Guest post by Andrew van der Vlies and Lucy Valerie Graham If assembling a collection purporting to be a readers’ companion to the work of any author is a difficult undertaking – will it be up to date on publication? for how long afterwards? how comprehensive can one reasonably suggest the contents will be? – initiating… Read More »
Guest post by Todd Martin While one cannot really know the mind of the author—and perhaps an author doesn’t fully know her own mind in the moment of creation—notes, manuscripts, and letters provide traces of intent. Insisting on the agency of the author of a work, Sally Bushell establishes some parameters for aligning the potential… Read More »
Guest post by Timothy S. Murphy We can probably all agree to call 2020 and 2021 the “COVID years,” but what to call 2022 and 2023 remains an open question. I’ve got no favorite for 2022, but although 2023 is not yet over, I’m leaning toward calling it the Year of the Fungi. The first… Read More »
One of the main challenges when approaching Dickinson is navigating the gigantic body of criticism which is out there. My own work on Dickinson has taken me through the different stages where this is crucial – from being a student and postgraduate researcher, to an author and University lecturer. When thinking about writing about or… Read More »
Editing is the invisible art. When it’s done well, the reader doesn’t notice the editor’swork, though you can bet the reader will notice a lack of editing. Good editors workbehind the scenes, putting writers and their words at center stage. Great editors deliberatelyavoid the spotlight. (And like stagehands, they look good in black.) But all… Read More »
The premise of the present book is simple. Like the epic and the novel, science fiction is a literary form. By that we mean a historical narrative form, which is at the same time a narrative form of history—history understood, as in French or German, in the double meaning of story and history. The subject… Read More »
Look, look, he’s a marrano, lower than dust. Juan de Lucena, De Vita Beata [1] I once said, perhaps rightly: The earlier culture will become a heap of rubble, and finally a heap of ashes, but spirit will hover over the ashes. Ludwig Wittgenstein [2] This book is the first monograph wholly devoted to the… Read More »
To speak of Baudelaire is to speak of paradox and contradiction. It is to speak of a poet who is modern, amodern, and antimodern, one who vaunts transcendent correspondences and lets his poet’s halo remain trapped in the mud of the urban street. Baudelaire’s works defy any attempt characterize them except by way of a… Read More »
In 2014, prominent Québécois columnist Christian Rioux published a fearmongering opinion piece on the use of “Franglais” (or Frenglish) in one of Quebec’s most prominent newspapers, Le Devoir, and sparked a province-wide controversy. In his piece, Rioux deplores the degraded quality of the French language he supposedly observes in Quebec and, most importantly, points a… Read More »
SAFE ABORTION / PAIN-FREE / SAME-DAY / CALL NOW In contemporary South Africa, these words may be found plastered on any public objects ranging from lamp posts to litter bins. Promotional flyers by traditional healers make similar claims alongside promises to bring back lost lovers, enhance penis length and more. The supposedly painless abortion is… Read More »