Trauma theory has been and continues to be important to critical work in every period of literary study. This essay argues that the subtle literary strategies of one fourteenth-century poem can help to address a blockage about representation current in that theory. Geoffrey Chaucer's "Troilus and Criseyde" meditates upon trauma by rendering…

The Dartmouth conference of 1966 has taken on a legendary stature in the annals of U.S. college composition. In the most familiar accounts (Applebee; Berlin; Harris), Dartmouth provided the stage for a trans-Atlantic encounter of the British growth model and the American curriculum-sequencing model, pitting process and personal growth against the…

The best literature dealing with the Holocaust assumes the worthwhileness and preciousness of human life. (JH)

Examines the meaning of the word "history" as used in the common phrase "literary history" by critics and scholars. Asserts the differences between historical scholarship and literary history. Argues that the grounding activity of literary history is insulated from the relativism insisted upon by poststructuralist theorizing.…

Presents 11 of the more that 50 women whose works are known from the Elizabethan Age. (CRH)

A number of techniques applicable to the teaching of Shakespeare are described with some illustrations from the author's own teaching experience. Analysis of dramatic structure receives significant attention with equal space devoted to the Gustav Freytag formula and the author's own technique. Literary, dramatic, social, and personal goals in the…