In "Funes the Memorius," Jorge Luis Borges tells the tale of an Argentinian man who falls off a horse, becomes paralyzed, and acquires the strange gift of infinite memory (Borges, 1993). Funes remembers everything, which is to say he forgets nothing. The author will use Borges's story as the backdrop for his response to Professor…

In this reflective piece, Karl Miller looks down the lens at an ancient world, once his own. He does so with the help of a memoir, "Rebecca's Vest," which he published much later, in the mid-1990s: a mid-term report in which he describes how he became a reader and about what he read. With the end of the term approaching, he offers a…

A recent article in "The Weekly Standard," "Kenyon College Cancels Play About Immigration; Starts 'Whiteness Group,'" describes a current call for censorship. Wendy MacLeod's play, "The Good Samaritan," is about an immigrant family in the U.S. surviving "without pay and living in dire conditions," according…

Michael Rosenak uses the twin metaphors of "language" and "literature," borrowed from Oakeshott and Peters, to argue that the goal of education is initiation into a language. This goal transcends the study of literature in that language. It includes, as well, the development of the capacity both to critique literature and to…

Edmundson states that if he could make one wish for the members of his profession, college and university professors of literature, he would wish that for one year, two, three, or five, they would give up readings. By "a reading," he means the application of an analytical vocabulary to describe and (usually) to judge a work of literary art.…

Literary studies is in the doldrums. Wave after wave of revisionism has washed over literature departments in the last few decades, bringing a miscellany of new methods and critical tools, from cultural materialism to critical race theory, deconstruction to disability studies, the new historicism to the new formalism. Yet, even as people's ways of…

In her thoughtful work regarding various aspects of emotion and emotion related words, Pavlenko explores a variety of perspectives on how we might characterize and conceptualize expressions of emotion. It is a work that is quite rich in breadth--one that leads to a variety of different thoughts on this topic, many of which are amenable to…

In this review essay, Jeanne Connell examines the influence of pragmatic philosophy on the scholarly works of twentieth-century literary theorist and English educator Louise Rosenblatt through the lens of a recent collection of her essays originally published between 1936 and 1999. Rosenblatt grounded her transactional theory of literature in…

Surveys the family background, education, interests, and literary production of 100 Franco-American authors. Two examples from the literature are discussed and indications on authors' political and social involvement are given to show that both preservation of the spiritual heritage and attention to populist causes were concerns of these writers.…

Discusses the following principles for developing literature and film courses: (1) instructors should have goals for the course and understand and know how to achieve them; (2) works should be chosen for their quality, not popularity; and (3) instructors should be expert in film, literature, or both. (AYC)

Examines literary theory's displacing of "method" in the New Historicist criticism. Argues that Stephen Greenblatt and Lee Paterson imply that no objective historical truth is possible and as a result do not give methodology its due weight in their criticism. Questions the theory of "truth" advanced in this vein of literary…

Proposes that deafness can be seen as an avenue into a theoretical discourse rather than either the infirmity that blocks communication or a subject for a simple thematic exposition as would be found in an analysis of "deafness in literature." Looks at the deafened movement as it dialectically approaches the critic, the reader, and the text. (TB)

Discusses feminist literary theory and describes challenges the experience of feminist literary theory presented to high school English students and their teacher. Students found that feminist theory threatened heterosexuality, agency, the good girl image, and the feminist haven. Makes recommendations to teachers who choose to utilize feminist…

Explicates core aspects of two censored narratives: the movie "E.T.: The Extraterrestrial" and the novel "Huckleberry Finn." Points out similarities between the two works and raises the issue of the estrangement of youth from adult society. (RH)

Discusses the characteristics of the "new reader" and the "new novel." (AM)