart from her mother’s, through effectively earning the trust and interest of increasingly impressive paternal imagos.

How and why do we read? And what is the relationship between academic reading and the reading we do for pleasure? This course is divided into two parts. The first part, on critical reading, surveys some of the most influential critical approaches in recent decades, including structuralism, Marxism, psychoanalysis, deconstruction, feminism,…[Read more]

Full collection of essays written during my undergraduate and graduate studies in literature.

This paper aims to tackle the ambiguity of Péladan’s interpretation of the Malatesta Temple of Rimini, the prestige of which is related for him to the faith in the Absolute of Art. In effect, in Példan’s novel Le Vice Suprême, Sigismondo becomes a hero for both his criminal reputation and his artistic prestige. Furthermore, in his theore…[Read more]

Review for The Seventeenth Century of Oona A. Hathaway and Scott J. Shapiro, _The Internationalists: How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Changed the World_ and Marco Barducci, _Hugo Grotius and the Century of Revolution, 1613-1718_

Archives and libraries operate within a complex web of social, political and economic forces. Digital technologies, globalization, the corporatization of the academy, and increasing commercial control of the scholarly record are just some of the myriad forces shaping their evolution. Libraries and archives in turn have shaped the production of…[Read more]

Front matter for Literatures of Liberalization: Global Circulation and the Long Nineteenth Century

“Notre-Dame in Jean Fouquet’s Hours of Etienne Chevalier, ca. 1452-52” is a book excerpt of May Spangler’s “Paris in Architecture, Literature and Art,” recently published at Peter Lang. Designed for an interdisciplinary course in Cultural Studies, the book capitalizes on the little exposure liberal arts students have to architecture, and the wid…[Read more]

La poesia dell’inverno (del letargo, dice Proust) è materia della Recherche che coniuga arte e vita, o piuttosto impasta i materiali della vita, per farne arte. In un passo del Côté de Guermantes l’eroe del romanzo si trova a trascorrere una notte nella guarnigione di Doncière. L’associazione di diverse sensazioni fisiche (il freddo, la luminosit…[Read more]

This article focuses on a vast category of texts, the so-called “Tableaux de Paris”, or “Paris-Guides”, which contributed in a relevant way to the creation and the vulgarization of the Myth of Paris all along the Nineteenth Century. The relation of these publications with the “high” literature is sometimes ambiguous: several great authors par…[Read more]