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In reading James Joyce's Finnegans Wake, two of the many shapes that phenomenology as a method has taken during and since the twentieth century come to light. The first is its use in constructing phenomenologies of reading; the second, its use as a critique of its own methods in the form of critical phenomenology. Bringing these two strands together and using the Wake as an illustration can help us imagine what a critical phenomenology of reading might look like. The three sections following the introduction respectively 'pilot' three forms of critiques of reading: the phenomenological, which is often purely descriptive and does not change our ways of reading; the critical-phenomenological, which can fall into absolute skepticism and ennui toward the text; and the one provisionally termed 'new,' which can be imaginative yet impossible as an academic exercise. Together, they speculate upon possibilities for new ways of bringing phenomenology into literary critique. Keywords: phenomenology / James Joyce / Finnegans Wake / interpretation, Don't read the book, just quote it, mine for epigrams, footnote it. That's by far the simplest way. --Sebastian D.G. Knowles, Finnegans Wake for Dummies There are some well-known and, [...]

Criticism of the welfare state would be more effective if it were better targeted. That is why we begin by clarifying the meaning of the welfare state. We then distinguish [...]

Maybe there is no point in having a thesis. Maybe it's too partial an experience. Maybe a conclusion is a delusion. Maybe 'research' and 'support' are themselves chimeras dreamed into [...]

This article expands on literary critic Veve A. Clark's discussion of the marasa concept as a mythical theory of textual relationships based on the Haitian Divine Twins by connecting the concept to its African origins, itself a marasa, and exploring it in relation to three short stories from Haiti Noir (2011), an anthology of noir literature edited by Edwidge Danticat. Even though the narratives are firmly focused on the New World experience, I contend that the marasa's origins guide and shape the stories and are explicitly manifest in at least one of them. Thus, the short stories 'Which One?' by Evelyne Trouillot, 'The Last Department' by Katia D. Ulysse, and 'The Finger' by Gary Victor (in my own invocation of marasa twa) embody the marasa concept in the way that they explore its continued relevance in the Caribbean reality of contemporary large diasporas and international interventions, which is especially true of Haiti, that produce here/there, us/them, home/abroad dichotomies. Moreover, they illustrate the attendant third element/space/moment of resolution or completeness through creativity, the dosu/dosa, which is also integral to the marasa concept., INTRODUCTION In her essay 'Developing Diaspora Literacy and Marasa Consciousness' (1991), literary critic Veve A. Clark argues for the development of marasa consciousness as a means of reading contemporary African [...]

Surface reading, the most prominent example of the recent backlash against the 'hermeneutics of suspicion,' eschews traditional depth-based approaches to literary and cultural analysis in favor of more descriptive reading practices. Despite the stridency of these assertions, however, when compared to traditional reading practices the published examples of surface reading demonstrate little methodological innovation. A discursive analysis of the emotional rhetoric mobilized by these arguments suggests that the real issue at stake has less to do with methodological dissatisfaction than with political disappointment. A reading of George Eliot's Romola (1862-63) draws a parallel between Romola's disillusionment with her spiritual and political mentor and surface reading's frustration with a previous generation of critics whose political promises remain unfulfilled. Eliot's merciless dissection of both characters reminds us that, for her, sympathy was both an ethical mandate and a critical practice, a positive form of suspicion that reorients, rather than repudiates, accepted interpretive methodologies., It is tempting to say that we need not speculate on the legacy of historicism because, to adapt a scene from Middlemarch (1871-72), our own methodological version of Mr. Featherstone [...]

The purpose of my essay is twofold: (1) I demonstrate how analytical techniques from the variationist research paradigm in sociolinguistics provide the scholar with additional tools to understand the relationship [...]

This essay argues that the diverse strands of Charles Kingsley's work--as nature writer, clergyman, and novelist, among others--can be united through an ecocritical approach that underscores his literary projection of a green identity. By conceiving of the imagination as situated between what he saw as the purely passive work of scholarship or art and the active engagement of physical labor, Kingsley forged an answer to a problem that continues to engage ecocritics: What autonomy, if any, does the imagination have when humanity is understood as the product of evolution? In rejecting easy dualisms and recognizing the co-dependence of imagination and fact, of art, science, and morality, Kingsley demands that we confront our partiality and fragility as biotic beings., I. Introduction On 23 January 1875, Charles Kingsley died, leaving instructions that his grave, in Eversley churchyard, not be bricked up. (1) His dying came at the outset of the [...]

This article is the second in a six-part series addressing research and the DSN. Critical review is a key aspect of research and evidence-based care and, therefore, of clinical and [...]

The prosecution of Caepio and Murena was a politically unpopular event from the early years of Augustus' reign. Strabo refers to the matter using a 'quoted quote' from Euripides. I look at possible conclusions to be drawn from Strabo's indirect way of handling his subject matter. I review the evidence for the date of the prosecution of Caepio and Murena. A bitter scholarly debate has led to the rejection of an early 23 BCE date. This legitimate rejection has resulted in a reaction against any date in 23 BCE. I suggest a date late in 23 BCE. A late 23 BCE date has implications for the trial of Primus, which immediately preceded Murena's own trial. I trace a possible connection between Murena's defence of Primus and his own subsequent prosecution for conspiracy. Whatever lay behind Murena's prosecution and death, his treatment shocked contemporaries so much that even the normally pro-Augustan Strabo feels compelled to register his criticism, albeit in an indirect way. Keywords Strabo, Cassius Dio, Licinius Murena, Primus, Terentius Varro Murena, Athenaeus

Poets, novelists and playwrights have always written about love because it seems to be something which unites us all in spite of the potential divisions of race, class or gender. […]

This literature review aims to untangle the complex concept of recovery in mental health. Recovery is irreducible to a simple construct, and, while its competencies are now part of everyday [...]

I reread lay Fliegelman's two extraordinary books during the summer of 2007, and I finished Declaring Independence just days before receiving the sad news of his untimely death at age [...]

The screenplay has been the uncle in the attic for most of film's history--largely (though not wholly) ignored and abandoned after it has served its usefulness. Seen by most as [...]

Feminism, especially the womanist brand, has been a very popular critical tool that most critics, men and women alike, have employed in their critical appraisal of African literary works. This is decidedly a very fertile area of contemporary scholarship. The emergence of this critical methodology in the African context stems from the perceived relegation of African women to the background, whether at the home front or in the domain of governance in the larger society. Essentially, feminism preaches equality of the sexes and frowns at the domination of women by men. Paradoxically, African literary works, being products and reflections of the stresses and tensions of the African society, have replicated this scenario. African literature, consequently, is male-dominated. This has and is still engendering reactions from concerned female and male writers who are re-writing the history of the emergent literature, countering and challenging male chauvinism by presenting conscious, active, resilient and courageous female characters in their novels. It is this anti-male domination crusade that has given concreteness to the feminization of heroism in African fiction as exemplified, in this study, by Nigeria's Buchi Emecheta and Senegalese Ousmane Sembene, reflecting in the process, the singleness of purpose of female and male African writers in their collective fight against discrimination against women., Introduction African literature, beginning with pre-independence writers, depicts literature as a masculine entity. The protagonists in novels like Amos Tutuola's The Palmwine Drinkerd, Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart and Arrow [...]

ABSTRACT This article contributes to recent debates on anonymous publication, authorship, and attribution. Following early modern examples from Shakespeare, Erasmus, Montaigne, and others, I argue that central to debates on [...]

Introduction KENNETH BURKE WAS THE INITIATOR AND CODIFIER of many great critical ideas of the twentieth century. Although Burke's religious faith, or lack of it, is less readily obvious than [...]

People are considerably more defensive in the face of group criticism when the criticism comes from an out-group rather than an in-group member (the intergroup sensitivity effect). We tested three strategies that out-group critics can use to reduce this heightened defensiveness. In all studies, Australians received criticism of their country either from another Australian or from a foreigner. In Experiment 1, critics who attached praise to the criticism were liked more and agreed with more than were those who did not. In Experiment 2, out-group critics were liked more and aroused less negativity when they acknowledged that the problems they identified in the target group were shared also by their own in-group. In both experiments, the ameliorative effects of praise and acknowledgment were fully mediated by attributions of constructiveness. Experiment 3 tested the strategy of spotlighting; that is, of putting on the record that you intend your comments to apply to just a portion of the group rather than to the whole group. This strategy--which did not directly address the attributional issues that are presumed to underpin the intergroup sensitivity effect--proved ineffective. Practical and theoretical implications for intergroup communication are discussed. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2958.2007.00314.x

The marks of elite forms such as the ode or the tragedy are retained when a title is cited. Historians of the book have considered every marginal element of the [...]

IN 1990, MARIANNA TORGOVNICK wrote an essay on 'Experimental Critical Writing that impressed my youngish mind with her eloquently expressed desire to write in a new voice outside of the [...]

Using Edward Said's The World, the Text, and the Critic as a critical foundation, I would like to propose that Geoffrey Chaucer's 'The Knight's Tale' influenced Joseph Conrad's writing of [...]

THE PHRASING IN THE SINGULAR of this forum's key query--Why do I have to write like that?--allows it to be read either as a rhetorical or non-rhetorical question. As a [...]

WHEN I READ STEPHEN SLEMON'S call for the 'Why Do I Have To Write Like That' panel (ACCUTE Conference 2007), I was struck by its plaintive cry for the freedom [...]

Abstract Approaches to teaching fiction vary since instructors might disagree as to what and how exactly should be taught and later tested. I believe it is possible for students to [...]

ABSTRACT In 1996, Calixthe Beyala was twice accused of plagiarism. One of the accusations led to her being found guilty in the High Court in Paris. Pardoxically, in that same […]

THAT LEON SURETTE has been writing for more than four decades primarily about Ezra Pound (1885-1972), the American poet, may seem unusual and surprising--but this 'scholarly monomania' may be attributed [...]

The inside story of a reviewer is described. The reviewer needs to be resourceful and flexible; needs both staying power and to stay awake; and finally, he has to be his own best critic. Reviewing is, therefore, presumably a job for those who value human company, or other people's opinion.

Art works are ideological because they a priori posit a spiritual entity as though it were independent of any conditions of material production, hence as though it were intrinsically superior [...]

The critic said to himself, 'if it is written by Mr. Trollope, I shall soon meet with the phrase, 'made his way,' as applied to walking where there is no [...]

Tradition discourses upon literature have been predicated upon the ability to refer to a text that others may consult (Landow, 1994, p. 33). Texts that involve elements of feedback and non-trivial decision-making on the part of the reader (Aarseth, 1997; p. 1) therefore present a challenge to readers and critics alike. Since a persuasive case has been made against a critical method that sets out to 'identify the task of interpretation as a task of territorial exploration and territorial mastery' (Aarseth, p. 87), this paper proposes the use of readers in an empirically based approach to hypertext fiction. Meta-interpretation, a method that combines individual responses to a text, reading logs, screen recordings and limited qualitative/quantitative analysis, and critical interpretation is outlined. By analysing readers' responses it is possible to suggest both the ways that textual elements may have influenced or determined readers' choices and the ways that readers' choices 'configure' the text. The method thus addresses Espen Aarseth's concerns and illuminates interesting features of interactive processes in fictional environments. The paper is divided into two parts: the first part sketches out meta-interpretation through consideration of the main problems confronting the literary critic; the second part describes reading research aimed at generating data for the literary critic: Key words: choice, critical-theory, empirical, hyperfiction, hypertext, interpretation, methodology, reader-response, textual-criticism

THE STUDY OF EXTANT English Renaissance poetry, prose, and dramatic manuscripts is once again flourishing. Spurred on by the frequent reluctance of 'history of the book' scholars to grapple with [...]

AT CONFERENCES and other academic gatherings, I often face a question that reveals just how uneasy many academics remain about interdisciplinary work: 'Do you think of yourself as a literary [...]

The meaning of 'intention' as it applies to literary criticism, focusing on how understanding an author's intention applies to an understanding of poetry. Topics include philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein's understanding of 'intention' according to his philosophy of language, which sees words as tools; an interpretation of the intention of Ogden Nash's poem 'Requiem'; and the use of 'intention' as a critical tool to explore multiple meanings of a poem.

The article examines two critical categories in poetry: dry disjunction, in which the poet excludes concepts to make a point, and tends to read dispassionately; and wet disjunction, in which concepts are included and tend to evoke emotion. These critical categories are applied to several modern poets such as T.S. Eliot, William Butler Yeats, and Ezra Pound.

The author suggests that critics of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's conversation poems need to disengage the text itself from the literary criticisms that have been applied to it, without returning to textual formalism. This article re-arranges the poems by using prose narratology, asserting that the poems have a four part structure and center on the idea of surrogacy.

A comparison is made between the critical aesthetics of Thomas Warton and John Upton, using Edmund Spenser's poem 'The Faerie Queene' as the focus. While Warton favored an approach involving interpretation and symbolism, Upton argued against overly embellished readings.

A critique is presented on American literary canon and the history of its development, specifically its incorporation of metaphor and figures of speech. It is posited that metaphor can obscure socially or politically relevant issues concerning the commercialization of literary fame.

The contributions of poet and theorist Veronica Forrest-Thomson are presented. Topics include her engagement with the philosophy of language as advanced by Ludwig Wittgenstein, the role of the reader in producing meaning, and the concepts of continuity, discontinuity, semantic intransigence and irony.

The functional relations between theory and avant-garde art are delineated. These include the role theories play in identifying objects or events solely within art rather than other social domains, the importance of theory in developing heuristics used by artists, and the influence artworks may have on shaping theories.