Annotated Bibliographies
ON STEIN
Itai Halevi
September 12, 2007
Selected Articles on Gertrude Stein and “Three Lives”: A Bibliography
Blackmer, Corrine E. “African Masks and the Arts of Passing in Gertrude Stein’s ‘Melanctha’ and Nella Larsen’s ‘Passing’” Journal of the History of Sexuality, Vol. 4, No. 2, Special Issue, Part 1: Lesbian and Gay Histories., Oct., 1993, pp. 230-263
In her essay, Blackmer directly confronts the complex of race and sexuality that are present in Stein and Larsen’s texts and tries to show how both authors exploited the symbolic trope of the African mask to situate their characters as within the narratives. Blackmer’s essay is expansive to a fault. At points it feels as though she is meandering, simply relishing the opportunity to retell the stories she is critiquing. Her attempt to concretize the connection between the two authors achieves mixed success – her application of the African mask analogy comes in fits, buried in the long summations, and the structure of the essay segregates the two essays in a basic comparative structure, first presenting one, then the other. Finally, the concluding connection between the authors differing successes and race feels hurried, disingenuous, and somewhat irrelevant. This essay raises many good points regarding sexuality and race, as well as appropriations of Africanisms in modern literature (its exposition of the functioning of the African mask is particularly valuable), and fundamentally, the parallels that Blackmer draws between Larsen and Stein are valid. However, it is a piece that frankly begs revision.
Doyle, Laura. “The Flat, the Round, and Gertrude Stein: Race and the Shape of Modern(ist) History” Modernism/Modernity Vol. 7, No. 2, pp. 249-271
Doyle proposes a history of the novel that identifies the construction of racial narratives as a requirement for the form’s development. By recognizing that Modernist writers were in inevitable interaction with the historical baggage of the novel (and other cultural affects) she considers Stein within the continuum of racialized texts. In the end, she argues that Stein’s usage of inflammatory language is not justified as it a) expresses an exploitation of the embedded shock value, and b) does not alter the underlying offensive construct but in fact perpetuates it. While the essay exhibits some theoretical problems in its analysis, it is nonetheless a worthy and vigorous examination of Stein and Modernism.
Fahy, Thomas. “Iteration as a Form of Narrative Control in Gertrude Stein’s ‘The Good Anna’” Style, Vol. 34 Issue 1, Spring 2000, pp. 25-35
Despite the title, this essay does not delve deeply into the formal aspects of Stein’s writing, focusing instead on the ideological consequences of her iterative techniques. Bait & switch? Perhaps, as Fahy’s examination of the functioning or deployment of repetition (or “insistence” as Stein referred to it, as Fahy repeatedly reminds us) is cursory. However, his analysis of “The Good Anna” is compelling; he locates Stein as the primal godmother of queer theory. The end result of the repetitions/insistence is, according to Fahy, the blurring of the binary distinctions regarding gender and sexuality that were rigidly encoded in text during the Victorian era, and her usage of the term “queer” throughout the text further destabilizes conventional constructs. An implication of his analysis is that Three Lives can be seen as a study of the continuum of female identities – masculinized (functionally asexual) Anna, intermediate (bisexual) Melanctha, and highly feminized (heterosexual) Lena – and how the failure of each to reconcile with their true “queer” nature results in their narrative death.
Knight, Christopher J. “Gertrude Stein’s ‘Melanctha’ and Radical Heterosexuality” Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. 25 Issue 3, Summer 1988, p295-300
Knight’s article seeks to utilize Jane Gallop’s concept of radical heterosexuality, and Melanctha and Jeff’s inability to achieve that mode of relationship, to identify a central theme of Stein’s novella. His premise is that the struggle between Melanctha and Jeff is not due to a clash of polar opposites, but due to Jeff’s inability to accept the non-polarized gender model embodied in Melanctha. The analysis, carried out with a good number of direct quotations from the text, is astute, and in the end there is little to argue with. The greatest issue with the essay is its brevity – Knight raises a valid question regarding Stein’s attempt to critique polarized models of gender, however, he does not contextualize this critique within the greater body of Stein’s work. Further, by avoiding considerations of race, economics, class and other analytical criteria, Knight leaves it to the reader to ruminate on the question of whether the radical heterosexuality is truly embedded within “Melanctha” or if it is a surface affect.
Rowe, John Carlos. “Naming What Is Inside: Gertrude Stein’s use of names in Three Lives” Novel: A Forum on Fiction, Vol. 36 Issue 2, Spring 2003, p219-243
Rowe proposes reading Melanctha as a “prophetic” figure based on an analysis of the names that Stein deploys in the text. He counters criticisms of the implied racism of the name “Melanctha” by tracing its etymological root to Philipp Melancthon, an early reformer of the German Church and a proponent of Humanism. It is a dense article, which draws upon Stein’s literary theories, cultural criticism, and historicism to build its case, but is well-written and ultimately easy to digest. In places it reads as if Rowe feels the need to rescue Stein’s legacy from the critics who would judge her as racist based on her deployment of obviously inflammatory language (based on the articles I’ve found, there is a significant number in this camp). Rowe’s article is a good example of current methodology. Highly Recommended.
Ruddick, Lisa. “Stein and Cultural Criticism in the Nineties: Review Essay” Modern Fiction Studies, Vol. 42, No. 3, 1996, pp. 647-659
This review article provides a good summation of three books that extend modernist studies of Stein, particularly as she relates to race and her contemporary cultural contexts. Ruddick’s critiques of the articles are astute, she exposes their scholarly value clearly, and her writing style is accessible. Most importantly, Ruddick expands the article with her critiques and observations of the field of modernist studies itself. She points out how the earlier “French” feminist readings of Stein, which lionized her for the anti-patriarchal stance of the writing, may have overlooked (silenced) the questions regarding race and cultural context that the texts present. Finally she raises concerns about the current state of scholarship, historicisms in particular, which seems to place diminished value on the aesthetic and pleasuring aspects of texts as a matter of critical significance.
Saunders, Judith P. “Bipolar Conflict in Stein’s ‘Melanctha’”, Modern Language Studies, Vol. 15, No. 2, Spring 1985, pp. 55-64
In contrast to Knight (see above), Saunders argues that “Melanctha” is indeed a tale of polar conflicts and embodied alter egos. Jeff and Melanctha play the roles of polarized figures (conformist vs. nonconformist, sexually repressed vs. promiscuous, thinker vs. feeler) and Melanctha is further conflicted due to the polar nature of her own characteristics (black/white, powerful/meek, wanting to wander/wanting to be good). It is a solid, if somewhat rote, psychoanalytic reading of the text. To her credit, Saunders does point out how Stein complicates Melanctha and Jeff’s gender roles, but only too near the end of the essay. As with Knight, the narrow focus of the author precludes the complicating factor of race from the discussion, which, within the context of current Stein scholarship, makes it appear a bit simplistic. This would make a good companion article to another that foregrounds a reading based in postcolonial or queer theory.
ON JOYCE
Aaron Zak
09/27/07
Centola, Steven R. "White Peace of the Alter: White Imagery in James Joyce's 'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man." HYPERLINK "http://www.jstor.org/browse/0277335x" South Atlantic Review, HYPERLINK "http://www.jstor.org/browse/0277335x/sp040020" Vol. 50, No. 4, Nov., 1985, pp. 93-106
Centola's article seeks to show how Stephen Dedalus's alienation from the Catholic Church and his development as an artist are developed structurally through Joyce's rhythmic writing and use of white imagery. By pointing out that most of Stephen's epiphanies occur at the end of each chapter, this creates a wave-like structure to Joyce's narrative. In addition, we reach the innermost depths of Stephen's mind through recurring motifs and white images such as lavatories, sheets, faces, ivory, and even the Catholic Church itself. Associated with these white images are motifs of punishment, cruelty, fear, and authority. Centola claims that Joyce intentionally creates this link to show the repressive qualities of the Church on Stephen. On the other hand, because Stephen uses these motifs and white images in his journals and art, the imagery seems to shape Stephen as an artist. Thus, he has started to gain some control of his surroundings, ultimately casting off all the discourses he is presented with choosing between throughout the novel. This is a good article to read next to the Schwarze. She makes the argument that casting off all discourses available silences Stephen, while Centola seems to think that, because Stephen can interact artistically with the discourses, they ultimately give him his voice.
Kershner, R.B. "The Artist as Text: Dialogism and Incremental Repetition in Joyce's Portrait." HYPERLINK "http://www.jstor.org/browse/00138304" ELH, HYPERLINK "http://www.jstor.org/browse/00138304/di990211" Vol. 53, No. 4, Winter, 1986, pp. 881-894
This article also explores the issue of Stephen's plunge into the different discourses available to him within the novel. Kershner compares Stephen to the modern novel, claiming he is a product of heteroglossia. The novel is written in three narrative forms, so Stephen's search for voice and language literally parallels the novel's structure. Literally, Stephen is text. At the end of the article, Kershner makes the claim that Stephen, by interacting with the discourses available to him, only creates an inner narrative (journal) in which the artist has disappeared. I was left with too many questions at the end of this article. If the artist has left Stephen at the end of this novel, but Stephen himself parallels the structure of this novel, what does this say about Joyce as an artist?
Levenson, Michael. "Stephen's Diary in Joyce's Portrait--The Shape of Life." HYPERLINK "http://www.jstor.org/browse/00138304" ELH > HYPERLINK "http://www.jstor.org/browse/00138304/di990207" Vol. 52, No. 4, Winter, 1985, pp. 1017-1035
This is a convincing article concerned with the significance of Stephen's diary and
the role it plays in determining his future as an artist and a human being. Levenson makes the interesting distinction that the journal itself is proof of Stephen's interaction with the different discourses present in the novel, allowing the reader an inside view into the true progression of Stephen as the artist. Through a careful analysis of many of Stephen's journal entries, Levenson ultimately points out that the repetitive quality of the journal captures Stephen's future. He will be stuck contemplating past emotions and experiences, therefore never escaping the job of interpreting and reinterpreting his past.
Schwarze, Tracey Teets. "Silencing Stephen: Colonial Pathologies in Victorian Dublin. Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 43, No. 3, Autumn, 1997, pp. 243-263
Schwarze's article is an exploration of the different discourses (Catholicism, Protestantism, Irish Nationalism) Stephen Dedalus is forced to choose between in his search for voice and identity. Discussing themes of self-betrayal, self-deception, and self-oppression, her article points out the limitations one faces when trying to choose between one discourse and another. Schwarze comments on the concepts of pure blood, language, culture, and race through a discussion of hybridity, and ultimately makes the claim that, because of the history of colonialism, nothing is truly "pure." Every culture, race, or religion has some aspect of another within its system. Schwarze even argues that the novel itself, being written in multiple voices, reflects how one consciousness has been informed by many discourses. She concludes with the idea that, because Stephen is forced (or that he tries) to choose only one discourse to be his own, he is self-oppressive/self-limiting and ends up losing his voice instead of finding one.
Toolan, Michael. "Analysing Conversation in Fiction: The Christmas Dinner Scene in Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man." HYPERLINK "http://www.jstor.org/browse/03335372" Poetics Today, HYPERLINK "http://www.jstor.org/browse/03335372/ap020029" Vol. 8, No. 2, 1987, pp. 393-416
This very long but thorough article is focused on analyzing what many claim to be the most important scene in Joyce's novel. Toolan begins his analysis with a look at the historical significance of Parnell, the hot topic of the evening. His analysis continues with the conversation itself, pointing out the violence in language and how this scene ultimately shapes Stephen as an adult. The three political opinions at the dinner parallel Stephen's own struggle to choose his own discourse throughout the novel. Toolan literally breaks down the conversation into documented moves/acts as if it was a televised debate. Toolan's goal ultimately seems to be to dissect the conversation to point out its political/religious sides (Protestantism, Catholicism, and Irish Nationalism), and to analyze the outcome. He claims that sides are chosen by the end, both silently and vocally, but that there is no real resolution. Everyone seems stuck in transferring themselves from one discourse to the other. Unless you are obsessed with the dinner party scene (or with the elements of debate), this article is not for you. It really seems that Toolan was most interested in pointing out how much both he and Joyce knew about debate and conversational analysis.
Weaver, Jack. "English Romanticism as a source for Character and Motif in Joyce's 'Portrait'" HYPERLINK "http://www.jstor.org/browse/00382868" South Atlantic Bulletin, HYPERLINK "http://www.jstor.org/browse/00382868/sp040180" Vol. 42, No. 4, Nov., 1977, pp. 93-95
Weaver's article seeks to make a comparison between Stephen Dedalus and Lord Byron of Manfred or Childe Harold. Weaver attributes many of Stephen's moods and attitudes to the melancholia and rebelliousness exhibited in some of the romantic poets like Byron and Shelley. Dedalus even compares himself to the Byronic hero at one point. Weaver quickly moves to his conclusion (which differs greatly from Schwarze) that Stephen's rejection of "religion and job-seeking" because of its interference with the "free" artist and his search for nationalism. This quick and easy article ultimately makes the claim that Stephen is the Byronic hero, giving some insight into some of the inspiration for Joyce's young Stephen. While I buy his claim, I think that this is an overly simplistic look at Stephen, especially when there is so much biographical similarity between Joyce and Dedalus.
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Jaffney Roode
Centola, Stephen R. “‘The White Peace of the Altar’: White Imagery in James Joyce’s
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.” South Atlantic Review, Vol. 50, No. 4.
(Nov., 1985), pp. 93-106.
This essay focuses on the how the form reflects the content aspect of the text. Centola illustrates how Stephen’s growing distance from the Catholic Church concurs with his development as an artist, through the motif of white imagery. White imagery is used throughout the novel in association with the priesthood. As Stephen’s disillusion toward religion grows, so too does his negative association with the color white. White comes to mean, cold, lackluster, and repressive. This article would serves as a good starting point for those taking a New Criticism approach to the text.
Jacobs, Joshua. “Joyce’s Epiphanic Mode: Material Language and the Representation of
Sexuality in Stephen Hero and Portrait.” Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 46,
No. 1. (Spring, 2000), pp. 20-33.
This article focuses on the epiphanic moments of the text – for example when Stephen sees the bird/girl. In these moments Stephen struggles with his desire for “rigid” self-construction and his own lack of control in his developing selfhood. The author argues that the material aspect of language in these passages (e.g. murmuring) reflect Stephen’s corporeal - and not concretely intellectual - reactions to sexuality and selfhood. This article could be of use to those employing a Freudian analysis, or those tracing Joyce’s development as a novelist.
Kershner, R.B. “The Artist as Text: Dialogism and Incremental Repetition in Joyce’s’
Portrait.’ ELH, Vol. 53, No. 4. (Winter, 1986), pp. 881-894.
Kershner looks at the instances in which words and phrases are attributed to the narrator and alternately to Stephen’s consciousness. Kershner questions young Stephen’s originality if his education and consciousness have been informed by the memorizing and absorption of songs, poems, and prayers. This would be a good resource for anyone researching Bakhtinian theories of language.
Klein, Scott W. “National Histories, National Fictions: Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as
a Young Man and Scott’s The Bride of Lammermoor.” ELH, Vol. 65, No. 4.
(Winter, 1998), pp. 1017-1038.
This essay surmises that Joyce’s anxiety toward an independent Ireland would lead to “incestuous self-containment.” Positing that Sir Walter Scott’s The Bride of Lammermoor serves as Scottish parallel to Portrait, Klein traces the similarities between the two novels, in terms of content and historical context. Focusing on the brief scene in the National Library wherein Stephen and Cranly meet the eccentric, possibly incestuous Scott-worshipping “captain,” Klein illustrates Stephen’s fear of nationalism. This is a good resource for those writing about sexuality’s role in reproducing the nation.
Latham, Sean. “A Portrait of the Snob: James Joyce and the Anxieties of Cultural
Capital.” Modern Fiction Studies, Vol. 47, No. 4. (Winter, 2000), pp 774-799.
Latham sets out by stating a common critique of modernism – that it is snobby and beholden to maintaining its status as high culture. Latham asserts that modernist writers tried to situate themselves within the literary marketplace and also to resist the market’s urge to organize. The main problem with this article is that Latham fails to show how Joyce tries to “find a way out of the limitations of snobbery.”
Schwarze, Tracey Teets. “Silencing Stephen: Postcolonial Pathologies in Colonial
Dublin.” Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 43, No. 3. (Autumn, 1997), pp. 243-
263.
Schwarze argues that Stephen is silenced by the myriad discourse of Ireland – Catholicism, Protestantism, Nationalism, etc. In additional to English rule, Irish self-betrayal divides the aforementioned groups, leading to fractured allegiances and a fractured consciousness. Each of the aforementioned ideologies is restrictive and therefore silencing to the emerging writer. Ultimately, Schwarze concludes that Stephen will never be a successful writer because of his inability to transcend nationalist, religious, and British powers. This essay brings in pertinent points from Said, Bhabha, etc. The engaging and thought-provoking nature of this essay invites a rebuttal.
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ON FORD
Jeremy Blaustein
October 4, 2007
Michael Levenson
Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 30, No. 4. (Winter, 1984), pp. 373-387.
Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0041-462X%28198424%2930%3A4%3C373%3ACITGS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-2
Michael Levenson explores Ford’s use of “justification” for character actions, suggesting that they must hold up to analysis. According to Levenson, characters in The Good Soldier are a mix of characters with justification and representatives of a larger type. The primary example Levenson explores is Ford’s continued examination of “good people”. Ford’s use of characterization is more often to conceal than reveal motivations.
Hoffmann, Karen A.
"Am I no better than a eunuch?" Narrating Masculinity and Empire in Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier
Journal of Modern Literature - Volume 27, Number 3, Winter 2004, pp. 30-46 - ArticleKaren Hoffman looks at The Good Soldier as embodying closely related anxieties about the impending collapse of the landed gentry, empire, and patriarchal systems in England. Hoffman views Dowell as a narrator who is incredibly self-conscious about the act of narrative, and the opportunities it allows for revision. Hoffman examines the methods Ford uses to distance himself from Dowell and its implications for a feminist reading of the text.
The Good Soldier: Comedy or Tragedy?
Barry D. Bort
Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 12, No. 4. (Jan., 1967), pp. 194-202.
Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0041-462X%28196701%2912%3A4%3C194%3ATGSCOT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-L
Bort’s article is primarily an exploration of genre and an analysis of Edward Ashburnham. Bort implies that our interpretation of Edward’s character is the crux of understanding the genre. Bort concludes that comedy arises from the “incongruity of things as Dowell and the other characters want them to be and as they really are” and that an essentially tragic theme becomes comic.
The Strange Irregular Rhythm: An Analysis of the Good Soldier
Elliott B. Gose, Jr.
PMLA, Vol. 72, No. 3. (Jun., 1957), pp. 494-509.
Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0030-8129%28195706%2972%3A3%3C494%3ATSIRAA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-8
Gose briefly explores how Ford combines the best of Conrad and James in The Good Soldier. The article also includes a fairly useful chronological summary of the novel. Gose is primarily interested in how the reader ultimately judges Dowell and his ability to comprehend reality. Gose argues that all readings of the novel must follow this examination, which hinges on an understanding of Edward Ashburnham. Edward is seen as having a split character; the internal Edward driven by passion, and the external Edward who is the good soldier.
Flanagan, Anne Marie
Ford's Women: Between Fact and Fiction
Journal of Modern Literature - Volume 24, Number 2, Winter 2000/2001, pp. 235-249
Flanagan looks at Ford’s place in the English suffrage movement and his response, both personal and literary, to the changing views of gender. Flanagan is primarily concerned with pamphlets and articles Ford published in support of the suffrage movement and the character of Valentine from Parade’s End. The larger anxiety that comes to the forefront is over women’s place in employment and the economy. While the article does not deal explicitly with The Good Soldier it does provide some other helpful context about Ford’s view and problematic portrayal of women.
ON WWI WRITING: HEMINGWAY AND OWEN
Grace Mlady
Barloon, Jim. “Very Short Stories: The Miniaturization of War in Hemingway’s In Our Time.” The Hemingway Review 24.2 (2005): 5-17.
Barloon argues that Hemingway’s seemingly random vignettes or “miniatures” actually depict a form that represents the “horror of modern-day warfare.” It is with this form—the miniaturization of war through vignettes—that Hemingway describes the horrific experience of war as fractured and chaotic. This is an interesting article for those stumped and looking for connections between the seemingly motley array of short stories of In Our Time.
Cheatham, George. “The World War I Battle of Mons and Hemingway’s In Our Time Chapter III.” The Hemingway Review 26.2 (2007): 44-57.
Cheatham examines the one-paragraph Chapter III of In Our Time and argues that Hemingway’s specific mention of Mons carries “culturally-coded” meaning and significance that readers of Hemingway’s day would have recognized and understood. Much of the article focuses on historical accounts, journals and newspaper articles that describe the Battle of Mons and ultimately become a propagandistic praise of the glorious British war effort. Cheatham ultimately concludes that Hemingway’s specific use of Mons was a deliberate effort to portray society’s disillusionment and sudden shift from innocence to its horror of war. The article, however, does not venture beyond this one chapter to go into more detail about the implications this one reading has on the entire text.
Cohen, Milton A. Hemingway’s Laboratory: The Paris In Our Time. Tuscaloosa: U of AL P, 2005.
In his book, Cohen looks at the individual, smaller chapters—what are, according to critics, "interchapters"—of In Our Time to closely observe Hemingway’s early but varied style and narration. He argues that the vignettes should be considered as a unit themselves to fully understand Hemingway’s numerous styles that are reflected in his later writing. Cohen examines the vignettes’ historical origins, their drafts and styles to better understand Hemingway’s formative years.
- - - . “Soldiers’ Voices in In Our Time: Hemingway’s Ventriloquism.” The Hemingway Review 20.1 (2000): 22-29.
In this critical article, Cohen discusses the various voices and narratives of the numerous characters throughout Hemingway’s work. Many critics, according to Cohen, classify the voices as only either British or American and, in doing so, faultily clump each soldier’s war experience, struggles at home post-war, psychological traumas, etc. into one collective reaction to the war. Cohen critiques this reading by maintaining that Hemingway’s diversity of voices is not only meant to reveal the characters’ differences but also to present war writing that intentionally defies cliché.
Fahy, Thomas. “War-Injured Bodies: Fallen Soldiers in Propaganda and the Works of John Dos Passos, Willa Cather, Ernest Hemingway, and William Faulkner.” Freak Shows and the Modern American Imagination: Constructing the Damaged Body from Willa Cather to Truman Capote. Ed. Linda Wagner-Martin. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. 53-79.
Fahy examines war propaganda that often used the “exotic body and freak show conventions” to dehumanize the enemy. He compares this use of the exotic body with Hemingway’s presentation of the damaged body as a reflection of self. Fahy looks at the societal complications these authors’ depictions of war-damaged bodies brought to a prejudiced America dominated by fear, a fascination with and horror of physical disability, and consequential marginalization.
Strychacz, Thomas. “In Our Time, Out of Season.” The Cambridge Companion to Hemingway. Ed. Scott Donaldson. New York: Cambridge UP, 1996. 55-86.
This article juxtaposes the entirety of In Our Time with one of its stories, “Out of Season.” Strychacz explores the paradox between the book’s title and this story’s title, noting “in our time” as a phrase from the English Book of Common Prayer which asks for peace and the Holy Spirit to descend upon the post-WWI era. He subsequently states that “Out of Season” instead offers a “world of thorough disorientation” depicted by an unnamed American couple and their guide Peduzzi. For Strychacz, this story offers an ironic statement about the old world where “communal prayers seem to have lost their power” (55).
Trout, Steven. “‘Where Do We Go From Here?’: Ernest Hemingway’s ‘Soldier’s Home’ and American Veterans of World War I.” The Hemingway Review 20.1 (2000): 5-21.
Trout, much like George Cheatham, looks to historical events and organizations to further understand one particular story, “Soldier’s Home,” within In Our Time. He looks specifically at the Veterans’ Bureau scandal of 1923 as a backdrop to the protagonist’s story of struggle about merging back into citizen life in Okalahoma. Trout determines that this event would have been topical to Hemingway's first readers and ultimately contributes to Hemingway’s examination and critique of America’s inability to provide a home for its war-torn soldiers in its desire for post-war normalcy.
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Kate Fay
October 11, 2007
Cheatham, George. “The Battle of Mons and Hemingway’s In Our Time, Chapter III.” The Hemingway Review 26.2 (2007): 44-57.
While Cheatham’s article does not address Owen’s poetry specifically, he uncovers the way in which Hemingway uses Chapter III to subvert the symbolism of the Battle of the Mons, and therefore draws upon central themes found in Owen’s work. Challenging the notion that British society utilized battles to convey and enforce ideological terms of patriotism and glory, honor and sacrifice, Hemingway, Cheatham argues, uses the popular belief of honor in battle to “achieve particular effects with possible interpretive implications,” namely, the darker underbelly of war. By placing the British soldiers at Mons, in the garden of a beautiful estate, their first confrontation with German soldiers illustrates the confrontation and the “violent contrast between the natural, even idyllic, and the mechanical and the brutal.” It is here that Owen’s poetry becomes most important, because both author and poet strive to constantly underwrite the traditional story of war. By disavowing the mores of glory and honorable sacrifice, Hemingway produces a text that is “filled with violence and death, ironically play.” Similarly, Owen constantly pulls the pastoral, idyllic scenes into a bloody confrontation with the brutalizing forces of war. Just as Hemingway subverts the pastoral and sets the garden as the place of death, Owen writes of men being slaughtered as sheep, where “No mockeries for them; no prayers nor bells,/Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,/The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells”. And where Hemingway articulates the shocking realization of close-contact battle with the enemy- “He had so much equipment on and looked awfully surprised and fell down into the garden,”- Owen crafts “Strange Meeting,” the inevitable meeting of the German and British officers in Hell, “that sullen hall,” where “no blood reached from upper ground/ and no guns thumped, or down the flues made mourn.” With his stress on the anti-pastoral grounds of war and the shockingly new confrontation of men in battle, Cheatham’s article points towards many of the central and crucial points in the works of Hemingway and can simultaneously help us get at many of the violent ironies that direct Owen’s poetic voice.
Das, Santanu. “ ‘Kiss Me, Hardy’: Intimacy, Gender, and Gesture in World War One Trench Literature.” Modernism/Modernity 9.1 (2002): 51-74.
Das provides an interesting discussion of the development of tactile contact among men fighting in the First World War. In opposition to the great literary modernists of the 1920s and 1930s like Hulme, Eliot, and Pound who developed a determinedly masculine canon, Das argues that writers like Sassoon, Owen, and David Jones, among others, crafted their own “more complex conception of masculinity,” concepts that were largely informed by the close contact fostered by life in the trenches and the sentimentality of friendship in war. Das provides an interdisciplinary approach to the Modernist period; incorporating historiography, gender studies, and “the more general histories of the body, intimacy, and gesture.” Das’ essay derives strength from its many substantial links across disciplines. Freud, Sassoon, and Barthes mingle together to produce a sustained and substantial discussion of tactile contact in World War One. Das nicely refigures the debate towards a politics of touch and sentiment in war culture. Owen’s poems are discussed here as they illustrate his conflicting responses to the expressive gesture of the “kiss”: “a rigorous Protestant ethic mingled with feelings of guilty eroticism and a hatred of warfare.”
Gilbert, Sandra M. “ ‘Rat’s Alley’: The Great War, Modernism, and the (Anti)Pastoral Elegy.” New Literary History 30.1 (1999): 179-201.
Gilbert’s essay is both a sensitive, and at times a highly uncomfortable, exploration of how the war poets, and those who wrote in the aftermath of the war, struggled to transform the traditional elegy into a device worthy of describing the industrialized brutality of First World War. Working towards a new poetics “fostered by modern death” (180)- encapsulated in what Gilbert’s coins the anti-pastoral elegy- writers like Owen and Isaac Rosenberg struggle to reconcile traditional elegiac visions of natural renewal and immortality within the theater of war. Using Owen’s “Strange Meeting” (among others) and T.S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland” as loci for her discussion, Gilbert concludes that the elegy’s traditional paradigm- which moves the reader through grief towards consolation- is unable to resolve the monstrosity of death on the battlefield. Owen’s work is especially problematic in its relation to the pastoral elegy because he continually obliterates that landscape which is emblematic of all traditional elegies: “the earth that ought to have been (as in pastoral) a consoling home for the living and a regenerative grave for the dead had become instead a grave for the living and a home for the dead” (183). Unable to adequately resolve the deaths of his comrades through a turn to the pastoral elegy, Owen’s poetry becomes a site of perpetual haunting. Further complicating his position as both soldier (victim and victimizer) and poet (witness), Owen struggles to resolve his paradoxical status “of the mourner as himself a murderer” (187). Gilbert’s reading is a fascinating, attenuated, and by turns chilling, reading of the destruction of the pastoral elegy and the simultaneous creation and rising numbers of the war dead that found expression through the anti-pastoral.
Hipp, Daniel. The Poetry of Shell Shock: Wartime Trauma and Healing in Wilfred Owen, Ivor Gurney, and Siegfried Sassoon. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Company, Inc., 2005.
Treating Owen’s poetry as an exercise in self-renewal, Hipp develops a reading that is at once intriguing and overwhelming. Whereas other critics have produced sustained and fruitful readings of only a few of Owen’s poems, Hipp attempts to read them all, leaving the reader fatigued and confused as to where his focus lies. Subtitles indicate that shell shock, identity, and poetic devises will serve as foundational theses throughout the chapter, and yet the sections are so long and involved that his initial ideas get swallowed up in the various divergent discussions that ensue. This is not to say that Hipps’s chapter on Owen is not helpful; his exploration of the psychology inherent in“Strange Meeting,” (initially pondered in “Mental Cases”) is exceptional, but there is a strong sense that Hipp himself realizes he is struggling to stay atop his own many wonderful ideas. Pulling reference from letters home, poems, war reports, doctors’ analyses, and personal memoirs, as well as splitting discussion of the poetry across divergent chronological events, renders the chapter an exhausting, though exhaustive, piece critical analysis.
Kerr, Douglas. “The Disciplines of the Wars: Army Training and the Language of Wilfred Owen.” The Modern Language Review 87.2 (1992): 286-299.
Kerr’s essay illustrates the ways in which military discourse influences Owen’s poetic voice. Kerr argues that Owen’s internalization of said discourse stabilized Owen’s hyper-romantic and highly sensitized poetry, forcing his pleasure seeking discourse into martial obedience. Steeped in the War’s military pamphlets, textbooks, and technical manuals, Kerr extracts the “Discipline” principle- “the great capital theme of army discourse” (288)-and charts its influence on Owen’s poetry, paying special attention to his poem “Insensibility.” Arguing the poem is a statement of the war’s cost at the body’s expense, Kerr concludes that the disciplined rhetoric of the war demands a “monster- brute, machine, corpse, madman: but it is also the good soldier, and he is still alive” (297). Discipline, as it requires absolute obedience in order to survive, ultimately coincides with a rationing of one’s humanity. The work of discipline upon not only Owen’s body and mental psychology, but by extension upon his poetry, reflects a central irony of war- man must become machine in order to survive. Kerr’s reading is a helpful and focused reading of Owen’s abandoning poetic ideals in the face of war, and his transformation towards an hardened and ironical poet whose work refuses to imbibe itself with romantic illusions of death and glory.
Longley, Edna. “The Great War, History, and the English lyric.” The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the First World War. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Longley’s contribution to the Cambridge Companion is helpful in that it loosens the binds of war that constantly constrain readings of Owen’s poetry. Arguing, as many critics before her have done, that the War transformed the English lyric and utilized the traditional sonnet for modern means, thereby creating an unequivocal “counterblasting war sonnet,” Longley deviates in that she places the poetry in a “multi-generic special case…between form and history” (58). Especially helpful is Longley’s attention to the social events, literary climates, and economic backgrounds that produced the various war poets. Quoting Rosenberg’s poem “Break of Day in the Trenches,” Longley writes that it is not only the rat that maintained “cosmopolitan sympathies,” offering a sentiment that re-envisions the various poets as actively engaging with modern events outside of the war and approaching their poems through both elegiac tropes and historiography. Longley’s discussion of the politics of “literary position” further break apart the polemics that only want to read poets like Owen through the lens of prowar/anti-war writing, and she asks that the reader consider the various definitions of protest poetry as it operated during, and outside of, World War One. Longley’s readings of Owen’s poetry are helpful and at times insightful, but it is her insistence on readings that operate within and outside of the boundaries of war that prove most fruitful here.
Martin, Meredith. “Therapeutic Measures: The Hydra and Wilfred Owen at Craiglockhart War Hospital.” Modernism/Modernity 14.1 (2007): 35-54.
Martin’s article turns the discussion of Owens’ poetry into a recuperative effort of the damaged self. Analyzing the pedagogical tools that ordered the public school boy’s education- one that Owen himself was a student of- Martin finds that poetry served many purposes: disciplined reading and exposition, ordered understanding and analysis of texts, etc. Using these tools, Martin explores how these foundational understandings aided the recovery of men hospitalized with shell shock. An analysis of two doctors and their treatments- one who treated Owen and another who treated Siegfried Sassoon- Martin argues that it is through the structured and ordering function of poetry that soldiers like Owen and Sassoon can begin to append meaning and coherency to their disordered existence along the front lines. With a sensitive and nuanced analysis of Owen’s work for the Craiglockhart Hospital’s literary magazine, The Hydra, Martin offers a compelling argument for the reconstructive abilities of poetry as well as the terrible irony of achieving mental health- “their recovery meant an inevitable return to battle.” Martin ends her discussion with one of the most insightful and provocative discussions of the form and verse of Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum est” that I have yet come across.
Najarian, James. “ ‘Greater Love’: Wilfred Owen, Keats, and a Tradition of Desire.” Twentieth Century Literature 47.1 (2001): 20-38.
Najarian’s essay interrogates Owen’s homosexuality, representing the author’s attempt, alongside Samuel Hynes’, to release the “prisoner” from his own “saintly reputation.” To this critic, Najarian’s essay is confusing, offensive, and surprisingly reluctant to engage with Owen directly. Shuttling around Owen’s poetry, Najarian seeks to locate Owen’s awareness of his homosexuality in his love for Keats, reading “Wilfred Owen’s sexuality in the context of his literary precursors” because “Owen’s poetic development took place as he came into the knowledge of his sexuality.” The essay spends an inordinate amount of time on Keats and fails to draw, in my opinion, any substantial link to Owen- aside from his obvious love for the Romantic poet. How this connects to or illuminates Owen’s own sexuality continues to evade me. Turning, after many loops and twists, to Owen’s work produced while at the “decayed hydrotherapeutic establishment,” Craiglockhart Hospital, and the subsequent development of Owen’s “homoerotic ethic” Najarian ends his discussion with a reading of “Miners-“ the only poem Najarian uses as evidence for a homoerotic ethic. Najarian argues that the “moaning and writhing” of the dying men represent an instance of Owen’s “sexually charged” ethic- an ethic that requires Owen to first fantasize about the “muscled bodies” before he can write about them. The critical analysis of “Miners” is exploitative and inevitably disingenuous. Najarian produces an analysis that is always sexually charged and never read as an example of sympathetic pity and remorse which “Miners” surely is. As a whole, Najarian’s essay seems misplaced- crossing furtively between Greek literature, Romantic poetry, and Owen’s sexuality- any substantial link between these various discussions is largely absent.
Ramazani, Jahan. “Wilfred Owen.” Poetry of Mourning: The Modern Elegy from Hardy to Heaney. Chicago, Illinois: Chicago University Press, 1994.
Ramazani’s chapter on Wilfred Owen seems a precursor for Sandra Gilbert’s essay above, though it exists at a more focused level of critical thinking. Whereas Gilbert relies on the elegy as a paradigm in and of itself, Ramazani probes further still, finally focusing his reading of Owen’s poetry on a single trope of the elegy- the pathetic fallacy.
He proposes, like Gilbert will do later, that Owen utilizes the elegy only to illustrate its inability to console and calm the many horrors of war, but it is Ramazani’s confrontation with the pathetic fallacy that carries his discussion into areas unexplored by later critics. In the traditional pastoral elegy the pathetic fallacy acts as “a point of exchange, converting human loss into nature’s gain of humanity” (71). Reading Owen’s “Anthem for a Doomed Youth,” Ramazani points out the sheer absurdity of the pathetic fallacy’s operation in the space of war. In a poem that posits men as cattle and the soft bells of shepherding as “the monstrous anger of the guns,” Owen does not simply question, he destroys the belief that man can find repose and relief in the space of modern war. Reading more closely still, Ramazani points out that machine guns cannot assuage a grief that they have helped create. Following his discussion of “Anthem,” Ramazani moves to a wonderful reading of “Mental Cases,” buttressesing his explication with reference to Freud’s “death wish” and Freud’s (along with Owen’s) intimate experience with various war neuroses. Ramazani’s reading is most helpful here in its discussion of the transformation of the pathetic fallacy and the failure of generic tropes to account for Owen’s experience of war.
ON WOOLF
Joe Fitzgerald
Lilenfeld, Jane. “Could They Tell One What They Knew?” Virginia Woolf and Trauma.
Eds. Suzette Henke and David Eberly. New York: Pace University, 2007. 95-122.
Lilenfeld, who has introduced the methods of literary criticism to the study of
addiction in the lives of modernist authors, examines the narrative techniques
Woolf uses to assimilate the text of To the Lighthouse with the unresolved
recollections of traumatic events from her own life. She sees the death of Woolf’s mother, her half-sister Stella, and her brother Thobe, as well as sexual abuse at the hands of her two half-brothers, being played out through James Ramsay.
Lilenfeld advances a detailed and thoughtful argument that, Woolf’s
contention “that autobiographical self-referentiality ruined fictional narratives” notwithstanding, some of the trauma from the author’s childhood found its way into her novels.
Goldman, Jane, ed. Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse, The Waves. New York:
Columbia University, 1998. Goldman places Woolf’s two most important books in the context of her oeuvre while surveying critical reaction from the 1930’s to the late 90’s. Feminist, psychoanalytical, mythic and biographical analysis of Woolf’s work has burgeoned into a significant field of study since the author’s death in 1941, and while Goldman’s stated aim is to limit the scope of her book to feminism, modernism and postmodernism, she parses these novels from every conceivable angle in this down to earth Columbia Critical Guide. Goldman does a thorough job of explicating, rebutting and elaborating on some very pointed criticism of Woolf’s work. The post-colonial criticism from the 90’s, which focuses on race and empire, is especially timely.
Clewell, Tammy. “Consolation Refused: Virginia Woolf, The Great War, And Modernist
Mourning.” Modern Fiction Studies 50 (2004): 197-222. Clewell examines the way “Woolf’s textual practice of endless mourning compels us to refuse consolation, sustain grief, and accept responsibility for the difficult task of
remembering the catastrophic losses of the twentieth century” (199). She details Woolf’s “feminist critique” of The Great War and the ensuing carnage which was central to Jacob’s Room and To the Lighthouse. Clewell refuses to accept the popularly held theory that the latter is a final goodbye to Woolf’s mother who the author lost at age thirteen. She sees a lingering connection to past grief in Woolf’s “modernist understanding of mourning and cultural memory”(219).
Donaldson, Sandra M. “Where Does Q Leave Mr. Ramsay?” Tulsa Studies in Women’s
Literature 11 (1992): 329-336. Donaldson looks at the role of symbolic logic in To the Lighthouse. Mr. Ramsay, the philosopher who depends on logic and letters to make sense of the world, is seen by Donaldson as a man missing the point. Much is made of his inability to get past the letter Q. Donaldson chooses instead to celebrate Lily Briscoe’s ability to see the whole picture in one sweeping glance. The scientific method meets modernist fiction.
Stevenson, Randall and Jane Goldman. “but what? Elegy?’: Modernist Reading and the
Death of Mrs. Ramsay.” The Yearbook of English Studies 26 (1996): 173-186.
Goldman and Stevenson spar over the narrative form Woolf employs in To The Lighthouse. Stevenson views “The Window” section of the book as an elegiac tribute to the conventions of the Edwardian age, and he considers Mrs. Ramsay an appropriate exponent of all that is good about that period. He is a bit apprehensive about the author subjecting Mrs. Ramsay to a bracketed death half-way through the book and while he accepts her rationale for moving into modernism during the final section, he lacks enthusiasm for it. Goldman, on the other hand, is a feminist critic who views To The Lighthouse as a modernist elegy that thanks Mrs. Ramsay for her grace and social skills, then pushes her aside in favor of Lily Briscoe, an impressionistic artist who believes thought takes precedence over action; someone who represents the hopes, fears and possibilities that await women in the post-war era. Mrs. Ramsay or Lily Briscoe? Elegy or eulogy?
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Gerard Teichman
October 23, 2007
Books
In the course of my literature review, the following books either contained anthologized articles on To the Lighthouse and were written or edited by authors who have published peer-reviewed articles listed in this bibliography. The contents of Out of Bounds can be searched through the EBSCO Host electronic database. Besides the two articles listed below, there appear to be several additional articles relevant to Virginia Woolf and Modernism there.
Berman, Jessica Schiff. Modernist Fiction, Cosmopolitanism and the Politics of Modernism. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Goldman, Jane. The Feminist Aesthetics of Virginia Woolf: Modernism, Post-Impressionism and the Politics of the Visual. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998.
---. Modernism, 1910-1945 Image to Apocalypse. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.
---. Introduction and Editor. Virginia Woolf Out of Bounds: Selected Papers from the Tenth Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf. New York, NY: Pace UP, 2001.
These articles in this volume are both about To the Lighthouse:
Dymond, Justine. "The Outside of Its Inside and the Inside of Its Outside': Phenomenology in To the Lighthouse"
Whitworth, Michael. "Porous Objects: Self, Community, and the Nature of Matter"
Journal Articles
Reed, Christopher. "Through Formalism: Feminism and Virginia Woolf's Relation to Bloomsbury Aesthetics". Twentieth Century Literature 38. 1. (Spring, 1992), pp20-43
This is an interesting review of Woolf's engagement with art criticism of her time and Feminism. He writes: "Using the formalist valorization of aesthetic purity, Woolf is able to transcend conventional critical hierarchies that would privilege the treatment of subjects deemed significant by the dominant (patriarchal) culture" (25).
Saunders, Rebecca. "Language, Subject, Self: Reading the Style of To the Lighthouse. NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, 26. 2. (Winter, 1993), pp. 192-213.
This article takes on the way Woolf uses changing perspectives and captures the thoughts of different characters while allowing a sense of story to move forward. Saunders uses Kristeva as one element of her theoretical model, but also brings in scholarship on psychology and feminism from writers such as Nancy Chodorow and Jane Marcus.
Stewart, Jack. A "Need of Distance and Blue": Space, Color, and Creativity in To the Lighthouse. Twentieth Century Literature, 46. 1. (Spring, 2000), pp. 78-99.
This article focuses on the visual, spatial and compositional elements present in To the Lighthouse, especially focusing on Lily's painting. His treatment is inventive, even a little bizarre as when he writes: " Intuitive movement extends beyond the visual frame composed by eye and mind, into a wild zone or 'moon country, uninhabited of men' and so beyond phallogocentric control. If this were a mindscape, the zone might be called feminine intuition, but that term indicates a single function of the androgynous mind..." (82).
Viola, Andre. "Fluidity versus Muscularity: Lily's Dilemma in Woolf's To the Lighthouse". Journal of Modern Literature 24.2 (2000/2001) 271-289
This article brings in the theory of Klein and Kristeva as well as Jungian psychology and biographic material to bear on the character of Lily. He states that there exists tension between fluid and matter in this work.
Reviews
Gillespie, Diane F. " The Feminist Aesthetics of Virginia Woolf: Modernism, Post-Impressionism and the Politics of the Visual". Modern Fiction Studies 45.2 (1999) 526-529.
Gillespie writes an informative review of The Feminist Aesthetics of Virginia Woolf: Modernism, Post-Impressionism and the Politics of the Visual by Jane Goldman. She discusses some of the aesthetic and social issues that appear in the novels of Virginia Woolf writes in detail of the significance of the painting by Lilly Briscoe in To the Lighthouse.
ON POETIC MODERNISMS
Teri Torchia
Albright, Daniel. Introduction. Quantum Poetics: Yeats, Pound, Eliot and the Science of Modernism. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997. 1-29.
Ambitious, largely unrealized but extremely provocative appropriation of the Quantum Particle/Wave paradigm to examine Modernism’s paradoxical decentralizing of the structure of language and simultaneous search for its building blocks. Introduction sets up examination of the poetry from the perspective of what we now know to be the complex nature of what is referred to as a “text” as well as from within the historical and ideological context of figures like Freud, Einstein, and Leibniz. Poetry of Pound and D.H. Lawrence is presented in light of the particle/wave dichotomy and ultimately demonstrates both the irreducibility to either single form and irrepressible transference between them. A flawed but admirable breath of fresh air that seeks to place a literary “movement” in a continually unfolding larger context.
Childs, Peter. “’Birth and Copulation and Death’: The 1920’s and T.S. Eliot.” The Twentieth Century in Poetry: A Critical Survey. New York: Routledge, 1999. 62-82.
Examines the historical context of Eliot and other co-temporaneous artists and thinkers collectively engaged in destabilizing the “ordered knowable Newtonian universe.” (64) In-depth exposition of The Waste Land as the quintessential Modernist poem; as contextualized with writings of Lukacs, Adorno, Bakhtin; as important precursor of “multiple discourses;” as embodiment of Eliot’s methodology of fusing “history and mythology” as a way through life in the “Modern” world.
Menand, Louis. Discovering Modernism: T.S. Eliot and His Context. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.
In-depth study of Eliot as “protagonist” of the larger “story” of Modernism, epitomizing the ideology and methodology of the “entire literary period.” Discusses transitions in language, the onset of “Imagism,” and Modernism as point of interplay between literature and philosophy (e.g. Bradley, Bergson). Addresses Eliot’s pivotal importance as literary/cultural critic and influence on others such as I.A. Richards and F. R. Leavis. Weaves representative excerpts from Eliot’s writings and biography – fascinating incidentals like the letter Eliot asked Pound to write to his (Eliot’s) father explaining his abandonment of a university career for the “vocation” of literary bohemian (and asking for financial underpinnings).
North, Michael. Introduction. The Political Aesthetic of Yeats, Eliot, and Pound. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991. 1-20.
Documents critique of Modernism as a flawed and “incomplete project” from a largely socio-political perspective, particularly in the wake of “failed liberalism.” “Aesthetic Modernism” and its poetry presented in light of ongoing human effort to reconcile individual with society/community, woven with Marx, Hegel, Lukacs, and Yeats, Eliot and Pound as complex, idiosyncratic figures in that ongoing “resistance.” Introduction – and presumably remainder of book – exposes but rightly does not resolve the complexities of the three major Modern protagonists and the personal, social, political, and philosophical factors involved in their respective contributions. Puts poetry in the perspective of larger “Modernisms” and demonstrates it all as a continuing work-in-progress.
Riding, Laura and Robert Graves. A Survey of Modernist Poetry. New York: Haskell House, 1969.
First published in 1928, a fascinating tour of and apology for Modernist poetry from the inside – mediates elements of the ‘tradition’ of Modernism as it was emerging, being put into practice, and, in fact, becoming obsolete. Much more widely reflective of foundational principles than the narrower-minded proponent/practitioners Pound and Eliot – some chapters include: “Modernist Poetry and the Plain Reader’s Rights;” “Unpopularity of Modernist Poetry with the Plain Reader;” “Modernist Poetry and Dead Movements” (“Modernist Poetry, if it is nothing else, is an ironic criticism of false literary survivals).” (111) Ends with a contextualization/critique in light of the meaning of an ongoing poetic tradition – all in all something like credible eyewitness testimony.
ON THE WASTE LAND
Shelly Karren
Nov. 1, 2007
Brooks, Cleanth. “The Waste Land: Critique of the Myth” in Modern Poetry and the Tradition. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1939.
Although the articles contained in this annotated bibliography comprise a small portion of the recent scholarship on The Waste Land, I felt this bibliography would be incomplete without a reference to Brooks’s 1939 critical reading of the poem. In order to facilitate an understanding of the poem, Brooks constructs what he terms “a scaffold” which takes the form of a detailed explication of the poem’s five sections. Brooks shows how the symbols, allusions, and other poetic elements provide a unifying effect for the poem as a whole, a unity which Lawrence Rainey references in The Annotated Waste Land (37). This reading of the poem contrasts sharply with poststructuralist readings of more recent years which evoke the sense of disorder the poem presents to its readers.
Cohen, Philip. “The Waste Land, 1921: Some Developments of the Manuscript’s Verse.” Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association 19:1 (1986): 12-20.
Cohen undertakes an explanation of how Eliot developed “genre, speaker and tone” the through a study of the chronology of The Waste Land manuscripts. Cohen also argues that, through this process, Eliot created a “more modernist poem which resembles a Cubist collage (12). Readers interested in the study of the poem in the abstract sense of a cubist painting, one in which the parts, though connected, are rearranged in new, mystifying ways, with specific emphasis on part V’s cubist/collage quality, will find this article interesting. Although Cohen’s points are compelling at moments, he does not spend considerable time defining what he means by “collage” poetry and why this method is significant in the work. Instead, Cohen focuses on the function and ambiguity of the narrative voices and speakers in the poem in connection with a “Modernist impersonality” which echoes Eliot’s contention about authorship and impersonality in his essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent.”
Cooper, John. “T.S. Eliot and the Politics of Voice: The Argument of The Waste Land.” UMI Research Press (1987) 121.
This article presents an interesting, complex philosophical argument of The Waste Land. In this essay, Cooper explores Eliot’s development of what he calls a “new lyric consciousness” which serves as an authoritative voice in the poem. Like other critics who note the ambiguous role voice plays in the poem’s structure, Cooper uses voice as a means by which a political argument, or authority, is asserted in The Waste Land. This political aspect slowly dissolves into a discussion about the function of reason and faith (or lack thereof) that Eliot criticizes in his poem. The article concludes with a brief discussion about the evolution of Eliot’s own views of reason and faith after the publication of The Waste Land which, in turn, marked a point of departure in his subsequent poetry.
Helmling, Steve. “The Grin of Tiresias: Humor in The Waste Land.” Twentieth Century Literature 36:2 (1990): 137-154.
Helmling presents an intriguing and unexpected slant on Eliot’s The Waste Land where he argues that humor and sarcasm are essential elements in the otherwise bleak and ironic world Eliot portrays in the poem. The author extends the definition of humor to include conflicting “ideas and emotions” which paint the voices and characters in the poem as both “caricatures” and non-caricatures. In this essay Helmling makes a convincing case for The Waste Land as both a “literary and mock-literary” poem, notes and allusions notwithstanding. For a refreshingly different take on The Waste Land, Helmling’s argument is, if not compelling, intelligent and entertaining.
Kaiser, Jo Ellen Green. “Disciplining The Waste Land or How to Lead Critics into Temptation.” Twentieth Century Literature 44:1 (1998): 82-99.
In this essay Kaiser explores the relationship of Eliot’s notes to critics’ reading of The Waste Land and how the notes, though themselves incomplete in many ways, are inextricably bound to the poem. Through a general discussion of the notes (which invite an order to an otherwise disorderly poem), Kaiser shows how the quest to find order in the poem mirrors the conflict in the world of professional literary criticism and modernity. This exploration of the relationship between criticism and culture seeks to elucidate, not the poem itself, but show how criticism is “embedded in the cultural situations it has sought to transcend.” For a specific explication of the notes themselves, other sources might be more enlightening, but in terms of the effect the notes have had on literary criticism, this article is clear and precise.
Brooker, Jewel Spears and Bentley, Joseph. “Unifying Incompatible Worlds” in Reading The Waste Land, Modernism and the Limits of Interpretation. Amherst: UMass Press, 1990, pp 34-59.
This article provides an overview of the philosophical underpinnings of The Waste Land through a discussion of how Eliot’s philosophical background (i.e. studies at Harvard and dissertation of F. H. Bradley) influenced his work, specifically with regard to his ideas about the conflict between unity and disunity and of linguistic entrapment and transcendence (40). The article introduces the idea of dualism and modern consciousness, then proceeds to a discussion of the Sibyl and Tiresias which serve as examples to further illustrate this conflict in terms of seeing, perceiving, and knowing. The unification of “incompatible worlds,” according to the author, extends into time and space, and is further complicated by the inability of the reader to see beyond the system in which he finds himself. Hence, Eliot’s goal is to transcend this paradox, and give the reader a perspective both within and beyond the “contemporary world” (59). This article may be especially useful for readers interested in a well-presented philosophical perspective of The Waste Land.
________________________________________________________________
George Kovach
Brooker, Jewel Spears and Joseph Bentley. “Unifying Incompatible Worlds, The Sibyl of Cumae and Tiresias,” in Reading The Waste Land, Modernism and the Limits of Interpretation. Amherst, The University of Massachusetts Press, 1990, pp. 34-59. This second chapter of an excellent close reading of The Waste Land focuses on the problems of experiencing and representing reality on a transcendent level, and finding a suitable poetics for expressing the mystical. It is a very helpful study for the reader looking for access to Eliot’s difficult poem. It begins with an explanation of the poet’s early intellectual orientation, strongly influenced by philosopher F.H. Bradley and anthropologist James Frazer. Key to this perspective is the concept of experiencing the world on different levels. The second part explains the importance of myth as an organizing form. Here Eliot uses the Sibyl myth as an example of transcendent knowledge. An important concept presented in this section is the confusion caused by what the authors call the “language trap.” The third part focuses on the crucial function of Tiresias as the embodiment of multiple perspectives existing at the same time, a figure of absolute knowledge and the unifying element for the entire poem. This chapter is an indispensable guide to the complexities of The Waste Land. Familiarity with this book-length examination of the poem as the consummate example of Modernist poetry is necessary for Eliot studies.
Brooker, Jewel Spears. Mastery and Escape, T.S. Eliot and the Dialectic of Modernism. Amherst, University of Massachusetts Press, 1994. Brooker is a leading Eliot scholar whose extensive writing about Modern literature is indispensable for approaching the poet and his milieu. This is her second book after Reading The Waste Land, Modernism and the Limits of Interpretation (1990), which she co-authored with James Bentley. Here she widens the focus of her earlier work, delving deeply into the intellectual and sociological dynamics that fostered the rise of Modernism. The title of the book reflects one of Eliot’s central ideas, expressed in “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” that moving contemporary arts forward requires moving back, without losing anything along the say. Underlying her analysis of this theme is a sophisticated grasp of complex forces. She examines literary criticism leading up to and influencing Eliot, the personal philosophical perspectives that he developed from his academic interests and early writing on the major philosophical movements of his day. Booker includes discussions about Frazer’s influential work, its method as well as its theories, both of which strongly influenced Eliot. She concludes her study by addressing his complex ability to occupy opposing positions . This rewarding study of Eliot and his time ends with a useful chapter on the teaching of his poetry and criticism.
Childs, Donald J. “T.S. Eliot and the Occultation of Knowledge and Experience.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 39.4 (Winter 1997): 357-375. Citing statements Eliot made in 1935 as supporting evidence, Childs argues that Eliot was more accepting of occultism than the characterization of Madame Sosostris suggests. However, the other evidence he presents seems slight: Eliot had conversations with W.B. Yeats, he took notes about William James’ The Varieties of Religious Experience, two occultists attended an evening course he taught, etc. There are numerous examples like these, but quantity does not carry the day. The author does, however, establish Eliot’s familiarity and serious interest in the occult and quotes the poet on the subject to good effect. The essay includes cursory discussions of Madame Sosostris and Tiresias: how their characters relate to the spiritual and occult. But the case that Childs makes is further undercut by the suggestion that Eliot practiced automatic writing in The Waste Land.
Erwin, Mark. “Wittgenstein and The Waste Land” Philosophy and Literature, 1997 Oct; 21 (2): 279-91. This essay is thought provoking on two levels. It approaches The Waste Land from an ethics-based perspective rooted in Wittgenstein’s treatment of language. It presents an alternative to current critical theory overly concerned with “structures, signs, and play.” Erwin centers his argument on the recent work of Charles Altieri, which asks if poetry can provide a mode of expression that can go beyond cultural contingencies and arrive at ethical consensus. The second part of this essay is an informative analysis of the poetic forms and strategies that Eliot uses in The Waste Land. Much of this analysis appears to be drawn from recent work in the field of Eliot studies. Nevertheless it is a concise treatment of the problems that the poet faced in expressing mystical experience. Erwin looks at the various techniques Eliot used, such as multiple perspectives, montage, sound and “mythical method.”
Gray, Piers. “The Coherence of the Poetry of Incoherence” in T.S. Eliot’s Intellectual and Poetic Development 1909-1922. Sussex, The Harvester Press, 1982, pp. 211-244. Though published in 1982, this study of Eliot’s intellectual development is still very important. It guides the reader through the complex array of ideas that were current in Eliot’s intellectual orbit, as well as the eminent figures who were clearly influential for his development as critic and poet. The reference cited here is the book’s seventh chapter which hones in on the poet’s concern with the limitations of language. Here Gray focuses on a number of Eliot’s critical essays, published prior to completion of The Waste Land, which tie critical concepts such as “historical sense” and sacrifice of personality to the major poems. The chapter explains how critical ideas support and advance poetic method. It looks closely at how Eliot attempted to achieve “comprehensiveness through allusion and meaning through dislocation.” This is an intellectually challenging study that pays dividends for the effort it requires.
ON MINA LOY
Jonathan Molinaro
11-14-07
Schmid, Julie. “Mina Loy’s Futurist Theatre.” Performing Art Journal, No. 52 (1996) pp.1-7. The Johns Hopkins University Press.
While analyzing the theatrical manifestations of Loy’s art, Schmid examines how Loy employments futurism within the female context. Although she notes the brevity and final disillusionment of Loy’s futurist involvement, she reveals the essential, lingering effects that its manifesto had upon her work. Noted as the preeminent female futurist artist, Loy used Futurism’s avant-garde stance on language and technique in order to break free from the conventions of language and scene. Sparking her career as a poet, she invoked the philosophy in order to display shocking and new notions on feminism. Futurism’s call for the “destruction of Syntax—Imagination with Strings—Words-in-Freedom”, became an essential component of Loy’s art. It allowed a break from traditional form and, as pointed out in her plays, a means to develop the societal and conscious-based reforms that she felt imperative. And although many of her plays seem to question or at least critique Futurism as an art and philosophy, the syntactic and scenic freedoms which it put forth allowed her to both escape the traditional and find her own method of feminist, poetic and avant-garde expression.
Morse, F. Samuel. “The Rediscovery of Mina Loy and The Avant Garde.” Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature, Vol. 2, No. 2, Studies of Recent Poetry (Spring - Summer, 1961), pp. 12-19
Samuel Morse dwells upon Mina Loy’s rediscovery with a lamenting tone. He yearns for an appreciation of her genius while at the same time recognizing the impossibility of her contemporary appreciation. He follows the gradual infusion of Loy’s work into the world, noting her recent path from obscurity to lesser obscurity. And in such, Loy is painted not only as a revolutionary, but with a shocking freshness and newness that surpasses the works/artists of the time. Characterized by her typographic and syntactic eccentricity and “from a peculiar combination of fantasy and savagery”, Loy’s edginess seems to set her apart from the avant-gardes of her day. Combining her emotionlessness, mere factual, ideological wit and observation, and her destruction of syntactical form, Loy’s poems move beyond the experiments of her contemporaries and move into a realm that, as Morse says, “the next generation may find hard to match” (18). Although still rising from the ashes of obscurity, her experimental genius thus seems founded upon rebellious originality, and from such, it seems that as her work continues to ferment, its value will only grow.
Sheffield, Rob. “Mina Loy in Too Much Too Soon: Poetry/Celebrity/Sexuality/Modernity.” Literary Review; Summer 2003, Vol. 46 Issue 4, p625, 11p. Fairleigh Dickinson University.
As an enthralled Loy worshipper, Sheffield unbashfully traces the origins and aspects of Mina Loy’s lore. Starting with her “Aphorisms On Futurism”, Sheffield highlights the rebelliousness and against-the-grain mentality of Loy and her Rogue counterparts. As direct oppositions to Pound and the Boston/Chicago modernists, Sheffield points out how Loy and her loyal followers repeatedly overstepped the literary boundaries of the day, constantly breaking down conventions of sex, gender and propriety. Within such, she used the guise of Futurism in order to express herself, as a means to a personal manifesto of expression. Sheffield notes her love for and celebration of excess, of her eccentric usage of language and her constant necessity to break down syntax, add white space, dashes, capitals, readymades, asterisks and other forms of “textual noise”. As he puts it, “it’s poetry that is thoroughly and visibly fucked with” (4). Mocking the Pound-like modernists of her time, and pushing radicalness to the next level, Loy basked in her rebellious attention. A rock star among her audience, Loy’s punk-like appeal and eccentric genius surpassed her, overshadowing at times her art as she became a figure of shock value. But as Sheffield points out, it is this value, this “noise” which she created poetically and socially that gave her work weight and is now pulling her once again from the depths of anonymity.
Peppis, Paul. “Rewriting Sex: Mina Loy, Marie Stopes, and Sexology.” Modernism/Modernity. Vol. 9, 4. pp. 561-579. (2002). The John Hopkins University Press.
Peppis examines the semi-scientific work of Marie Stopes’ Married Love and Mina Loy’s Love Songs in order to show how both women use language to reconstruct female sexuality. Within both cases, there is a bonding process in which “male” language is utilized alongside “female” language to empower the feminine and “female” social reforms. Peppis points out how Stopes uses this scientific male language along with romanticized female language in order to promote a female sexual agent, e.g. advocating the use of birth control and participating in foreplay. Loy’s linguistic manipulation, on the other hand, relies on the same use of scientific language and sentimental language, but in her case, the union between the two is a failure. Within her Love Songs, “vocabularies of science and rationality cohabit antagonistically with vocabularies of love and sentiment, opposing and undermining each other, enacting formally the unrealizability of union between lovers and language” (574). Loy thus exemplifies the impossible harmonization of male and female desires. In the end, there still remains a divide between free love and social purity, literature and science, and sentimentalism and modernism. But not all is lost; Loy and Stope implement the female voice in order to liberate it from traditional bonds. And in a modernist world defined by anti-sentimentalism and masculinity, Stope and Loy use language to modernize the sentimental and essentially “reform gender by rewriting sex” (576).
Kouidis, Virginia M. “Rediscovering Our Sources: The Poetry of Mina Loy.” Boundary 2, Vol. 8, No. 3 (Spring, 1980), pp. 167-188.
Kouidis examines the ideological, aesthetic and philosophical evolution of Mina Loy’s literary career. Starting with her futurist awakening, Kouidis outlines how Loy implemented the self’s potentiality and rejection of the past to create “new poetic forms for discovering and expressing her freedom” (170). The offspring of this newfound collaboration was an examination of the (female) self-consciousness. As seen with her earlier works, she plays with idealism of individual growth, dismantling syntax, the stereotypical usage of words and infusing shocking sexual language in order to create a chaotic portrayal of intuition and intellect. Through an alternation of abstraction and image, she examines the inward consciousness of the self and its essence while at the same time moving “outward to place the self in cosmic becoming” (174), or a state of transcendence. She draws heavily from the female perspective of self, using poems such as “Parturition” to depict the female “cosmic becoming” within childbirth. At her base lies the futurist emphasis on imagery, word disjunction, and disconnected syntax. But instead of expressing the futurist’s “dynamism of the technological age” (176), Loy explores the consciousness. Her poems thus bring the reader to the forefront of timeless, conscious experience. Within poems such as “The Costa San Giorgio”, the reader becomes enmeshed in a timeless, every-world where the chaos of an Italian street and the interplay of action and stasis moves the poem outside of the present or past and intermingles the two into a timeless transcendent experience of both. Kouidis shows how Loy’s futurist base, feminist drive and constant desire to shock, lead her on an existential journey of disjunction, absence, excess, transcendence and finally an imposed or assumed unification/certainty.
Nicholls, Peter. “Arid Clarity: Ezra Pound, Mina Loy, and Jules Laforgue.” The Yearbook of English Studies, Vol. 32, Children in Literature. (2002), pp. 52-64.
Throughout the essay, peter Nicholls follows the artistic interplay between Pound, Loy and Laforgue. Even though these poets were not of the same direct social group, they were inevitably bound by their art and time. Though Pound differentiated himself by defining Loy as an “American Modernist”, her employment of what Pound called ‘logopoeia’ seemed to influence or allow the same usage within his own works. Through their works and critiques, the poets seemed to create an underlying level of communication. While socially silent, they spoke and fed off of each other’s poetic experiments and philosophies. To some degree, both Loy and Laforgue pushed their works beyond the comfort of Pound, to an area which he was reluctant to follow—the demystification of the romantic body in Loy’s case and irony for Laforgue. Yet when examining them, Pound imposed his subjectively, focusing on elements within their work that he felt contributed to and defined, at least for him, their poetic achievements, contributions and identity. Though this may have disregarded some aspects of their poetics, it allowed him to define them within the modernist context. Pound applied these constructs to interpretation, using his “construction of a Laforguian modernism…as a lens though which to read Loy’s work” (60). And although the Pound’s Laforgue was the lens to which he read Loy’s work, Pound still recognized the two admirable endeavourers, and how in some ways, they seemed to put to work or define his literary ideas, e.g. logopoeia. Yet by pushing, extending and personalizing these various poetic and aesthetic concepts, Nicholls displays the interconnectedness of the era, and the at times indirect communication and evolution of art that occurs within these modernist poets as they play against, with and away from each other.
ON FORSTER
Jackie Partyka
Beer, Gillian. “Negation in A Passage to India.” A Passage to India: Essays in Interpretation. Ed. John Beer. Totowa, NJ: Barnes & Noble, 1986. 44-58.
Beer’s chapter begins by citing Forster’s Aspects of the Novel to describe how characters must ultimately relate to other elements of the novel. She points out the numerous gaps present within the novel, relating them to the space left between cultures. Beer also posits that the negative sentence structures throughout the text (no, nothing, never) determine how we read the text as a shifting ideology. The negatives imply many ideological readings, including rejection, indeterminacy, endlessness and it even characterizes the landscape. These different readings come about syntactically since “nothing” alone implies stasis, but “nothing” in a sentence causes instability. This article would be useful for anyone looking at the linguistic or ideological aspects of Forster’s novel.
Christie, Stuart. “’Queer Report’: Disappointed Critics and Prophecy in A Passage to India.” Worlding Forster: The Passage from Pastoral. New York: Routledge, 2005. 157-74.
Christie’s chapter is located within a larger book that approaches Forster’s novels through a lens that aligns the legacy of English pastoral novels with Forster’s homosexuality. While this approach is interesting, I think the rationale behind this decision is never fully justified (at least it isn’t in the introduction). The idea that Forster’s texts are “marked” with Forster’s sexuality seems a bit limiting, though I suppose Christie offers a new approach to views of Forster in relation to nation, otherness and exile with this perspective. The final chapter approaches the many “disappointments” that post-colonial critics have in relation to homosexuality in the text. Christie critiques Suleri’s reading of A Passage to India for attempting to explain too literally the homosocial aspects of Fielding’s and Aziz’s colonial friendship. Rather, Christie approaches the text in relation to the text’s “queer illegibility” where the relationship of colonial friendship becomes more legible during shared intimate experience but it never becomes fully “fixed” as homosexual.
Herz, Judith Scherer. A Passage to India: Nation and Narration. New York: Twayne, 1993.
In her book, Herz provides a detailed account of Forster’s novel. Her first chapter begins by outlining some of the major questions surrounding the reception of the novel. Notably, the first chapter, “A Modernist Novel?” addresses the literary context behind Forster’s work and focuses on how the text manages to mingle different modernist and antimodernist modes. Chapter 7, “Narration and Language” does a very nice job tracing Forster’s use of free indirect discourse and external focalization to explain the relationship between the narrator and the other characters. Towards the end of this chapter, Herz focuses on the use of language in the novel as a means of separation and division, complementing how there are multiple subjects of perception seen throughout the novel. The rest of the book goes on to look at the novel’s critical reception and provides an in-depth reading of each section of the novel so it would be useful to anyone wanting a useful but insightful overview of the text.
Parry, Benita. “Materiality and Mystification in A Passage to India.” Novel 31.2 (1998): 174-94.
Parry’s article opens by addressing how most postcolonial critics often trace colonial tropes through established tensions of gender and class. Rather, Parry prefers to focus on form in A Passage to India and chooses to align the emergence of modernism with the emergence of changes in the perception of empire. She posits that the subtext behind the numerous sexualized and racial readings of the novel lies the attempt to rectify the “many Indias” that elude Western normative systems. Along the same lines as Herz, Parry comments on the spatial issues of the novel and how the struggle to articulate the many contradictory Indias results in intelligibility and misrepresentation.
Said, Edward. “There are Two Sides.” Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage, 1993. 191-209.
I’m including Said here because many of the articles I’ve read reference Said’s reading of A Passage to India. Though this chapter isn’t explicitly about Forster’s novel, Said spends a decent amount of time using Forster as an example of disparate power between the West and the non-West. Throughout his book, Said traces both universalized and more specific interactions between the imperializers and the imperialized. The anti-imperial resistance is present in A Passage to India where Forster preserves the gulf between cultures but permits select crossings. However, Said asserts that Forster’s adherence to the novelistic form limits a fully serious national approach to imperial resistance because Forster’s India is portrayed as too personal rather than official or historic. This chapter would be a very useful starting point for anyone looking at the imperialist or colonial influence in Forster.
Tayeb, Lamia. “The Inscription of Cultural Bafflement in E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India.” Interdisciplinary Literary Studies 6.1 (2004): 37-59.
Tayeb’s article focuses on how Forster creates a narrative voice that satirizes and destabilizes traditional imperial discourses. In Said’s formulation, space and the Indian landscape becomes personified entity that acts upon the characters. By shifting spatial elements to the subject position, Tayeb provides a compelling reading of how a “dual vision” of Indian geography articulates the cross-cultural encounter. Tayeb also goes into more specific detail concerning the possibility of Fielding’s and Aziz’s cross-cultural friendship and spiritual bonding for Mrs. Moore and Aziz. Ultimately, Tayeb situates these traditional colonial issues within a “neutral space” of the narrative’s undecidability.