Showing papers on "Plot (narrative) published in 1997"

Constructing therapeutic narratives

Abstract: Patients of psychotherapy often have pre-developed, powerful stories about themselves when they come for treatment, and these are usually characterized by bleak self-portrayals, inexorable plots, narrow themes, and demoralizing meanings. This book aims to help the psychotherapist in creating a new story for the client that is so close to their own experience that they may view it as their own story. However this story must be different enough from the previous one so as to allow for new meanings and options to be perceived. The aim is that once the client is freed from his original story he can begin to be freed from his problem altogether. Teaching the therapeutic principles of narrative reconstruction, this book shows how to improve in the following: characterizing, constructing plot, outlining and developing themes, and conveying meanings.

Imagined Human Beings: A Psychological Approach to Character and Conflict in Literature

Abstract: One of literature's greatest gifts is its portrayal of realistically drawn characters--human beings in whom we can recognize motivations and emotions. In Imagined Human Beings, Bernard J. Paris explores the inner conflicts of some of literature's most famous characters, using Karen Horney's psychoanalytic theories to understand the behavior of these characters as we would the behavior of real people. When realistically drawn characters are understood in psychological terms, they tend to escape their roles in the plot and thus subvert the view of them advanced by the author. A Horneyan approach both alerts us to conflicts between plot and characterization, rhetoric and mimesis, and helps us understand the forces in the author's personalty that generate them. The Horneyan model can make sense of thematic inconsistencies by seeing them as the product of the author's inner divisions. Paris uses this approach to explore a wide range of texts, including Antigone, "The Clerk's Tale," The Merchant of Venice, A Doll's House, Hedda Gabler, Great Expectations, Jane Eyre, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Wuthering Heights, Madame Bovary, The Awakening, and The End of the Road.

Plot and point of view in the Iliad

Abstract: "Plot and Point of View in the Iliad "argues that Homer, the poet of the "Iliad, " may be fully distinguished from the narrator of Homeric poetry, who is the Muse, and also from the heroes and heroines who live within the world of the story. The "Iliad "is a poem with a particularly rich and complex structure of perspectives, and as point of view as an element of storytelling has garnered tremendous interest in this century, critical attention has taken up this question in relation to Homer's poem.Robert Rabel argues that in different ways, both the Muse-narrator and the poet manipulate point of view in order to discover and define the meaning of the "Iliad, " placing various ways of thinking in competing and complementary relationships with one another. In the process, the Muse-narrator produces a sophisticated and compelling analysis of the tragic limitations of life in accordance with the heroic ethic. In the end, the poet provides a demonstration of the extent to which reality can only be grasped and apprehended in epic poetry through images that are constructed from various individual perspectives.This volume will be of interest to students of comparative and classical literature, philosophers, and readers of Homeric epic. All Greek passages are translated, and discussions of technical language are kept to a minimum.Robert J. Rabel is Associate Professor of Classics, University of Kentucky.

Effects of Variant Narrators in Acts 10–11

Abstract: One of the cruces interpretum regarding the Acts of the Apostles that continue to reappear in scholarly discussions is why some stories are repeated three or more times. Redaction criticism moved the solutions beyond the earlier theories of multiple sources toward a consensus of attributing repetition to Lukan redaction. One contribution from redactional approaches was the awareness of how emphasis is achieved by repeating accounts of events that are especially pivotal to the overall plot of Acts.

Melville and the Visual Arts: Ionian Form, Venetian Tint

Abstract: Throughout his professional life, Herman Melville displayed a keen interested in the visual arts. He alluded to works of art to embellish his poems and novels and made substantial use of the technique of ekphrasis, the literary description of works by visual arts, to give body to plot and character. In carefully tracing Melville's use of the art analogy as a literary technique, Douglas Robillard shows how Melville evolved as a writer. In separate chapters Robillard deals at length with Redburn, Moby-Dick, Pierre, and Clarel. In briefer discussions he looks at the Piazza Tales and the shorter poems. His extensive history of what Melville saw, responded to, and valued offers new insights into Melville's creative processes.

History, Biography, and Narrative in Don DeLillo's Libra

Abstract: An analysis of Don DeLillo’s Libra for two main forms of desire for plot. The first of these is Lee Oswald’s desire to attain a sense of unity of self. Oswald is frustrated in this desire by the workings of language. The text demonstrates that the subject is structured in and through language, in the way in which Oswald functions as a sign. The second form of desire for plot is Nicholas Branch’s narrative desire to write the definitive history of the Kennedy assassination. Like Oswald’s, Branch’s desire is frustrated. He is unable to write this account because he cannot create a narrative from the information about the assassination.

Sophocles' Trachiniae: Some Observations

Abstract: In several ways Trachiniae seems almost a textbook of Sophoclean trag? edy, so many elements of plot, theme, and even formal structure does it have in common with one or another (sometimes with several other) of the playwright's works. The deceptive quality of oracles and prophecies,1 the equally illusory nature of human happiness, the alternation between the familiar, even the domestic (insofar as Greek tragedy can ever be "domestic") and "the wild country"?the lonely, unknown, and some? times feral areas of experience "out there"?,2 even the curious, "diptych" structure of the play, involving the disappearance of a major tragic figure from the action:3 all these features, so prominent in Trachiniae, are to be found in various other Sophoclean tragedies. Yet in all cases Sophocles uses what appear to be common features in different combinations and contexts to produce strikingly different tragic effects. It

Voyage to Tunis: New History and the Old World of The Tempest

Abstract: A recent pairing by the Royal Shakespeare Company of The Tempest with Edward Bond's Bingo has reminded critics of the persistence of what they long ago discounted as the "totally spurious" identification of Prospero's story with the dramatist's.' While this last comedy has been Americanized on campuses as a tragedy of colonialism in the New World, the professional theater continues to connect its ending to New Place and a retirement in Stratford. These popular and academic traditions seem, in fact, to straddle the play's two hemispheres, and it may be that the New Historicist success in relocating The Tempest in Virginia has transported it too far from Virgil, and the Old World of Aeneas where its action is set, between Tunis and Naples. For it is now axiomatic that, as Frank Kermode stated in the Arden edition, Shakespeare had America "in mind" when he wrote his "Virginian masque," based Ariel's songs on Algonquian dances, and intended Caliban "to be a representative Indian, and Prospero a planter." Yet this certainty about the American context is matched by agnosticism over the play's European pretext, which seems, Kermode presumed, to have been "a wedding in 1611 of which we know nothing." Ever since 1809, when Malone noted analogies with the Jacobean Virginia Company pamphlets, the Americanization of The Tempest has been accompanied by obliviousness towards its festive occasion, typified by Kermode's belief that "there is no need to imagine such a wedding." So, though Stephen Orgel's Oxford edition ventured an affinity with King James's dynastic plans, no attempt has yet been made to explain how these might relate to the Shakespearean realpolitik that necessity makes "strange bedfellows" (2.2.38), or motivate a plot which seems to carry its actors

The Legitimization of Royal Power in Chaucer's Man of Law's Tale

Abstract: text. The character- and theme-based studies of Edward A. Block, John A. Yunck, Robert P. Miller, and others have established a consensus concerning the passive heroism of Custance and the shortcomings of the Man of Law himself.' If the piece is viewed as a heroine's tale, then the story seems drawn out and the protagonist's character incompletely developed (at least to modern readers). I would like to suggest that instead of focusing on the story and heroine, we might usefully consider the tale's historical and genealogical elements. The Man of Law's Tale is, in terms proposed by R. S. Crane, unsatisfactory as a "plot of action" or "plot of character," but I shall argue that it makes more sense as a "plot of thought."2 Neither story nor character is especially engaging; the point lies in the ideas the tale presents. What is this tale about? By looking at Chaucer's additions to his sources, we can deduce that he was particularly concerned with aristocratic power. Chaucer fuses temporal power (represented by the I would like to thank Kathryn Hume, Craig Bertolet, and Robert D. Hume for their

Story Sense: Writing Story and Script for Feature Films and Television

Abstract: Lucey, Paul Story Sense: Writing Story and Script for Feature Films and Television New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996, 398 pp, $2050 (paper) Learning how to write effectively for the screen is like learning a foreign language: what works in a novel or short story doesn't automatically translate to a script, where the words must create a nonverbal end product Screenwriting requires both teacher and student to develop visual equivalents for various emotional states and to learn and understand the economy of film-how to convey exposition through images and action In Story Sense: Writing Feature Scripts for Film and Television, Paul Lucey does an admirable job of covering these and other issues facing the aspiring screenwriter Whether studying in a formal classroom or simply in their spare time, screenwriters could benefit from the lessons in these pages Lucey calls the volume a "screenwriting course in a book," and, in fact, he does cover everything-from developing an idea to finding an agent In the cinematic equivalent of John Gardner's adage that the writer's aim is to create a vivid and continuous dream in the reader's mind, Lucey says more than once that "the script should flow through the mind of a reader like film flowing through a movie projector" He claims that his book "teaches the two essentials of screenwriting: how to plot a story and how to write the plot into a dramatic script" (xiii) To that end, the 12 chapters in Story Sense are divided into two parts: "Writing the Story" and "Writing the Script" An appendix includes a selection of useful information related both to the text and to the business of screenwriting The Writers Guild of America Minimum Basic Agreement 1991-1995 and a sample Writer's Deal Memorandum give the aspiring screenwriter a look at rates and contracts Other sections offer excerpted scenes referred to in the chapters Lucey refers to four mainstream films to illustrate the discussion in each chapter These films are The Verdict, The Terminator, Witness, and Sleepless in Seattle He refers to numerous other films, including such classics as How Green Was My Valley and High Noon and more recent releases such as Speed, Die Hard, and The Fugitive (this last, not surprisingly, since Lucey was a writer on the original Fugitive TV series), but the continued reference to the principal four provides a satisfying continuity and coherence and would make the book useful in the classroom, where references to multiple films are not necessarily helpful The four chapters in "Part One: Writing the Story" track the screenwriting process from selecting and developing an idea for a motion picture to writing the plot This section concludes with a chapter on scene structure "Part Two: Writing the Script" opens with chapters that discuss how to translate that idea into the idiom of the screenplay The last three chapters of this part cover script format rewriting, and the business of writing: agents and meetings; there is even a section titled "Making Movies out of the Mainstream" Despite the nod to alternative filmmaking, this is clearly not what interests Lucey And in his emphasis on the mainstream commercial feature film lie both the strengths and weaknesses of his book While Lucey does refer to some films that use innovative narrative structures (Rashomon, Pulp Fiction, and Day for Night among them), the emphasis here is on commercial films and the three-act structure Lucey is very much of the school that argues that in order to break the rules, a writer must first learn what they are He also believes that since the three-act structure has worked for so long, the beginning screenwriter would do well to learn from it His main concern is that a script appeal to the industry reader who will buy or recommend that it be bought and ultimately to the movie-going public Lucey avoids dealing with the ongoing controversy that such heavy reliance on the three-act structure results in a steady stream of predictable, formulaic movies-a topic that leads to controversies even in Hollywood …

Western values, or the peoples Homer: Unforgiven as a reading of the Iliad

Abstract: We explore Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven as a reading of the Iliad. Significant parallels link the two works in terms of genre, plot structure, and ideology, especially the ideology of manhood. The Western is, in fact, the modern American epic, and as such performs an equivalent cultural role to that of the Iliad in Classical Greece: It defines the qualities necessary for those heroes who will build civilization

The Gunpowder Plot: Terror and Faith in 1605 by Antonia Fraser (review)

Abstract: The Gunpowder Plot.' Terror and Faith in 1605. By Antonia Fraser. (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.1996. Pp. xxxv,347.L20.00.) This is a handsome production, well illustrated and indexed, based on good sources, and presented in a prose at once elegant and readable, which we would expect by now from this author. It has been well received by reviewers generally in England who usually reveal little knowledge about the plot except from what they read here. It is safe to prophesy that there will never be a last word on what Joel Hurstfield once described as a "non-event"; but it is to be regretted that one cannot recommend this as an outstanding milestone on the way. The book refers to a "no plot" faction, but no one denies a plot. The question remains, whose was it and of what kind? Fraser retells the traditional story of the plot as the concoction of a group of disaffected Catholics driven to desperation and despair by persecution and seeing no other remedy.The dark hero of the piece was dashing Robert Catesby, whose zeal inflamed and led the rest to all-time disaster for the Catholic cause. She follows in essentials Mark Nicholls's thesis as expounded in Investigating Gunpowder Plot (1991) and also an unpublished manuscript by the late W K. L.Webb, SJ. It is extremely plausible that this was the way of it since we are all too well aware of the terrorist answer to seemingly insoluble political problems in our own time. Nevertheless, closer inspection of the evidence, which is, admittedly, often unsatisfactory and incomplete, must confirm many in the view that the plot was Robert Cecil's contrivance-one of quite a series which began with the Lopez plot of 1594, which no one takes seriously, and the Squire plot of 1598, aimed at the Jesuits, which nobody would take seriously if people knew anything about it.The Main and Bye plots were rather better contrived but still bear the falsifying imprint of the master.The gunpowder plot,"Cecil's holiday" as it was described by contemporaries, was the last and best stage-managed of them all, so skillfully that it continues to deceive even those it was intended to destroy down to our day. It is the great outcrop sticking up in our English sands of time to hold back the sinister force of popish revisionism. Cecil had two aims in mind: first to bring the papists into everlasting hatred; second to discredit those Catholics and their cause who, finding nothing worthwhile for them to do in his England, tried to find employment and honor abroad fighting for the archdukes in Flanders.The oblique attack on the English regiment is an essential part of the story.The group which made its way to the last stand at Holbeach on November 8 was the remnant of a contingent intended for Flanders. Guy Fawkes, prototype of the fall-guy and the only professional soldier, was their liaison man. The operation was infiltrated by four men working for Cecil, viz., Thomas Percy, the principal mole, with Robert Catesby as his main contact in the field, and William Monteagle and Francis Tresham as assistants. …

History, Biography, and Narrative in Don DeLillo's Libra

Abstract: An analysis of Don DeLillo’s Libra for two main forms of desire for plot. The first of these is Lee Oswald’s desire to attain a sense of unity of self. Oswald is frustrated in this desire by the workings of language. The text demonstrates that the subject is structured in and through language, in the way in which Oswald functions as a sign. The second form of desire for plot is Nicholas Branch’s narrative desire to write the definitive history of the Kennedy assassination. Like Oswald’s, Branch’s desire is frustrated. He is unable to write this account because he cannot create a narrative from the information about the assassination.

"Harlem Renaissance Man" Revisited: The Politics of Race and Class in William Grant Still's Late Career

Abstract: William Grant Still reached his artistic maturity as a versatile, innovative commercial musician and composer of concert music in Harlem in the 1920s. Aesthetically, he sought new ways to break down race-based limitations on the mixing of African American and European techniques, forms, and styles, as well as to blur class-based boundaries between the "popular" and "serious" in his concert music. Over a quarter-century-long period his audience grew steadily. Yet his music often drew ambivalent critical responses that were permeated with stereotypically race-based expectations. The 1949 production of Troubled Island by the New York City Opera formed the apex of Still's rise as a composer. In its aftermath, Still came to believe that he was the target of a communist conspiracy. In several articles and one speech, he went public with what I shall call his "plot theory." I propose that, far from being a frivolous position dismissible as mere individual paranoia, Still's acceptance of the plot theory is associated with the racial typecasting that was both his and his music's lot.

Reader-Investigators in the Post-Nouveau Roman: Lahougue, Peeters, and Perec

Abstract: It is not impossible to imagine ... a novel whose fiction would be exciting enough so that the reader intensely felt the desire to know its last word which precisely, at the last minute, would be denied to him, the text pointing to itself and towards a rereading. The book would be thus, a second time, given to the reader who could then while rereading it, discover everything in it which in his first mad fever he had been unable to find. Benoit Peeters, "Agatha Christie: Une ecriture de la lecture" (177). I. Toward a post-Nouveau Roman detective novel A trend that I will characterize as the post-Nouveau Roman detective novel may be distinguished in the current French literary scene.(1) A new narrative hybrid form is being developed which partakes of both the mystery story and the early Nouveau Roman.(2) Novels of the first phase of the Nouveau Roman, particularly Robbe-Grillet's Les Gommes, Butor's L'Emploi du temps and Ollier's La Mise en scene, as well as a Nouveau Nouveau Roman like Ricardou's Les Lieux-dits, used detective-story structures. Although they played with some traits of mystery fiction, they did not fully belong to the detective genre. They were parodies, metafictions, or anti-detective novels, but not proper detective stories. Likewise, thirty years later, a significant number of novels by authors as different as Modiano, Echenoz, Belleto, or Roubaud, draw from the detective model without entirely following the rules of the game.(3) As opposed to current representatives of the genre,(4) the Nouveau Roman policier and the post-Nouveau roman policier recycle generic characteristics by means of innovative textual strategies.(5) Perec calls his > a "literary thriller" (Bellos 710) and, to use an expression from the text, La Doublure de Magrite can be defined as a "feuilleton avant-gardiste" (186). It is well known that the Nouveau Roman calls into question most of our expectations of what a narrative should be--in terms of plot, psychology, characters, logical and chronological series of sequences. However, its "anti-representational" or "auto-representational" effects, as Ricardou analyzed them at the time, are now fairly familiar to the postmodern reader : what used to be `writable' (scriptible) has since become a little more lisible.(6) Today, whether such narrative strategies are called "self-reflexive," "metatextual," "metafictional" or, preferably, "metarepresentational,"(7) post-Nouveau Roman detective novels use Nouveau Roman textual devices while returning to what might appear to be a more conventional way of story telling.(8) They offer the pleasures of reading (it is a clear return to the romanesque) and do not overtly subvert our expectations. Beneath their innocent surface, however, what supports these puzzles may be a very sophisticated network of infratextual as well as intertextual correspondences. Briefly, in these novels metarepresentational strategies are no longer deliberately anti-representational. Contemporary with the Nouveau Roman but distinct from it, Georges Perec's versatile work--shifting constantly from playful Oulipian mechanical exercises (along with Italo Calvino and Jacques Roubaud among others) to autobiographical and extraordinarily imaginative, often humorous, novels--has certainly anticipated this significant evolution, one that blends intricate specific textual constraints with a more representational narrative format. Although I would not agree with Tani that any interesting contemporary fiction takes more or less advantage of detective-novel techniques (149, 151), I don't deny that there may be a fundamental mystery or suspense in any nondetective novel per se ("une forme fondamentale": see Boyer 74). …

Photographic Convention and Story Composition: Eudora Welty's Uses of Detail, Plot, Genre, and Expectation from "A Worn Path" Through The Bride of The Innisfallen

Abstract: throughout. Readers have at times objected to Welty's plotlessness as obstructive of meaning and found her use of detail inundating rather than illuminating. Diana Trilling's early remarks in the Nation (1943) faulted Welty's stories for developing "technical virtuosity" rather than conventionally meaningful narrative. She accused Welty of writing "a book of ballets, not of stories" and read the stories as staying "with their narrative no more than a dance, say, stays with its argument."' Trilling's remarks are representative of a particular reaction to finding Welty's fiction not what was expected. John Fleischauer's responses in "The Focus of Mystery: Eudora Welty's Prose Style" (1973) are similar; he speaks of "vagueness contrasting with or containing delightful and colloquial concentrations of detail," arguing that "the vagueness, or sketchiness, or selection of detail is so pronounced . .. as to lead to complaints" while readers look for a "a steady progress of action."2 Teachers of Welty's fiction sometimes find similar responses in classrooms of new Welty readers. Of all Welty's collections, The Bride of The Innisfallen receives the most criticism

“The story of Semiramis”: an oriental tale in Elizabeth Rowe's the history of Joseph

Abstract: This article aims to further our understanding of Elizabeth Singer Rowe, an important eighteenth-century writer who is little read today. “The Story of Semiramis”, an inset narrative in her biblical poem The History of Joseph (1736-37), is notable for its interest as an extensively revised representation of an important historical character. The narrative is intimately linked to the biblical plot of Joseph, and illuminates Rowe's interests in generic hybridisation and in the religious interpretation of secular history.

"What's to Say": Silence in Raymond Carver's "Feathers"

Abstract: Raymond Carver is well known for his sparse, pared-down style, a style that invites readers to contribute their own interpretations through connections that are not overtly communicated textually. Frequently, critics note that Carver's narrators leave questions pertaining to plots and characters unanswered, often leading to interpretations that consider concerns the text raises rather than issues the text resolves.(1) Some critics also point out that just as narrators leave surface details unspoken, characters frequently remain silent.(2) Often it is not direct discourse, words spoken between characters, but characters' inability to communicate that becomes important in developing characters' attitudes, motives, weaknesses, or hopelessness. Indeed, characters' silences, indicative of their inability to communicate with other characters, reflects a recurring theme in Carver's fiction. Often his stories are about discourse itself, ways people communicate or fail to communicate, demonstrating consequences of various modes of discourse. Cathedral provides a good example of Carver's portrayal of modes of discourse as motif. Critics point out the therapeutic value of communicating with others that characters experience in stories such as "A Small, Good Thing," "Cathedral," "Where I'm Calling From," and "Fever."(3) In "A Small, Good Thing," Ann and Howard break bread with the baker and feel compelled to sit and talk with him, finding communion through both the discourse and the symbolic Eucharist. The narrator of "Cathedral" communicates verbally and non-verbally with Robert, resulting in a renewed sense of empathy and a remarkable, almost religious experience. Repeatedly, the narrator of "Where I'm Calling From" urges J. P. to continue his story. Listening to J. P. inspires the narrator to speak himself, for at the end of the story he gains a renewed identity and decides to call his wife or girlfriend. Similarly, in "Fever," after Carlyle listens and talks with Mrs. Webster, he feels purged of earlier insecurities and is able to accept that his marriage has ended. While communicating with others helps heal feelings of desolation that Carver's characters experience, failing to communicate with others parallels or even penetrates his characters' feelings of despair. Frequently in Carver's fictional world, speech is therapeutic but silence is detrimental to characters. In terms of plot structure, silence or speech may be used to establish closure. Readers can examine discourse or lack of discourse as a means to determine the resolution of many of Carver's stories. The level of characters' willingness to communicate often determines the extent to which they will succeed in overcoming their personal misfortunes. At least once--and, frequently, several times--in every story in Cathedral, narrators inform readers that characters cannot articulate speech. While silence is an important motif found in many of the stories in Cathedral, in "Feathers," understanding characters' silences is crucial for interpretation, especially for understanding the seemingly perplexed ending of the story. In "Feathers," the first story in the collection, direct references to characters' silences appear more frequently than in any other story in the collection. In addition to various implied silences such as references to characters' nods, nudges, shrugs, stares, grins, or blushes instead of oral responses that might seem more appropriate, explicit references to characters' inability to speak abound throughout the story. The narrator describes someone's silence seventeen times: "I hung up [the phone]" (4); "Fran didn't answer" (6); Fran "didn't say anything" (7); "[W]e didn't say the word out loud" (7); "There was nothing else to say" (8); Olla "Didn't seem to have any more to say" (14); "I didn't know what to say to this. Neither did Fran" (14); Fran "didn't say anything"(15); "We didn't say much ..." (17); "Nobody said anything. …

Maidens and Their Guardians: Interpreting the "Rapunzel" Tale

Abstract: One major issue when dealing with folktales lies in the difference between the folklorist method and the non-folklorist approach: the former has usually involved collecting every known variant without critical comment on their meaning, whereas the latter focuses on a single text and interprets it - failing to take into account, as Alan Dundes notes, that a folktale type does not have a text, but rather texts ("Fairy Tales" 261). The Aarne-Thompson Index (AT), which is a product of the folklorist approach, identifies recurring plot elements and structures in certain folktales that link these stories together, thereby creating a tale type: for instance, the story of Cinderella has been told differently all over the world, but all the variants can be identified as belonging to AT type 510A. Many interpretations of tales from the Grimm Brothers' Kinder- und Hausmarchen collection, in contrast, follow a non-folklorist method by treating these individual stories as if they were unique texts, instead of single examples of variants. Recently, James McGlathery has argued for a middle position between these two approaches, one that accounts for the cultural, historical, and social context in which a tale is narrated, and which allows for changes in meaning over time and settings in which it is retold. (Romance 194). The tale of "Rapunzel" lends itself well to such a contextualizing approach, for while it was the Grimm Brothers' Kinder- und Hausmarchen collection that made the tale known to a world-wide audience, their version represents a rewrite of a French literary tale that is, itself, several steps removed from the general plot of "The Maiden in the Tower" found in previous oral and literary variants. Thus whereas it is the Grimms' version of the plot that one finds in the Aarne-Thompson Index under type 310, which lists the basic plot elements for the "Maiden in the Tower" folktale, actually the Grimms' version must be seen as simply one variant among many, with primary importance being given to comparing the different tales and to examining the overall structure, and - only then - offering interpretations. In this essay, therefore, I wish to examine several variants of "The Maiden in the Tower" that differ in several ways from the general outline (in particular, the ending) of the Grimms' Rapunzel. Since my concern is with the tale as it existed before, or independent of, their version, the name "Rapunzel," which was first used in the 18th century, will be regarded as an alias by which "The Maiden in the Tower" subsequently came to be known. The variants I will consider come from Persia, the Mediterranean region, France, and Germany; I will examine both oral and literary versions, acknowledging along with McGlathery, Linda Degh and others that the interrelationship of the oral and literary tradition is too intertwined to separate. My procedure will be first to provide a general overview and history of the variants, drawing heavily from the work done by Max Luthi, Paul Delarue, Heinz Rolleke and others. Next, through a comparison of the variants, I will conduct a structuralist analysis of the tale and attempt to define a probable basic plot for this tale type. Finally, I will focus on the older-younger woman relationship and offer a somewhat feminist interpretation of the story, based on speculations about how the tale relates to the historical and cultural interests in which it was redacted. For those who are familiar with Rapunzel as a German story, it may be surprising that one of the earliest recorded instances of a "hair ladder" comes from 10th-century Persia. Ferdowsi (932-1025 A.D.) is the literary alias (his real name is unknown) of a poet who wrote a Shahname, or history of kings, in order to preserve ancient Persian culture, drawing on both the oral tradition and literature. In the "Maiden in the Tower" sequence of Ferdowsi's Shahname, Roudabe offers to lower her hair to her true love, Zal, to use as a ladder to climb up on to the roof of the women's enclosure. …

An Interview with Harry Mathews

Abstract: Born in New York in 1930, Harry Mathews studied music at Harvard University. Though he has frequently taught writing in the United States, since the 1950s Mathews has lived in France. His first novel, The Conversions, appeared in 1962.(1) In 1973 he was asked to join the international experimental writing group Oulipo (Ouvroir de Litterature Potentielle) whose members included Italo Calvino and George Perec.(2) Oulipian writers practice and theorize the use of what they call "constrictive procedures" in the writing process. Because Oulipians explore an astonishingly wide range of such procedures (mathematical formulas, limited vocabularies, aleatory techniques) and use them in quite different ways, their texts can be collectively identified only by a consistent attack on the romantic notion of authorship as a matter of inspiration and genius. Even before joining Oulipo, Mathews was especially influenced by the French writer Raymond Roussel, whose deadpan tone, minutely descriptive narratives, and bizarre text generation techniques became one of the most important precedents for the Oulipo and for Mathews. Roussel, for instance, by switching one vowel in one word in a sentence composed of words with multiple meanings, would come up with two very different sentences; relating these sentences then became the task for his novel, moving from the first to the second meaning as the envelope of the narrative. Mathews's early novels present deceptively simple quest narratives that get side-tracked into realms of absurdly specific erudition. Though plot concerns always seem to drive the need for the protagonists (and the reader) to sort through these complicated, interwoven, and beautifully told bodies of knowledge, the collective effect of Mathews's tales within tales is often to collapse plot into a mosaic of diversions that foregrounds questions of interpretation and relevance. While Mathews's earlier novels tend to be anti-psychological, in his more recent fiction psychology reappears filtered through an Oulipian lens. The narration of his novel, Cigarettes (1987), is structured by the depiction of fourteen character-relationships. In The Journalist, the protagonist's increasing desire for realism in his diary gradually takes over the narrative and the character's life. Mathews is also a significant critic and poet; his 1977 book of poems, Trial Impressions, exhaustively rewrites a short Elizabethan love lyric by the English poet and musician John Dowland into the linguistic and social world of the 1970s. The following interview took place in Paris in May of 1994. LYTLE SHAW: I want to ask you about the concept of play that holds so much interest for Oulipians. The way I understand it, a number of twentieth-century theoreticians and writers have reimagined German Idealism's concept of play by arguing for a kind of radical interpretive participation or readerly involvement that comes to be seen, in many cases, as a form of non-alienated labor. But since the early 1960s, when you wrote your first novels, the discourse surrounding play has become more self-reflexive and now, for instance, a number of important critiques of the political efficacy of play have emerged. How, then, do you see the evolution of this concept over the last thirty years? Do you still find some kind of political liberation in the idea of readerly participation? HARRY MATHEWS: The answer to that is certainly yes. But I'd like to say at the beginning that for me the approach that I found in Raymond Roussel - getting to material through arbitrary, game-like procedures - was primarily a way that allowed me to get myself out of the place where I was stuck - feeling and thinking certain ways about the world, confronted with the huge difficulty of working directly from that into the production of the text. The playful procedures gave me something completely different to do and moved me onto another terrain from which I could come back to the material, whatever that might be. …

John Donne's 1622 Gunpowder Plot Sermon: A Parallel Text Edition ed. by Jeanne Shami (review)

Abstract: retreated from its complexity into production gimmicks gangsters, punk rock, insects crawling over stones that bury the actors in spectacle and limit the meaning of the play. The Duchess ofMalfi has a much longer stage history, and has fared better in the twentieth century. It is, as Carnegie notes, no coincidence that the date of the breakthrough production (at the Haymarket in London) was 1945: the death camps had just been opened, and Webster's horrors acquired a new seriousness. This edition offers a clear, responsible text, a judicious presentation of the critical issues, and a suggestive treatment of the plays' theatrical life. It is an important contribution to Webster studies, and (particularly in the richness of its commentary) a model for other editions to follow.

`Mit entgegenwirkenden Stromungen': The discourse of Brecht's Der Jasager

Abstract: To analyze Bertolt Brecht's Der Jasager [He Who Says Yes] and Der Neinsager [He Who Says No], didactic "school operas" written for performance by students, critics often use similar approaches. First, they examine the texts that form the history of the plot: Arthur Waley's translation of a Japanese No play; Brecht's two versions of Der Jasager, and his third version of the story, Der Neinsager. They then judge each of Brecht's versions using formalist criteria such as unity and internal logic. A representative of this approach is Ronald Speirs. He compares Brecht's plays with Waley's translation in order to demonstrate what he calls Brecht's "increasingly shallow manipulations of the Japanese plot" (177) and concludes that Brecht's final versions of the drama are unsuccessful because they sacrifice complexity for rationalism. Wolfgang Pasche uses a similar approach, but reaches a different conclusion. He asserts that Brecht's final versions are more successful because, in them, Brecht has transformed a drama originally based on superstitious ritual into a drama based on reason (147). These readings, though useful, are not wholly adequate for a proper understanding of Brecht's achievement. One reason is that they do not trace the development of the story fully through all its versions. Without such a full consideration, one cannot appreciate how many of the elements of Brecht's drama, including unresolved tensions, are actually traces of the earlier dramas. Another reason is that a formalist attempt to judge Brecht's drama as a unified, self-contained artifact risks missing the unique dynamic of Brechtian composition, a dynamic based on dialectic more than artistic unity. My reading of Der Jasager in this essay will trace the history of the plot not to determine the comparative worth of each text, but to identify the various voices present in each version. Such a reading will not only offer a more complete historical picture, but will perhaps also provide a model of readership for Brecht's dramas, one that is congenial to the author's own ideas of reading and writing literature. The story that eventually became Der Jasager had its origins in a Japanese No drama entitled Taniko. This work, variously attributed to Seami or Zenchiku, tells the story of a boy who accompanies a group of yamabushi (mountain ascetics) on a pilgrimage in order to pray for his ill mother. However, the boy himself falls ill on the journey and, according to an ancient custom, is thrown into the valley and killed. The pilgrims pray that his life may be restored, and because of his filial piety, the gods answer the prayer (Tyler 318-30). In this original version, the motivations are complex and contradictory. The love of the boy for his mother causes his death and his return to life. The pilgrims mourn the boy's fate at the very moment they hurl him into the valley. These tensions are more or less relieved, however, by the final appearance of the god who resurrects the boy. The god functions as a deus ex machina in the strictest sense; he is a method to resolve tensions that would otherwise be incapable of resolution. In the next step of the play's progress, the drama was read by Arthur Waley and translated into English. Even the act of translation, sometimes assumed to be a more or less neutral process, changes the dynamic of the play. The play loses some of its aesthetic qualities. One reason is that Waley greatly abridges the drama; over half the original version is omitted from the translation. The sections omitted are mostly belletristic passages, descriptions of natural scenery and poetic laments about life. Even the passages that remain assume a different literary aspect. As Waley himself admits, the Japanese text is very formal, replete with honorifics and long strings of "weighty auxilaries" (33). Waley's translation transforms the baroque complexity of the Japanese text into an austere formality. But even more significant than these changes is Waley's omission of the ending of the drama. …

Closure and Disclosure: The Significance of Conversation in Jane Austen's 'The Watsons.'

Abstract: Between 1803 and 1805 while the Austen family resided at Bath, and after she had revised both Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen began a new work that has come to be called The Watsons.(1) Around 1805 Austen stopped working on this novel and since its first publication in 1871 critical comment has been dominated by attempts to account for its apparently unfinished state. These explanations generally follow one of three patterns: Austen failed to complete The Watsons because she was depressed, because the story was flawed and the heroine too close to her own life, or because The Watsons was rewritten later as Emma.(2) Such conjectures reveal the discomfort that most readers share in response to a fragment: they imagine The Watsons as a debased particle of an unrealized whole. This approach to the work, however, focuses attention disproportionately on the circumstances surrounding its writing and away from the issues at its heart. Putting aside Cassandra Austen's reputed knowledge of her sister's intentions for the novel's completion, as reported in Austen-Leigh's Memoir(3), I suggest that The Watsons is already a novel. Only twenty-two pages shorter than Lady Susan in the Chapman edition, The Watsons comprises the complete history of the heroine's movement from a position of social exclusion to one of inclusion. Because this plot substitutes acceptance into meaningful conversation for the courtship novel's conventional resolution in marriage, The Watsons has been read, traditionally, as a fragment. I argue that the heroine's full participation in adult society, which is usually signalled through marriage, is instead represented through conversation and in her eventual discovery of a companion with whom she can converse as an equal. Hence, conversation is central to The Watsons as it provides a framework for closure and an alternative to the marriage plot. Emma Watson, a woman of "education and feeling" (MW, p. 317)(4) and a strange familiar returned to her family after a fourteen years' absence, retreats, at the end of the novel, to her father's sick room where she is "at peace from the dreadful mortifications of unequal Society, & family Discord" (MW, p. 361). The story ends when Emma refuses the invitation of her vulgar, nouveau riche brother and sister-in-law to visit them in Croydon where she might find a husband (MW, p. 362). Although she is aware that in her new position she is "of importance to no one, a burden on those, whose affection she cd not expect, an addition in an House, already overstocked, surrounded by inferior minds with little chance of domestic comfort, & as little hope of future support" (MW, p. 362), Emma refuses to participate in the husband-hunting game that customarily offers escape. Instead, The Watsons concludes with the heroine's discovery of an equal relationship with her father, manifested in meaningful conversation. The novel thus substitutes candid conversation for the traditional sign of a young woman's acceptance into society and passage into adulthood, the marriage proposal.(5) Since such an event ordinarily satisfies a plot, The Watsons may be read as complete while through the conversational scene and in resisting readers' expectations for conventional, novelistic closure it uncovers or discloses the arbitrariness of these expectations.(6) The idealized concept of conversation that drives the plot of The Watsons functions in accordance with Samuel Johnson's evocative definition and conforms to its depiction in numerous seventeenth- and eighteenth-century manuals and conduct books. Supported by quotations from Locke and Addison that stress the educational properties of good conversation, the Dictionary defines "To converse" as to "cohabit with; to hold intercourse with; to be a companion to"; it is also "to convey the thoughts reciprocally in talk."(7) From the word's etymology, Henry Fielding proposes that conversation is "that reciprocal Interchange of ideas, by which Truth is examined, Things are, in a manner, turned round, and sifted, and all our Knowledge communicated to each other. …