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Taking issue with recent "post-critical" attempts to valorize the aesthetic aspects of literature, the present article suggests that Lloyd Bitzer's concept of the rhetorical situation is a more pro ...

The present article critiques the so-called postcritical position for refusing to acknowledge the literariness of literature. As a case in point, it considers Toril Moi’s Revolution of the ordinary: literary studies after Wittgenstein, Austin, and Cavell, which has been greeted as a pivotal specimen of postcritique. Like other practitioners of postcritique, Moi would replace literary theory with an art of judgment, based upon good faith in, rather than suspicion of, the literary text. In theory, all that is needed to practice this art of judgment is a willingness to pay close attention to the specifics of the particular case. In practice, however, the postcritical claim to go beyond ‘the hermeneutics of suspicion’ is compromised by its refusal to confront the literariness of literary text, as the present essay demonstrates by subjecting Moi’s own reading of the particular cases of Paul de Man and Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik to rhetorical analysis.

This article suggests that the ideologically aware mode of criticism that characterizes recent Hawthorne criticism is not the radical break with an earlier mode of criticism that it might appear to ...

This article is a quantitative and qualitative diachronic study of how the expression politically correct (PC) and related phrases are used in the American magazine Time from 1923 through 2006. The data show a dramatic increase in the frequency with which PC-phrases are used in the early 1990s. From this time onwards, the phrases are often used as a means of passing evaluative subjective opinions off as objectively reported facts, especially in reviews of cultural events, where they figure prominently. In contrast to earlier studies, our data show that PC-phrases are not inherently negative; this applies primarily to discourse on environment and business, where to be PC often implies being environmentally or socially conscious in a positive sense. Nevertheless, negative or ironic uses of the terms predominate. Most often they express criticism of unspoken cultural norms rather than being attempts to close down debate or criticizing the replacement of offensive terms by more neutral expressions.

The Fascist as Anti-Fascist. Teratologen, Literary Criticism, and the Literary Commodity The present article takes as its point of departure the debate that ensued when anti-racist magazine Expo revealed that Swedish writer Niklas Lundkvist (a.k.a. ”Nikanor Teratologen”) over several years as ”Ezzelino” had published massive amounts of racist and anti-semitic writings in an online forum. The article suggests that Ezzelino’s ideological stance is in fact detectable in Teratologen’s critically acclaimed literary works as well, and asks why Swedish literary critics have been prone to read the latter as an anti-fascist parody of fascist ideology rather than as an attempt to promote fascist views by rendering them aesthetically acceptable. It traces this inclination to the critics’ adherence to a Barthesian conception of textuality, which delivers the critic from having to think of the author as the historical origin of the literary text. The article goes on to suggest that this textual principle is trumped by the fact that literary texts today appear to us as literary commodities, that is, in a form that re-inscribes the authorial function into the literary text as the very product that is on sale. While critics quite rightly point out that one cannot equate Teratologen with Lundkvist, it is not our understanding of Lundkvist’s intentions that are affected by the revelation that Ezzelino and Teratologen are the same person, it is our understanding of how the Teratologen-commodity functions that changes – or at least, that should change, if we want literary criticism to be a means to resist fascist ideologies.

This essay argues that Andrea Dworkin’s much derided argument against pornography may still prove productive if read in relation to her fiction. Taking note of the fact that Dworkin’s own novels have been accused of being pornographic according to her criteria, the essay explores the possibility that her radical feminist anti-porn stance, inevitably described as something of a moralistic backlash by sex-liberals, could be seen as a continuation of the pornographic imagination it so vehemently protests. Through critical readings of Dworkin’s novels Ice and Fire and Mercy , as well as her autobiographical works and theoretical writings on pornography, the essay demonstrates that the contradictions that beset her writings echo the contradictions inherent in our contemporary understanding of pornography. Much like the pornography she would resist, Dworkin’s writings invite a solipsistic mode of reading, the experiential rewards of which are not so much of an interpretive as of a sensual nature. In so doing, Dworkin’s fiction paradoxically proves an invaluable point of entry into the pornographic imagination, making evident its essentially monologic nature. While this circumstance may be damaging for her status as an agitator, it points to her continued—if as yet largely unacknowledged—importance as a writer.

The present essay takes as its point of departure the resurgence of the anti-porn argument claiming that pornography is harmful. It focuses especially on philosopher Rae Langton’s attempt to use speech act theory to defend the anti-porn position of Catherine MacKinnon. Langton’s argument is critiqued for assuming that we can ascertain the function of pornography without considering the situations of its use. It hence runs counter to the particularizing intent of speech act theory as such, which emphasizes the need to study speech in context. Rather than dismiss the anti-porn position Langton defends as faulty, the essay suggests that it remains an incontrovertible facet of the pornographic situation, and as such should be dialectically engaged. In the second half of the essay, therefore, the reasoning that informs the antiporn position is shown to be incompatible with the recurrent claim that porn is the expression of a male desire to dominate women. Rather, a closer look at Langton’s defense of the anti-porn argument helps us see that pornography is the expression of cognitive possibilities unique to the historical conditions that have brought it forth, and as such is every bit as self-conflicting as is capitalism itself.

Nathaniel Hawthorne's Septimius Felton, or The Elixir of Life (1872) is habitually considered a failure today, valuable only as the pathetic documentation of the rapid decline of the creative capacity of one of America's greatest writers. Biographer after biographer has ventured to portray this mental "crack-up" in increasingly loud colors, and critics have in the main followed Henry James's recommendation that we purposely reserve but a small space for speaking of the book, "for the part of discretion seems to be to pass it by lightly." Dismissing Hawthorne's posthumous romance as an "essentially crude piece of work" (162), James's advice apparently has been taken to heart by American critics: over the subsequent 150 years, Septimius has been passed by so lightly that one can to date find only one substantial reading of the whole text) Yet when the romance was originally published in 1872, edited by Una Hawthorne with some assistance from the poet Robert Browning, it was favorably, even enthusiastically, received. Despite its unfinished state, the reviewer of the London limes, for instance, did not hesitate to compare it to Hawthorne's "masterpiece, Transformation, or The Marble Faun." Indeed, while this reviewer held that some elements of the supernatural "might have been toned down," he or she did not find that its incompleteness was such that it detracted significantly from the reading experience: unfinished, extravagant, and mournful as it is, it has a fascination about it that leads you on from scene to scene, dreading yet almost longing to be shocked or surprised again. You feel you are following the workings of, perhaps, the most original mind of his generation, refining with its innate poetry the strange births of a capricious and almost sinister fancy. Reflection is piqued and excited throughout. Hardly a page but has its startling suggestion subtly argued, or advanced incidentally in the course of conversation. In short, "it is a remarkable book," one which "will do no injustice to the author's memory." Though hardly destined to rank among the author's more popular works, "it will be read for its poetry and fancy by many who care but little for fiction in general, and on those who really appreciate and admire it we can hardly doubt it will exercise a strong and growing fascination" (5). (2) History would quickly disprove this prophecy; James's condemnatory view was a mere five years in waiting and has since been almost unanimously upheld. But the review makes evident that, notwithstanding its unfinished state, Septimius is quite capable of generating a mode of response that is at once intellectually intense and highly pleasurable. One might have thought that the 1977 publication of volume 13 of the Centenary Edition, which collected the various documents that make up the romance as The Elixir of Life Manuscripts and thus finally brought Septimius to light in all its ragged glory, would have sparked renewed critical interest in Hawthorne's last phase; but with the significant exception of Charles Swann's study, criticism on the romance has remained as scarce as ever. The reasons behind Septimius's continued exclusion are complex and multifaceted and would no doubt provide as rich a source for studying the mechanics of canonization as some of Hawthorne's other works (the pivotal texts in this respect are Tompkins and Brodhead). In the present essay, however, I will confine myself to considering the extent to which the Centenary Edition (CE) might paradoxically have contributed to perpetuating Septimius's status as a "failure." It is historical irony that the one critic who has done the most to bring the unfinished romances to light is also heavily responsible for stigmatizing them as unfinished, if not unreadable. Edward H. Davidson, who was on the editorial board of CE Volumes 12 and 13, first presented his view of the unfinished romances in Hawthorne's Last Phase (1949). …

A picture, however admirable the painter's art, and wonderful his power, requires of the spectator a surrender of himself, in due proportion with the miracle which has been wrought. Let the canvas glow as it may, you must look with the eye of faith, or its highest excellence escapes you. There is always the necessity of helping out the painter's art with your own resources of sensibility and imagination. Not that these qualities shall really add anything to what the Master has effected; but they must be put so entirely under his controul, and work along with him to such an extent, that, in a different mood, (when you are cold and critical, instead of sympathetic,) you will be apt to fancy that the loftier merits of the picture were of your own dreaming, not of his creating. (335)1

In the very last canto of The Divine Comedy, Dante finally comes to unite his gaze with that of God. God is an eternally moving circle of light, and as Dante looks into it he finds at its center the image of Christ?or, literally, "la nostra effige," our image.1 This is a decisive moment: what Dante, and the reader along with him, sees reflected in the revolving circle of God is his own image; God is a circle "with our image within itself," and Christ being man, man is both reflected and contained in God: through the image of Christ we see not only God, but ourselves in God. Dante is unable to find words for this moment of unsurpassed transcendence, "se non che la mia mente fu percossa / da un fulgore in che sua voglia venne" [save that my mind was smitten by a flash wherein its wish came to it] (DC 140-41). There follow merely four lines: "A l'alta fantasia qui manco possa; / ma gi? volgeva il mio disio e'l velle, / si come rota ch'igualmente ? mossa, / l'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle" [Here power failed the lofty phantasy; but already my desire and my will were revolved, like a wheel that is evenly moved, by the Love which moves the sun and the other stars] (DC 142-45). Through this moment of unprecedented translucence, then, the desire of the poet is ultimately brought into harmony with that of the Creator, becoming itself a revolving wheel moving towards its fulfilment in God. Coinciding, as it does, with the end of the Comedy, this moment of transcendent inspiration is itself all times: a reference to a future already accomplished, which has nevertheless still to be begun, as this end in truth marks the moment which enables the beginning of the writing of the Comedy, the greatest of all allegories. The translucence with which this final scene of the Comedy is marked allows us to look upon Divina Commedia as a transubstantiation, as it were, of allegory into symbol and vice versa. In Coleridge's famous distinction between allegory and symbol, however, translucence is taken to be the defining characteristic only of the latter

Despite the many historical links between literature and rhetoric, teachers of literature have made relatively few attempts to draw on rhetoric for teaching purposes. The present article suggests how this may be done, and argues for the pedagogical benefits of taking a rhetorical approach to literature. By means of a close reading of the first chapter of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, I demonstrate how a text may be systematically explored through the five steps (partes) of the classical rhetorical process. In conclusion, it suggests that rhetoric may be a means to bridge the gap between the many facets of English as a second language subject, as rhetoric provides a holistic framework allowing us to study literature and culture as language, and vice versa.