Associated University Presses

The artist as original genius; Shakespeare's "fine frenzy" in late eighteenth-century British art.

In the late 18th century a group of British artists made a deliberate effort to create historical paintings. Feeling the lack of a native tradition on this theme, they invented their own. Using Shakespeare as the model of an independent genius, they drew inspiration from the way he broke classical rules of drama. Pressly (art history and archeology, University of Maryland) presents these artists as a group and as individuals. He explains their philosophy of art and how it was expressed in their work. Examples are given in black and white illustrations. Pressly argues that their work provided a transition from continental Renaissance art to the nineteenth century Romantics. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Color, hair, and bone; race in the twenty-first century.

Despite the frequent declaration of biologists that the only race is the human one, racism continues to exist all over the world. This collection of essays demonstrates that fact. Lewis (sociology, Bucknell University) Griffith (English and Caribbean studies, SUNY, Albany) and Crespo-Kebler (Caribbean and Puerto Rican studies, University of Puerto Rico, Bayamón) make it clear in the introduction that racism isn't confined to any one nation or group. However most of the essays deal with North American racism as evidenced in books and film. Two articles treat German attitudes. While it might be desirable to have more variety, this book reminds Americans that we should clean our own house before commenting on the attitudes of others. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

David Mallet, Anglo-Scot; poetry, patronage, and politics, in the age of union.

It must have seemed to be a new world in the heady days after the Act of Union. It certainly was exciting for ambitious and talented Scots who finally had the means to go to London and make a living by the pen. Mallet was amongst them, and although he made many friends along the way to fame he also remained true to his nature and his variable politics. Jung (English, U. of Salford) provides a strong context for Mallet's seeming conflicts, and considers manuscript materials from a range of sources to counter misconceptions about Mallet. He also places Mallet within the long eighteenth century, explaining why the author was frequently mired in controversy abut his politics, but takes pains to place Mallet at the center of equally contentious writers and influential people in a contentious time. Distributed by Associated University Presses. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The discontented cavalier; the work of Sir John Suckling in its social, religious, political, and literary contexts.

Wilcher, a recently retired educator, focuses on the literary works of Sir John Suckling, sometimes disparagingly known as one of a group of "Cavalier poets." Biographical information certainly plays a part here, but the author notes that the works themselves provide a glimpse into the England of the early 1600s in which Suckling lived. The volume tracks his literary output, his experiences as soldier, diplomat, his career as a wit and gamester in fashionable society his primarily satirical responses to the fads in love and poetry at court, and his intellectual and artistic involvements. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The genius of the English nation; travel writing and national identity in early modern England.

Suranyi (history, Northeastern U.) presents studies on how emerging concepts of national identity, imperialism, colonialism, and orientalism were established and presented to English readers through travel and ethnographic writing in Early Modern England, including analysis of recurring cultural stereotypes used to describe continental Europe, Ireland, and the Ottoman Empire. The text pays particular attention to England's wavering between rejection and admiration of Turkish culture via the Ottoman Empire, the ideals of English national identity that served to justify conquest of people such as the Irish, and the belief that most Continental countries were civilized regions on par with England despite religious differences. The book is presented in two sections: part one establishes the identification of difference with discussions on travel and ethnographic literature, nationalism and imperialism, and discourses on origins; part two includes four thematic case studies on food and foodways, dirt, cleanliness, and clothing, foreign women, and gendering of states. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Gleaning modernity; earlier eighteenth-century literature and the modernizing process.

Rothstein (emeritus, English, U. of Wisconsin) proposes literature as an agent of change in the modernization processes of 18th century British culture. Conducting readings of Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Richardson's Clarissa, Fielding's Tom Jones, Cleland's Fanny Hill, and the later poems of Alexander Pope, he argues that popular works of literature contained a means by which readers could, most often subconsciously, engage in low-risk cultural experimentation that enabled them to cope with the modern. His argument thematically explores issues of reason and animality in Gulliver's Travel's, the reapportionment of gender boundaries in Clarissa, and issues of property and virtue in Pope, among other topics. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Journey from Paris to the Limousin; letters to Madame de La Fontaine (1663).

Punctuated by verse, illuminated by detail, and containing some of the most elegant gossip imaginable, Fontaine of the famous Fables wrote six long letters to his wife to assure her he was behaving well on his way to and back from Limoges. Art historian and academic Berger provides helpful notes and a comprehensive introduction to the letters along with his translation, which is the first ever in English for this text. The result is a glimpse into the poet's mind and character; his work generally keeps the reader at arm's length otherwise, and readers get few clues about his personal life. Fontaine's text makes it apparent he is committed to kindly forming his wife's mind as well as explaining his own views, and the result is remarkably charming and entertaining. Distributed by Associated University Presses. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Lucrezia Marinella and the "querelle des femmes" in seventeenth-century Italy.

Price (romance languages, Colorado State U.) and Ristaino (Italian, Emory U.) closely analyze Marinella's work and are convinced she belongs amongst the Italian and European literary canons. They make a convincing case, examining the Arcadia felice and its reduction of the pastoral from source of escape of oppression to a part of that same oppression, and the riches of the female religious quest in Amore inamorato, et impazzato. They also provide evidence in their assessment of Marinella's hagiography (in her work on Saint Colomba and Saint Francis), her abilities in heroic poetry, and her intriguing call for positive female role models. Distributed by Associated University Presses. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

More precious than gold; the story of the Peruvian guano trade.

Independent scholar and author Hollett writes on the Peruvian guano trade after the country declared its independence from Spain in 1826. Greatly important to agriculture, the guano trade incited aggression, colonial transgressions, and international tension. This work contributes to maritime and South American colonial history with foci on international commerce, abuse and justice, and capitalism; its thesis maintains that guano was a product central to a history of exploitation, torture, and other human rights abuses from the Incan society to twentieth-century Peru. Distributed by Associated University Press. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Music, women, and pianos in antebellum Bethlehem, Pennsylvania; the Moravian Young Ladies' Seminary.

This charming book is a time capsule of one school for "young ladies" run by the Moravian Church in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Smith, a musicologist, has used the records of the school as well as a knowledge of society in antebellum America to show the reader a microcosm of women's education, particularly in music and piano. She sets the scene by explaining the general attitude of the time to the place of women in the social order and the somewhat different view of the Moravians. She then shows what life was like for the young students and the emphasis on developing musical skill. Chapters on the instruments used and the music texts and scores available are a fascinating look at an area not usually covered. She rounds out the story with a glimpse of the lives of the women after graduation. It is not surprising that many became music teachers, one of the few respectable ways in which a woman could live independently at that time. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Outward appearances; the female exterior in Restoration London.

Pritchard (English, Lewis and Clark College, Oregon) considers how men viewed women in London after the Stuarts returned to the throne in 1660. By outward appearances, he refers not only to the surfaces of women that men looked and pondered upon, but also women's increasing public visibility and commentary on it. Distributed in the US by Associated University Presses. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Out of bounds; islands and the demarcation of identity in the Hispanic Caribbean.

Goldman (Spanish, U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) closely reviews the perceptions by Caribbean authors that their milieu is the perfect equivalence of island and nation and their culture is the result of that intersection and relationship. She finds that globalization has not shaken that perception, and in fact identification with island/nation/culture has actually intensified in some locales in response. She uses Hispanic Caribbean cultural production as a study of paradox, in that Caribbean people emphasize the traditional in defiance of possible assimilation, a situation that affects politics and economics as well as literature. She examines the ways of self-fashioning in the region, the limits of normative sexuality, the enforcement of the idea of border and cultural space, insular topographies developed in the diaspora, and the resulting negotiations of translocal spatiality and identity. Distributed by Associated University Presses. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Reconnecting lives to the land; an agenda for critical dialogue.

Hayes-Conroy (a doctoral student in geography at Clark U.) argues that political understanding of agriculture can be linked to a counterhegemonic project in regards to the prevailing social and ecological systems in the United States, inspired by and in sympathy with both environmental concerns as well as the great social movements "of the working class, women, minority groups, and the many others that have struggled against socioeconomic and political systems of domination and manipulation." One of the ways this can be done, and a principle concern of Hayes-Conroy here, is by engaging in a dialogic project by which people are drawn in to an understanding of the holistic nature of agriculture and thereby draw in the rest of the world "and make it agricultural." She therefore spends some of the discussion examining a case study of just such a dialogic project she carried out in southern New Jersey. Distributed in the US by Associated University Presses. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Romantic empiricism; poetics and the philosophy of common sense, 1780-1830.

Five scholars of English literature explore the ambivalent and complex relationship between Romanticism and Empiricism during the period when 20th-century, scholars have generally agreed that the former merely displaced the latter. Among the figure that rise to the surface, in addition to Hume of course, are Robert Burns, Elizabeth Hamilton, Charlotte Smith, and Coleridge. Distributed in the US by Associated University Presses. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Selected poetry of Ebenezer Elliott.

Few know of Elliot, but he was the self-styled "Corn Law Rhymer" whose biting satire decried the appalling conditions of the poor and called capitalists and the government to task. Here Elliot mourns the loss of innocence, death by want, and the pain of parting, but he also celebrates the passage of the Great Reform Bill of 1832, the beginnings of love, and the richness of the simple life, if the hearth is warm. Storey (English literature emeritus, U. of Birmingham) has provided a significant service to scholars of Victorian life and literature, and provides an able and precise introduction and very helpful notes. He even includes, in appendices, Elliot's prose prefaces to various volumes. Distributed by Associated University Presses. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Shakespearean performance; new studies.

Occhiogrosso (English, Drew U.) has compiled 10 essays that were originally presented at a recent Drew University conference on Shakespearean studies. The scholar-critics featured offer a range of topics, including the transformation in the study and teaching of Shakespeare over the past 20 years, the importance of the staging of a particular moment in a play to the play's overall interpretation, and the transformation of performances of Hamlet since the end of World War II, and male cross-dressing at the New Globe Theatre, among others. The writing is lively, detailed, and above all, interesting reading for both theater enthusiasts and a general audience. This book is distributed by Associated University Press. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Shakespeare re-dressed; cross-gender casting in contemporary performance.

Bulman (English, Allegheny College) and his contributors examine what they contend is an unprecedented growth in cross-gender casting in Shakespeare's plays, in short having men play women and women play men, and both playing roles re-gendered for the opposite sex. The writers offer the explanation that the casting has been influenced by a "revolution" in the way audiences perceive gender in Western society. The authors bring many and varied perspectives to the topic with critical examinations of King Lear, As You Like It, and other works, as well as essays addressing all-female and all-male performances. This book would be of interest for Shakespeare enthusiasts and others interested in performance studies and gender theory. The book is distributed by Associated University Press. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Staging Shakespeare; essays in honor of Alan C. Dessen.

North American scholars of theater and literature look at some of the obstacles and opportunities encountered when transforming a written script into a reality of time and space, voice and movement. Among their topics are Hal and the psychology of disguise, exeunt omnes and The Tempest, some unacknowledged sources of Julie Taymor's Titus, and the puppets take Macbeth. Distributed in the US by Associated University Presses. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Technologies of the picturesque; British art, poetry, and instruments, 1750-1830.

Part of the Bucknell Studies in Eighteen Century Literature and Culture, this publication studies the influence of cartography, meteorology, and animal breeding on the picturesque aesthetic of the time, particularly their influence on Wordsworth, Gilpin, Constable, Gainsborough, and other artistic figures of the period. Broglio (literature and animal studies, Georgia Institute for Technology) argues that technology and the interior experience of the poetic subject both remove the viewer from nature while presenting the land as a comprehensible object. The book is divided into four parts, focusing on water, earth, sky, and animals, and is occasionally illustrated in black-and-white. Distributed by Associated University Presses. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Tobias Smollett; Scotland's first novelist; new essays in memory of Paul-Gabriel Boucé.

Tobias Smollett (1721-1771) was the Scottish author best known for such picaresque novels as The Adventures of Roderick Random and The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle but also was an enormously popular historian of England. Brack (English, Arizona State U.) presents 14 papers on Smolett in honor of the late Paul-Gabriel Boucé, who specialized in Smollett studies. Papers discuss Boucé's contributions to the field, the role of autobiography in Smollett's fictions, Smollett's influence on the gothic novelists, Smollett's satire of medical iconography in The History and Adventures of an Atom, and Smollett's histories for what they reveal about his views of himself and his society. Distributed in the US by Associated University Presses. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Uncircumscribed mind; reading Milton deeply.

Scholars of English literature scratch the surface of British poet John Milton's (1608-74) work, and find such matters as alchemy and Areopagitica, Satan's challenge to nascent Christianity, reassessing Milton's republicanism (he did, after all), and losing paradise in Dryden's State of Innocence. The 16 essays are expanded from papers delivered to a 2003 conference at Middle Tennessee State University. Distributed in the US by Associated University Presses. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Voltaire's tormented soul; a psychobiographic inquiry.

Retired from psychology practice, Nemeth has been applying his knowledge about personality to historical figures in western civilization. Here he profiles the French poet and philosopher known as Voltaire (1694-1778), emphasizing how certain childhood experiences had serious and lasting consequences in his life and philosophy. He finds signs of early emotional injuries scattered throughout his biographical accounts and in the rich imagery of his literary productions. Distributed in the US by Associated University Presses. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The workings of memory; life-writing by women in early twentieth-century Spain.

With a focus on four women writers, this study interweaves discussion of the sociocultural and political context of early 20th-century Madrid with close reading of their works and analysis of the light they shed on women's lives in Spain during that era. The writers under discussion are: Carmen Baroja (1882-1950), María Martinez Sierra (1874-1974), María Teresa León (1903-1988), and Concha Méndez (1898-1986). Leggot (Spanish, Victoria U. of Wellington, New Zealand) is a scholar of 20th-century Spanish literature and culture, in particular, women writers and autobiographical narratives. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)