In the fifteen years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks in America, countless literary and artistic works have responded to the incident. This paper examines Amiri Baraka's literary response to this violent event through his most famous poem entitled "Somebody blew up America," which defies American orthodox responses to the attacks. The…

This essay provides much-needed critical attention and historical context to the long-neglected 1924 edition of Gertrude Chandler Warner's "The Box-Car Children." Commonly overshadowed by its more recent and more popular 1942 version--known as "The Boxcar Children"--this earlier edition calls attention to the original cultural…

This study focuses on the political chaos in Kurt Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle" (1963). While the main scholarly studies focus on the postcolonial peculiarities of the novel, this study will focus on the post-nuclear characteristics and will render the novel's position distinctive within the discourse on political and social affairs. The…

This article describes a self-study pursuant to a clash between a lecturer and a student concerning the teaching of literature in a politically fraught context. The learning group is composed of Arab and Jewish teachers at a college in northern Israel. The work read by the group expresses a Palestinian perspective. The incident, discussed with…

The dramaturgical dimensions of the "theater of fact" as found in two anti-war plays, "Discourse on Viet Nam" by Peter Weiss and "Xa: A Vietnam Primer" by the ProVisional Theatre are examined. In these plays the author finds that Vietnamese history becomes rhetorical testament in arguments against United States…

Examines three rhetorical techniques that Franklin D. Roosevelt used in his "First Inaugural Address" to announce and implement his New Deal. The various speech drafts examined reveal that he purposefully used military metaphor, the scapegoat, and the carrot-and-stick approach to accomplish certain persuasive goals. (JMF)

This investigation attempts a didactic analysis of Arnold Wesker's Trilogy for teaching in the 12th or 13th grade of a Modern Language Gymnasium. Here the main emphasis is said to bear on an anlysis of the relation of language and structure of the Trilogy to Wesker's conception of history as revealed in this work, as well as upon an analysis of…

Recent developments and the present state of scholarship in Ciceroniana are surveyed in this booklet. Roman history and literature are reflected in discussion of the speeches, letters, philosophical and rhetorical writings, and political involvement of Cicero. Nineteenth-century literary criticism of Cicero is largely rejected in this survey in…

Examines five of White's books in the context of their historical perspective. (KS)

Argues that literary criticism, which has focused on the relevance of literary works to their context in society, must also address specific political issues confronting society. (RB)

Argues that English teachers are not asking the most important questions about a piece of literature, suggesting that they are ducking the issues that are specifically political. (RB)

Argues that literary theory is a fact of professional life in English departments and that differences of intellectual concern will always remain. Discusses what should be the object of critical analysis, and questions whether answering such a question is even possible. (HB)

Argues that the discipline of a total political and social revolution, it is stated, requires the self-discipline (in no way synonymous with control) and responsibility of the writer, as of any other citizen, in ensuring that the initial premises of the revolution are not betrayed, either by selfish failings on the part of the creator or by…

Argues that the recent feminist analyses of gender and power can illuminate the situation of the profession of composition studies as it has struggled for legitimacy and power within the academy. Focuses on the negative consequences of identification with the sciences and social sciences on the part of empirical researchers as the field struggled…