Showing papers in "Modern Fiction Studies in 2001"

Imagining Each Other: Blacks and Jews in Contemporary American Literature (review)

Abstract: her endorsement of "the democratic promise of the United States for Haiti" and her idealistic "confidence that a society with its own distinct cultural heritage can resist colonization." At its best, then, this is one of several recent studies of ideology and American literary culture that, in Joel Pfister's admirable phrase, get beyond "complicity critiques." Moreover, Rowe goes a long way in this book toward achieving his goal of constructing "a workable curriculum" for teaching about imperialism and its resistance in American Studies and literature courses.

Undiscovering the Country: Conrad, Fitzgerald, and Meta-National Form

Abstract: In this ceaseless rush of shadows and shades, that, like the fantastic forms of clouds cast darkly upon the waters on a windy day, fly past us to fall headlong below the hard edge of an implacable horizon, we must turn to the national spirit, which, superior in its force and continuity to evil and good fortune, can alone give us the feeling of an enduring existence and of an invincible air of power against the fates. —Joseph Conrad, The Mirror of the Sea

Accounting for Slavery: Economic Narratives in Morrison and Faulkner

Abstract: [A]ccounting is no longer to be regarded as a neutral device that merely documents and reports "the facts" of economic activity. Accounting can now be seen as a set of practices that affects the type of world we live in, the type of social reality we inhabit [. . .] the way in which we administer the lives of others and ourselves. —Peter Miller, "Accounting as Social and Institutional Practice: An Introduction

Breaking the Signifying Chain: A New Blueprint for African-American Literary Studies

Abstract: I have found in the Negro worker the real symbol of the working class in America. —Richard Wright, New York Amsterdam News1 The structures through which black labor is reproduced [. . .] are not simply 'colored' by race: they work through race [. . .]. Race is thus [. . .] the modality in which class is 'lived,' the medium through which class relations are experienced, the form in which it is appropriated and 'fought through.' —Stuart Hall, \"Race, Articulation and Societies Structured in Dominance\

An Interview with Iris Murdoch

Abstract: MURDOCH: I think this is a characteristic of the history of philosophy, that philosophical progress depends on great geniuses who appear at different times, such as Plato, Aristotle, and Kant, and later Hegel, Wittgenstein. Philosophy depends more than other studies on great metaphysical visions. This is just part of the history of human thought that these visions do occur from time to time and then exert a very great influence, so that was what I was referring to.

The Failures of the Romance: Boredom, Class, and Desire in George Gissing's The Odd Women and W. Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage

Abstract: I was sick of the starve and the stint and the grind of it all—sick to death of the whole grey life—and so I settled to have a royal time while the money lasted. All the things that I'd wanted—wanted horribly, and couldn't have—just because I was poor—pretty dresses, travel, amusement, politeness, consideration, and yes, I don't mind confessing it—admiration—they should be mine while the cash held out. I knew that I could buy them—every one—and I wasn't wrong. —Cicely Hamilton, Diana of Dobson's

Cold Comfort Farm, D. H. Lawrence, and English literary culture between the wars

Abstract: Stella Gibbons's Cold Comfort Farm (1932) has been an incredibly popular novel. Its most famous line, "I saw something nasty in the woodshed," has become a catchphrase, and the book has sold in large numbers since its first publication in 1932. It has been adapted as a stage play, a musical, a radio drama, and two films, thereby reaching a still larger audience. However, its status within the academically-defined literary canon is comparatively low. One full article on Cold Comfort Farm was published in 1978, and since then, only a few paragraphs of criticism have been devoted to the novel. Critics apparently do not consider Cold Comfort Farm to be properly "literary," and it is rarely mentioned in studies of the literature of the interwar years. This is curious because Cold Comfort Farm is an extremely sophisticated and intricate parody whose meaning is produced through its relationship with the literary culture of its day and with the work of such canonical authors as D. H. Lawrence, Thomas Hardy, and Emily Bronte. The novel's engagement with the gender issues of the 1930s also repays detailed examination.

Philosophy's Dangerous Pupil: Murdoch and Derrida

Abstract: The anguish of the philosopher comes about because philosophy touches impossibility [. . .]. It's impossible for the human mind to dominate the things which haunt it. --Iris Murdoch, "Iris Murdoch." What is the relation between philosophy and literature in Murdoch's writing? The question has often been raised in discussions of her work, even though Murdoch herself always seemed quite clear about the answer. Time and again in interviews she patiently maintained that while her novels did contain philosophical discussions they were certainly not "philosophical novels," nor did she set out deliberately to dramatize in fiction the philosophical questions that interested her. Speaking in 1976 Murdoch explained that in her fiction "there's just a sort of atmosphere and, as it were, tension and direction which is sometimes given by a philosophical interest, but not anything very explicit" ("Iris Murdoch in Conversation" 5-6). In 1985 she claimed even more forcefully that she felt no "tension" as a result of the demands placed on her by philosophy and art other than that produced by the fact that "both pursuits take up time" ("Iris Murdoch" 198). Most conclusive of all, perhaps, her opinion seems to be justified by the work itself, which manages to preserve a...

Ethical Issues in Twentieth-Century French Fiction: Killing the Other (review)

Abstract: one point devoting several pages to deciphering the meaning of the various grunts expressed by characters in Heart of Darkness. Furthermore, this is a book about a particular issue in a single work by a single author, and I wonder whether we needed a full-length monograph on the subject or whether several good articles might not have been sufficient. Envisioning Africa also seems too apologetic at times, often arguing that if Conrad was a racist or imperialist, then he was a weak one. Surely, Conrad was a product of his times, and his racist and imperialist tendencies are not as pronounced as those of many of his contemporaries, but I sometimes wish that we Conrad scholars could simply admit that Conrad was at times both racist and imperialist and leave it at that.