Literary Studies

Melodrama in Disguise: The Case of the Victorian Novel

By guest contributor Jacob Romanow When people call a book “melodramatic,” they usually mean it as an insult. Melodrama is histrionic, implausible, and (therefore) artistically subpar—a reviewer might use the term to suggest that serious readers look elsewhere. Victorian novels,… Continue Reading →

2017/09/27 0

Politics the only common ground

by Eric Brandom Le congrès des ecrivains et artistes noirs took place in late September 1956, in Paris. Among the speakers was Aimé Césaire, and it is his intervention, “Culture and Colonization,” that is my focus here. This text has been the… Continue Reading →

2017/06/07 0

Stefan Collini’s Ford Lectures: ‘History in English criticism, 1919-1961’

by guest contributor Joshua Bennett A distinctive feature of the early years of the Cambridge English Tripos (examination system), in which close “practical criticism” of individual texts was balanced by the study of the “life, literature, and thought” surrounding them,… Continue Reading →

2017/03/22 1

High Fidelity: Jean Starobinski’s Critical Hermeneutics

by guest contributor Emelyn Lih The work of Swiss literary critic, hermeneut, and historian of ideas Jean Starobinski can be characterized by its dedication to depth and diversity: diversity of periods explored (from Montaigne to Baudelaire to Claude Simon, to… Continue Reading →

2017/03/15 0

Foucault from Beyond the Grave

by guest contributor Michael C. Behrent Few living thinkers have been as prolific as the dead Michel Foucault. In the thirty-two years since his death, he has published thirteen book-length lecture courses, four volumes of interviews and papers (totaling over… Continue Reading →

2016/12/19 0

Ideas of Attachment: What the “Postcritical Turn” Means for the History of Ideas

by contributing editor Daniel London

2016/11/28 5

Mandatory Reading: The Novel and the College Course in the Early American Republic

by guest contributor Rob Koehler Like a lot of college students today, Daniel Tompkins (1774-1825) spent much of his four years at the newly named Columbia College [now University] writing essays. Foreshadowing his later political commitments as New York Governor… Continue Reading →

2016/11/16 1

(Prison) Note(book)s Toward a History of Boredom

by guest contributor Spencer J. Weinreich Act III, scene iii of William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice (c.1596) sees the imprisoned Antonio following his creditor, Shylock, through the streets, in hopes of mercy. Unmoved, Shylock expostulates, “I do wonder, /… Continue Reading →

2016/10/03 0

Cavendish’s Daughters: Speculative Fiction and Women’s History

by guest contributor Jonathan Kearns in collaboration with Brooke Palmieri Nor is the empire of the imagination less bounded in its own proper creations, than in those which were bestowed on it by the poor blind eyes of our ancestors…. Continue Reading →

2016/08/01 3

Apes, Jews, and Others: a reading of Franz Kafka’s “A Report to an Academy” and Bernard Malamud’s “God’s Grace”

by guest contributor Yaelle Frohlich On the surface, Franz Kafka’s short story “A Report to an Academy” (1917) and Bernard Malamud‘s last finished novel, God’s Grace (1982), appear quite different, but they each boast a striking similar feature: Both… Continue Reading →

2016/05/23 1

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